June 16, 2023 • 38 mins
With a winter characterized by substantial precipitation and robust vegetation growth in the Great Basin, many are curious about the implications for the upcoming fire year.
On Episode 13 of the Living With Fire Podcast, Christina Restaino, Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, engaged in a discussion with Joe Smith, a research scientist at the University of Montana, and Jeremy Maestas from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, about the connection between rain, snow, and fire risk in the Great Basin.
For more full episode details including the transcript, visit https://www.buzzsprout.com/1819551/episodes/13052970
Smith and Maestas are part of a team of researchers who have developed a new tool to predict wildfire probability in the Great Basin. This tool incorporates historical data and current conditions to provide fire probability maps, offering valuable insights for Land Managers in the region.
Maestas highlighted the impact of the increased vegetation growth, explaining, “All this growing vegetation production is going to build up out there and there's no amount of livestock and insects in the world that are going to eat it all. So, it'll build up on the landscape and probably show up next year in the fire probability maps."
Discussing the natural wet and dry cycles that characterize the Great Basin, Maestas and Smith shared their findings. Smith's research, based on 32 years of data, shed light on the implications of these patterns for potential fires. "We should be particularly concerned when transitioning from a wet cycle to a dry one," Smith advised.
What does all this mean for Great Basin residents? Restaino suggested a proactive approach, emphasizing the importance of creating defensible spaces around homes and collaborating with the community. This preparation will help residents stay vigilant in the face of potential fire risks in the coming year.
Resources:
· Great Basin rangeland fire probability tool
· A Homeowner’s Guide to Cheatgrass
· Be Careful! Cheatgrass is extremely flammable!
· Fire Adapted Communities: The Next Step in Wildfire Preparedness
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jeremy Maestas (00:00):
All this water that came this year is going to
have consequences for us,possibly next year, right?
Because of all this growingvegetation production is going
to build up out there, andthere's no amount of livestock
and insects in the world thatare going to eat it all. So
it'll build up on the landscapeand probably show up next year
in the fire probability maps.
Megan Kay (00:29):
This is the Living with Fire Podcast. Brought to
you by the University of Nevada,Reno extension. Hi there.
Welcome back to the Living withFire Podcast. I'm your host.
Megan Kay, Outreach Coordinatorfor the Living with Fire
program. And as I'm recordingthis in my basement in Reno,
Nevada, it's raining outside alot. Hopefully you can't hear
(00:50):
that, and hopefully my basementdoesn't flood. But that's just
indicative of this crazy, wetand wild winter/spring we've
been having here in the GreatBasin, and on this episode,
we're going to learn what all ofthis precipitation means for the
upcoming fire year. So you'renot going to hear too much from
me this episode. Thisconversation was facilitated by
(01:13):
the director of the Living withFire program, Christina
Restaino.
Christina Restaino (01:16):
I'm Christina Restaino. I'm on the
faculty here at UNR.
Megan Kay (01:22):
She spoke with Joe Smith.
Joe Smith (01:24):
So my name is Joe Smith. I am a research scientist
at University of Montana.
Megan Kay (01:31):
And Jeremy Maestas,
Jeremy Maestas (01:33):
Hey everybody.
Jeremy Maestas, here with theUSDA's Natural Resources
Conservation Service.
Megan Kay (01:39):
So I'm just going to hand it off, and let's hear what
Christina has to say about hasto say about this episode.
Christina Restaino (01:44):
I would just point out that in this episode,
we really try to untangle therelationship between rain and
snow, right? So how much rainand snow that that we get in a
winter, and what that means forthe fire season coming up, and I
think that all of us in theGreat Basin region right now are
(02:05):
really curious about what toexpect this year, right? It's
like, okay, we've had this bigwinter. We haven't had a lot of
fire in the past couple years.
We know that's related to thedrought. So what does it mean
when we get a lot of rain andsnow? What does that mean for
fire? So it's a fun conversationthat kind of dives into that.
(02:30):
Let's get into the real meat ofthe discussion here and really
start to talk about what all ofthis precipitation in the Great
Basin means when we're thinkingabout the fire year. So what do
we expect to happen with fire inthe Great Basin this year, after
this big winner,
Jeremy Maestas (02:49):
Fire risk is not created equally across the
landscape, is where I wouldstart in describing this. And so
for listeners out there who areprobably familiar most with
forests and forest fires,there's always enough fuel in a
forest to have a large fire,right? And so the scenario in
(03:12):
which we have large fire yearsin forests is determined mostly
by the amount of moisture in thevegetation. So if things are
really wet, they're not going toignite and burn at larger
scales, at least the likelihoodis lower, okay, but remember
that the nature of the GreatBasin, most of it is not
(03:34):
forested. It's actually shrublands, grasslands, open country,
and in that scenario, what wecall range lands, fire
probability is determined moreby the amount of fuel vegetation
buildup of fuel. We don't haveenough fuel every year to have
(03:55):
large fires. So those are twodifferent scenarios, and in that
case, it takes time for grass,enough grass, to build up to
have a large shrub land orgrassland fire year. So Joe can
unpack some of his work. I don'twant to be a spoiler here, but
(04:19):
we learned some really coolinsights about what it takes to
set us up for large fire years.
And maybe he can speak to that abit more here.
Joe Smith (04:29):
Yeah, that's a perfect setup. You know, be
thinking about that fuellimitation idea, you know, how
much, how much, how much fire isgoing to occur in a given year
really depends on how much fuelis there. But how much fuel is
(04:50):
there is not just determined bywhat grew this year or by what
grew, you know, in the spring.
Leading up to the to the fireseason. It's, it's determined by
that, plus carry over fromprevious years. So you know, if
a bunch of, if you have a reallyproductive year, you're going to
(05:13):
have a lot of sort of standstanding dead vegetation. And
you're also just going to yourperennial plants are just going
to grow a lot because of that.
So you're going to have biggerplants with more biomass. And
not all of that is going to goaway. You know, it's not all
(05:34):
going to get eaten by herbivoresor compacted by snow. Some of
that's going to be there againnext year. So you have this kind
of this build up that happensacross years, and actually in
the Great Basin, at least inmost of the Great Basin,
(05:55):
especially in Nevada, how muchfire you get in a given year is
actually more correlated withwhat happened last year than it
is with what happens thisspring. So, you know, for if
we're thinking about this 2023,fire season, even more important
than what was this winter like,or what's this spring like, you
(06:15):
want to be thinking about whathappened last, you know, May,
June, July, the there's quite abit higher correlation between
those conditions in thisupcoming fire season than there
are between, you know what? Whatkind of a winter was it this?
This winter?
Jeremy Maestas (06:32):
Yeah, it blows me away about Joe's work,
because it's pretty common tohave a big wet year or a big dry
winter and say, Boy, we're goingto have a heck of a fire year
this year, or whatever. Andthat's true when it comes to
forests, but it's not the samewhen it comes to these open
grassland, shrub land ecosystemsthat characterize most of the
(06:55):
Great Basin. So the big revealin his work was like, it's
really about what happened lastyear, and we now have the
ability to quantify that and seeit at large scales and say,
Okay, well, have we really setourselves up this year based on
what happened last year?
Christina Restaino (07:12):
Just to unpack all of this a little bit,
right? So in a year wherethere's been a lot of rain and
snow, we expect there to be moreproduction of grasses and shrub
land fuels, so the vegetationitself will grow more. But what
you're saying, Joe is that in ayear in which things actually
(07:34):
grow more, it might take a year,and then it might be that next
summer, we might expect there tobe more fire in these ecosystems
that just created a lot ofplants and that eventually
become fuels. Right? Is allthose when, when we talk about
fuels in the forest world, we'renot talking about gasoline and
(07:56):
and in the fire world, right ingeneral, we're we're talking
about sticks and grasses andshrubs on the ground. Sometimes
we use that, that wordliberally, and people don't
understand. Fuel? What's thatmean? And so, so then are you
saying, Joe, that that we mightnot expect this immediate summer
to be a big fire year in theGreat Basin, but maybe look out
Joe Smith (08:20):
A great overview, and, and I think, and that's
for next year.
exactly right, I think this thisbig, you know, this big winter,
we're going to see theconsequences of it, but we might
not see it until next year. AndI think another, another aspect
to think about, besides,besides, just how much fuel is
(08:41):
out there is, you know, howmuch, how much of that fuel is
dead versus alive? I think sothis is kind of where, this is
where you can, you can kind ofthink, okay, maybe, maybe this
fuel conditioning issue doesmatter a little bit for range
lands, but you just have tothink about it a little bit
differently than you do inforests. So in a in a year like
(09:04):
a year like this, you know, wedidn't have a lot of growth last
year. We've been climbing, youknow, the Great Basin has been
climbing its way out of adrought that, you know, peaked
in about summer of 2021 and sowe didn't have a lot of growth
in 2021 we didn't have a lot ofgrowth in 2022 we're getting
(09:26):
that growth now. We're gettingthat that fuels accumulation
now, but in this summer, a lotof the fuel, a lot of, a large
proportion of the fuel that'sout there is going to be green
stuff that grew this year. So Ithink there's, there is a little
bit of an element of, you know,the fuel condition matters. And
(09:48):
I think that when you have, whenyou have a larger proportion of
a fuel that's dead, you know,that's that standing dead, that
that carried over from pastyears. I think that's really a
recipe for, you know, a volatilefire year.
Megan Kay (10:06):
Let's take a quick break. I wanted to take a quick
break to talk about the Livingwith Fire Program. Maybe you
found this podcast and you'rewondering, what is the Living
with Fire Program? Well, we'vebeen around since 1997 we're
managed by the University ofNevada Reno extension, and we're
(10:29):
really a collaborative effortamongst federal, state and local
firefighting agencies as well asresource management agencies to
help people adapt, prepare andlive more safely with wildfire.
So if you haven't already, checkout our website,
livingwithfire.com where you'llfind all of our resources and
tools that will help you livemore safely with the wildfire.
(10:49):
Okay, back to the show.
Christina Restaino (10:50):
This was a good time, I think, for one of
you to just define what theGreat Basin is.
Jeremy Maestas (11:03):
The Great Basin, hydrologically, is where it's
like the Hotel California ofwater, rain and snow that falls
in the Great Basin stays in theGreat Basin and never leaves.
And so we have a series ofmountain ranges across the
region that run generally north,south, and in between all of
(11:25):
those ranges, we have these bigopen valleys where all the water
that comes off the mountainsgoes into the valleys and
evaporates in essentiallyterminal lakes. So instead of
flowing out to the ocean, watergenerally just stays within this
big region that we call theGreat Basin, centered, really on
(11:45):
top of Nevada, but spanningparts of Utah, Idaho, Oregon and
in California.
Joe Smith (11:53):
I think, like, like any of these polygons that we
put on maps, it has fuzzy edges,and those where those edges fall
depends on who you ask. And sothere's the kind of hydrologic
Great Basin where everything isinwardly draining, and that's,
that's kind of the common commonunderstanding. But then there's
(12:14):
also, I think, fry, if you askmore of a plant ecologist, or a
wildlife biologist, they'dprobably give you more of a
plant based definition. So thesort of unique thing about the
western portion of it is justhow dominated it is by by
(12:36):
wintertime precipitation. Sowhen you get into the the other
you know, the sage brushecosystems, more on the other
side of the Continental Divide,you're in much more of a summer
precips system. And so the theGreat Basin, when I think of the
Great Basin, I kind of think ofit a little bit broader than
(12:56):
than just the hydrologic GreatBasin I extended up into, you
know, further into southernIdaho and parts of Oregon that
don't really fit that, thatinwardly draining hydrologic
definition.
Christina Restaino (13:08):
Interesting.
Jeremy Maestas (13:08):
Yeah, I would add that it's, it's like Joe's
saying, really, um, arid, and,you know, climatically extreme,
where in the winter we get wecan get really cold and a lot of
snow, but in the summer, it'ssuper hot and dry, and so those
extremes drive the limitedamount of production we get in
(13:33):
terms of vegetation in theregion, and it's made it really
a tough place to live andsettle. And the evidence of that
is like, if you go on GoogleEarth at night, you ever seen
that map with like the lights atnight, it'll be one of the
darkest places left in NorthAmerica.
Christina Restaino (13:48):
And that's why we like living in it.
Jeremy Maestas (13:51):
Yes, exactly.
Christina Restaino (13:53):
I see really good stars from my backyard in
the Great Basin. Joe, I'mcurious you work in in the space
of predicting the probability ofwhat of what the probability of
fire will be for the fireseason. And I've looked at the
(14:14):
fire probability map for thisyear, and it is higher than last
year. So let's talk a little bitabout that, and why is it higher
than last year, and then kind ofdive in a little bit of you
know, who uses those maps? Howdo you make them, things like
that? But I'm just curious,because even though we're, we
didn't have a lot of growth lastyear, and we're, we're, why is
(14:38):
it expected that we might have alittle bit of an elevated
probability of fire this year?
Joe Smith (14:44):
Yeah, so, I mean, the short answer is that it's a
little higher this year, becauseyou can't really get any lower
than it was last year. You know,2021 like I said earlier, was
the depth of that drought thatwas, that was about the worst
that it got, so, really, atleast in sort of, you know,
(15:08):
recent memory, last, you know,decade or so, 2021 was really
one of the lowest productionyears that there was. So that's
why 2022 is just soexceptionally, you know, those
probabilities were, wereexceptionally low across most of
(15:28):
the Great Basin. So, you know,we've been sort of climbing our
way out. You know, I wouldn'tsay we're completely out of, out
of that drought yet, but we'vebeen climbing our way out, and
so it's just, it's, it's goingto be rising those I would
(15:49):
expect, actually the next yearis even going to be higher just
because of what's happened thiswinter. So yeah, that's, that's
kind of the short version.
Christina Restaino (16:02):
That makes l,msense, though, and I think
that helps people understand. Itcertainly helps me understand,
because I think that, you know,we have to understand, like, the
baseline probability of fire isalways going to be a certain
amount in the Great Basin,right? This is a fire prone
landscape, and so it's, it'sinteresting that we've, we've
(16:25):
been in kind of the lowestprobability of fire for the past
few years because of this bigdrought, right? And so now we're
expecting all of this newgrowth, which is going to
increase the fire risk, but it'salso going to bring all, you
know, it's a balance, becauseit's also going to bring more
forage to the range lands, moreproductivity, recharging of the
(16:46):
groundwater. It's also going tobring with it some flooding and
some fire risk. So it's likethese, these, these balances of
how these, you know, climaticvariations kind of influence the
day to day of life in the GreatBasin. I don't know if you want
to comment on that, Jeremy,before we move on to talking
(17:07):
about these maps a little bitmore.
Jeremy Maestas (17:09):
Yeah, the variability in conditions out
there is a definingcharacteristic of the Great
Basin, as we talked aboutearlier, wild fluctuations
between year to year, terms ofhow much moisture we get, how
the vegetation responds. And ofcourse, the wildlife
(17:30):
populations, the people thatdepend on these landscapes,
they're all following thosepatterns of boom and bust. And
so if you look at the maps thatJoe produced, because he was
able to leverage, you know, 30years of of satellite imagery,
we're able to go back in timeand kind of see that year to
(17:52):
year variation. So in any givenyear, the patterns of large fire
risk really aren't aren't thesame. But there are some
observations maybe we can diveinto here more in terms of like
the northern Great Basin, rightwhen you get up along the Snake
River plain, Eastern Oregon,kind of Winnemucca, Nevada,
(18:14):
North you know that area, moreyears than not, tends to have a
higher probability of largefires. And some of that goes
back to what Joe was talkingabout in terms of grass and fine
fuels. And the buildup of thatis more often happening in that
part of the Great Basin, asopposed to Southern Nevada,
(18:37):
where it's a rare, exceptionalyear, where you're going to get
enough production to really havea huge fire being likely.
Megan Kay (18:46):
Let's take a quick break. So speaking of grasses
and fine fuels, I'm sure you allhave noticed that due to all
this precipitation we've beenhaving. This spring, the weeds
are coming up like crazy,especially invasive grasses like
(19:06):
cheatgrass, and cheatgrass is ahuge fire hazard. It's also one
of the things that we get askedabout most often when we're
interacting with the public, is,how do I manage cheatgrass? How
do I get rid of cheatgrass?
Well, luckily, we do have someguidance for homeowners. A while
back, Living with Fire put outthe homeowner's guide to
cheatgrass, which is a greatoverview about cheatgrass and
(19:27):
why it's such a fire hazard, andgoes over some tips and tricks
and control methods thathomeowners can use to eradicate
cheatgrass on their propertiesand keep it gone. We've included
a link to that resource in theshow notes below, so check it
out, and we hope it's helpfulback to the show.
Christina Restaino (19:55):
So, Joe, you make these wild. Fire
probability maps, and we'vealluded to them quite a bit, but
let's get down to kind of whatgoes into making these, and why
are they necessary to make
Joe Smith (20:10):
Yeah. So these, these maps, are really sort of
designed to fit into a uniquegap in the existing fire risk
products that are already outthere. Now there's, there's a
lot of fire danger products thathave been produced, things like
(20:30):
the National Fire Danger RatingSystem. And then there's also
things there's, there's productsthat that look at fire risk
over, over really long, longtime periods. Right? What we
produced was a product that kindof looks at, you know, what's,
(20:52):
what's the, what's the fire riskfor the upcoming fire season? So
it's this intermediate timescale between products like the
National Fire Danger RatingSystem, which tell you about,
like, what's the fire risk inthe next like, 48 hours to maybe
a week, and then those longerterm products on the other side.
So we're kind of trying to fitit right in the middle there. So
(21:15):
that's, I guess that's sort ofthe context for for these
products that we developed. Andthe other, I guess, the other
important context is sort of thetechnology side of things. You
know, until very recently, wejust didn't have high resolution
data on vegetation productionthat was dynamic. So we could
(21:40):
say something about what wasproduced in an average year, but
we didn't. We didn't have adynamic product that told us,
you know, okay, what wasproduced last year? Was it above
average, or was it belowaverage? Now we have, like our
our models use data from therange land analysis platform, so
(22:01):
that that product gives usannually, percent cover and an
estimate of production in poundsper acre for every 30 meter
pixel of range lands across thewhole west. So that gives us
sort of a the missing, missinglink of fuel amount that that
(22:26):
you'd actually need to makethese sort of annual, longer
range forecasts for the GreatBasin. So what we're basically
doing is combining the cover,vegetation, cover and production
data that's at an annual timestep from from the range land
analysis platform with somedrought metrics and
(22:49):
precipitation metrics, from somesome gridded meteorological data
sets. And then we're, you know,combining, those with machine
learning models to try topredict what the what the
conditions are like, how ripe isthat, you know, for a fire at a
given given location. So that's,that's kind of the gist of the
(23:13):
models and what, what they do.
So we release them, we can, wecan make a prediction or a
forecast for the upcoming fireseason, starting in about in a
typical year, starting in aboutFebruary, and then we can update
that throughout the spring.
Christina Restaino (23:33):
Who uses the maps like, how is the data
ultimately right? Because it'skind of this complicated
distillation of a lot ofdifferent data. You've got the
vegetation data, you've got theclimate data. You use models to
bring it all together, and thenkind of, how is it applied and used?
Jeremy Maestas (23:54):
Yeah, the maps are especially beneficial to
like those federal landmanagement agencies, like the
Bureau of Land Management orforest service that are stewards
of a great portion of the regionjust because of the public land
ownership there. So you havesome of our local BLM fire and
(24:15):
fuel staff, who are starting tolook at this product alongside
those traditional metrics thatJoe mentioned, like the National
Fire Danger Rating System andother indicators so that they
can improve their preparednessgoing into the fire season. So
throughout the fire season,they're running around their
(24:37):
district trying to assess fireconditions. And imagine that
challenge of communicatingwhat's going on across your area
when, for example, you areresponsible for Harney County,
Oregon, which is six and a halfmillion acres in size, one
county. Okay, and sohistorically, they're using
(24:58):
climate and weather data andother Predictive Services that
can provide some courseestimates. They're using their
local knowledge and some fieldsampling of vegetation. But for
the first time, with Joe'sproduct, we've got a real time
forecast of vegetationconditions across every single
(25:20):
acre in their district. And it'sdynamic. So you can see the
change across the district isnot all uniformly distributed.
There's parts of it that mightbe higher probability of a fire
than others, and so they can usethat information to inform
things like resource allocation,where are we going to put our
(25:43):
firefighters, our dozers? Howmuch do we need to ask for this
year in our district? Do we needto talk about closures to the
public in certain areas atcertain time of the year, just
because what we know is likelyto happen, and so the public
might encounter those things,but have the agencies have the
(26:05):
data to better support therationale for why they would do that.
Joe Smith (26:10):
It's, you know, fire firefighters, the fire
suppression community, is reallythey are reacting in real time
to conditions on the ground. Youknow, they are really going to
be looking at things liketemperature and wind speed and
humidity. Those are like the bigthings that drive the decision
making process duringfirefighting. It's not how much,
(26:34):
you know, how much cheatgrassgrew there last year, or
whatever, like that. That's thatplays a role in what happens
during a fire. But the big, thebiggest drivers are, are
weather. So this is, this isreally, I think this, this
product is really aimed moretoward managers who can do
something about managementbefore a fire starts. This is
(26:58):
really about pre firemanagement, rather than the
actual act of firefightingitself.
Jeremy Maestas (27:05):
You know, one point that scientists have have
put out there in the last coupleof years is that more acres of
these range land ecosystems areburning than forested ecosystems
across the US, across the West,and that's especially true since
about 2000 so when we setnational policy, when it comes
(27:29):
to fire management, it's usuallyaround forest fire. But you
know, when you have more acresbeing burned on our grasslands
and our shrub lands today, Ithink there's a growing
awareness that we need toallocate more resources towards
that, to help affectedcommunities in the in the
(27:50):
region. And you know, this typeof work can help bring those
resources to the Great Basin ina timely fashion, to ensure
that, you know, we we enhancethe effectiveness of our
firefighting community beyondwhere it's at today, which is
really high. Like something like97% of all fires that start in
(28:12):
the Great Basin are put outbefore they become more than
1000 acres in size. So we'realready hyper effective that
fire suppression, but thereality is that that 3% that
gets away from us are gettingreally big.
Megan Kay (28:29):
Let's take a quick break. I hope you're enjoying
the episode so far. Just wantedto quickly let you know that
these wildfire probability mapsfor the Great Basin that we've
been discussing, they'reavailable online, and we
included a link to the maps inthe show notes below, so when
(28:51):
you get a chance go check themout. Okay, back to the show.
Christina Restaino (29:02):
Jeremy, you were just discussing how you
know, in the past 2, decades, Ithink you said so the past 20
years, you know, we'veexperienced most of our largest
rangeland fires. What's changingin the Great Basin that is
making these kind ofuncharacteristic large fires
(29:22):
occur.
Jeremy Maestas (29:23):
Yeah. You know, I always like to caveat our fire
discussions by saying fire isnot either bad nor good, it just
is. It's a part of this system.
But the reality is that it's not1850 anymore in the Great Basin.
By that, I mean before aEuropean settlement where we
brought livestock and invasivespecies and all these other
(29:46):
changes to the system. So today,when we have fire, we have
plants from other continents,invasive species, invasive
annual grasses, in particular,like cheatgrass, that are
waiting in the wings to takeover and replace the perennial
native vegetation thatcharacterizes the Great Basin so
(30:08):
historically large fire years inthe Great Basin happened, but
they were more rare, infrequentand driven by that accumulation
of our perennial, nativeperennial grasses, those bunch
grasses that are out there onthe landscape. And when we got
enough of that built up andenough dead material across the
(30:30):
landscape, we'd have a big fireyear what we see today, and when
we look at Joe's data, heactually mapped this out for us.
Looking back, you know over thelast 30 years is that we
fluctuate in our perennial grassproduction from year to year,
and that's largely stayed fairlystable in terms of the amount of
(30:55):
of grass production coming fromour native native grasses.
What's changed, though, is thatcheatgrass and other invasive
grasses have been slowlyincreasing over that 30 year
period, such that the amount ofabove ground production, or
grass biomass that's out therein some years can exceed the
(31:17):
amount of our native grassestoday. So in 2016 I think that
was the first year that wedocumented that happening, we
had more grass production comefrom invasive species than our
native grasses. Why does thatmatter? It means that those
years in which we're set up tohave enough fuel to have large
(31:38):
fires are becoming more and morefrequent because of invaders
like cheatgrass that have filledin the what used to be like bare
soil, inner spaces in a more ofa desert environment, right? We
didn't have anything growingthere, essentially. Now you put
this other plant in the middle,and it creates a very continuous
grass fuel bed that allows thosefires to become really large,
(32:05):
and that problem is largely whatwe think is driving some of the
patterns that we're observing interms of larger, more frequent
fires, especially in theNorthern part of the Great
Basin.
Christina Restaino (32:21):
Af ter these years, where we've seen a lot of
rain like and snow like we hadthis year, would we expect more
cheatgrass to grow?
Jeremy Maestas (32:31):
So we should see really good cheatgrass
production, unfortunately,because of higher moisture this
year.
Christina Restaino (32:39):
And so Joe, is the cheatgrass production
taken into account in theprobability maps that you guys
create?
Joe Smith (32:45):
So yes and no, it actually turned out that that
information didn't really add awhole lot in terms of how well
the models worked. So for rightnow, anyway, we're just relying
on last year and the yearbefore, but future iterations of
(33:07):
this might might use a bit moreinformation about current year's
kind of spring growth.
Christina Restaino (33:15):
But it does take into account, yeah, but it
does take into account last yearand the year before. Sheet grass
growth, like that plant is partof what you're seeing in the
models?
Jeremy Maestas (33:25):
Yeah, like what Joe mentioned earlier in the
podcast, all this water thatcame this year is going to have
consequences for us, possiblynext year, right? Because of all
this growing vegetationproduction is going to build up
out there, and there's no amountof livestock and insects in the
world that are going to eat itall. So it'll build up on the
landscape and probably show upnext year in the fire
(33:49):
probability maps.
Christina Restaino (33:50):
And the year after because its using the two
years. Yeah. So it could be alegacy that's kind of, you know,
to me, the moral of the storyhere is that really there's a
priming that has to occur for toget that big fire year in the
Great Basin right where it'slike, you have to have that big
winner, and then the productivespring and summer, and then fast
(34:15):
forward a year or two. And so ifwe have a really big drought
next year, that could really setit up even more, because we've
had all this growth, and theneverything will dry out, right?
So it's that combination ofproduction of grass and shrubs
and woody biomass in general,combined with, you know, what
(34:36):
are the current conditionsexisting on on the landscape
when a fire could be ignited,right? So it's like that
combination of the two. So likeanything in the Great Basin, the
story is complicated, but.
Joe Smith (34:49):
Yeah, that's a pretty good description. Actually, the
wet, dry cycles in the GreatBasin are pretty regular. That's
when we, you know. Should bereally worried is when we're
coming out of a wet cycle intothe into the dry portion of the
cycle.
Christina Restaino (35:06):
So to me, I would think the call to action
as a resident in the Great Basinis to spend this summer doing
some really good defensiblespace action around my home and
collaborating with my community,and kind of taking this time to
prepare, anticipating that nextyear will be will want to be on
guard for what could happen inthe sage rush ecosystems around
(35:29):
our communities.
Jeremy Maestas (35:30):
What a perfect tee up, Christina, because
that's where my head was going.
Like, you know, the upshot ofthis work is that we can
forecast with with a greatdegree of accuracy, the
probability of large fire. Wenow know that it's not just
driven by woody vegetation,which is often the focus of fuel
(35:53):
management, but in theserangeland or shrubland systems,
it's grassy fuels that drivelarge fire. So if you're a
community and you talk aboutdefensible space, in addition to
the woody fuels management youmight do around your
infrastructure and your roads sothat people can safely fight
(36:13):
fires, you need to think aboutgrass. So if you're doing mowing
alongside of roads, and you mowthe brush off so that your flame
lengths aren't too high, butthen all you do is open it up
for cheatgrass to explode.
That's something we'd ask you toconsider managing too. So maybe
(36:34):
some integrated treatments wherewe use herbicides to actually
kill that invasive annual grass,so we don't have that herbaceous
production alongside of ourroads or infrastructure that you
know might serve as an ignitionsource. We're doing this on
(36:56):
larger scales with landownersand the public land management
agencies, you know, to implementthings like targeted grazing,
where we focus livestock grazingin huge pastures, to try to
break up the amount of grassfuels that build up over the
landscape. So those aredefinitely things that this year
(37:17):
people should be thinking about,especially in those regions on
Joe's map that are kind of inthat upper, moderate to high,
elevated probability of fire. Soremember, grass fuels drive
these large fires. So it's notjust about managing your shrubs
Megan Kay (37:33):
Thank you for listening to the Living with
and trees.
Fire Podcast. You can find morestories and resources about
wildfire at our website,livingwithfire.com the Living
with Fire Program is funded bythe Bureau of Land Management,
the Nevada Division of Forestryand the US Forest Service, and
were managed by the Universityof Nevada, Reno extension, an
(37:55):
equal opportunity institution.
All this water that came this year is going to
have consequences for us,possibly next year, right?
Because of all this growingvegetation production is going
to build up out there, andthere's no amount of livestock
and insects in the world thatare going to eat it all. So
it'll build up on the landscapeand probably show up next year
in the fire probability maps.
Megan Kay (00:29):
This is the Living with Fire Podcast. Brought to
you by the University of Nevada,Reno extension. Hi there.
Welcome back to the Living withFire Podcast. I'm your host.
Megan Kay, Outreach Coordinatorfor the Living with Fire
program. And as I'm recordingthis in my basement in Reno,
Nevada, it's raining outside alot. Hopefully you can't hear
(00:50):
that, and hopefully my basementdoesn't flood. But that's just
indicative of this crazy, wetand wild winter/spring we've
been having here in the GreatBasin, and on this episode,
we're going to learn what all ofthis precipitation means for the
upcoming fire year. So you'renot going to hear too much from
me this episode. Thisconversation was facilitated by
(01:13):
the director of the Living withFire program, Christina
Restaino.
Christina Restaino (01:16):
I'm Christina Restaino. I'm on the
faculty here at UNR.
Megan Kay (01:22):
She spoke with Joe Smith.
Joe Smith (01:24):
So my name is Joe Smith. I am a research scientist
at University of Montana.
Megan Kay (01:31):
And Jeremy Maestas,
Jeremy Maestas (01:33):
Hey everybody.
Jeremy Maestas, here with theUSDA's Natural Resources
Conservation Service.
Megan Kay (01:39):
So I'm just going to hand it off, and let's hear what
Christina has to say about hasto say about this episode.
Christina Restaino (01:44):
I would just point out that in this episode,
we really try to untangle therelationship between rain and
snow, right? So how much rainand snow that that we get in a
winter, and what that means forthe fire season coming up, and I
think that all of us in theGreat Basin region right now are
(02:05):
really curious about what toexpect this year, right? It's
like, okay, we've had this bigwinter. We haven't had a lot of
fire in the past couple years.
We know that's related to thedrought. So what does it mean
when we get a lot of rain andsnow? What does that mean for
fire? So it's a fun conversationthat kind of dives into that.
(02:30):
Let's get into the real meat ofthe discussion here and really
start to talk about what all ofthis precipitation in the Great
Basin means when we're thinkingabout the fire year. So what do
we expect to happen with fire inthe Great Basin this year, after
this big winner,
Jeremy Maestas (02:49):
Fire risk is not created equally across the
landscape, is where I wouldstart in describing this. And so
for listeners out there who areprobably familiar most with
forests and forest fires,there's always enough fuel in a
forest to have a large fire,right? And so the scenario in
(03:12):
which we have large fire yearsin forests is determined mostly
by the amount of moisture in thevegetation. So if things are
really wet, they're not going toignite and burn at larger
scales, at least the likelihoodis lower, okay, but remember
that the nature of the GreatBasin, most of it is not
(03:34):
forested. It's actually shrublands, grasslands, open country,
and in that scenario, what wecall range lands, fire
probability is determined moreby the amount of fuel vegetation
buildup of fuel. We don't haveenough fuel every year to have
(03:55):
large fires. So those are twodifferent scenarios, and in that
case, it takes time for grass,enough grass, to build up to
have a large shrub land orgrassland fire year. So Joe can
unpack some of his work. I don'twant to be a spoiler here, but
(04:19):
we learned some really coolinsights about what it takes to
set us up for large fire years.
And maybe he can speak to that abit more here.
Joe Smith (04:29):
Yeah, that's a perfect setup. You know, be
thinking about that fuellimitation idea, you know, how
much, how much, how much fire isgoing to occur in a given year
really depends on how much fuelis there. But how much fuel is
(04:50):
there is not just determined bywhat grew this year or by what
grew, you know, in the spring.
Leading up to the to the fireseason. It's, it's determined by
that, plus carry over fromprevious years. So you know, if
a bunch of, if you have a reallyproductive year, you're going to
(05:13):
have a lot of sort of standstanding dead vegetation. And
you're also just going to yourperennial plants are just going
to grow a lot because of that.
So you're going to have biggerplants with more biomass. And
not all of that is going to goaway. You know, it's not all
(05:34):
going to get eaten by herbivoresor compacted by snow. Some of
that's going to be there againnext year. So you have this kind
of this build up that happensacross years, and actually in
the Great Basin, at least inmost of the Great Basin,
(05:55):
especially in Nevada, how muchfire you get in a given year is
actually more correlated withwhat happened last year than it
is with what happens thisspring. So, you know, for if
we're thinking about this 2023,fire season, even more important
than what was this winter like,or what's this spring like, you
(06:15):
want to be thinking about whathappened last, you know, May,
June, July, the there's quite abit higher correlation between
those conditions in thisupcoming fire season than there
are between, you know what? Whatkind of a winter was it this?
This winter?
Jeremy Maestas (06:32):
Yeah, it blows me away about Joe's work,
because it's pretty common tohave a big wet year or a big dry
winter and say, Boy, we're goingto have a heck of a fire year
this year, or whatever. Andthat's true when it comes to
forests, but it's not the samewhen it comes to these open
grassland, shrub land ecosystemsthat characterize most of the
(06:55):
Great Basin. So the big revealin his work was like, it's
really about what happened lastyear, and we now have the
ability to quantify that and seeit at large scales and say,
Okay, well, have we really setourselves up this year based on
what happened last year?
Christina Restaino (07:12):
Just to unpack all of this a little bit,
right? So in a year wherethere's been a lot of rain and
snow, we expect there to be moreproduction of grasses and shrub
land fuels, so the vegetationitself will grow more. But what
you're saying, Joe is that in ayear in which things actually
(07:34):
grow more, it might take a year,and then it might be that next
summer, we might expect there tobe more fire in these ecosystems
that just created a lot ofplants and that eventually
become fuels. Right? Is allthose when, when we talk about
fuels in the forest world, we'renot talking about gasoline and
(07:56):
and in the fire world, right ingeneral, we're we're talking
about sticks and grasses andshrubs on the ground. Sometimes
we use that, that wordliberally, and people don't
understand. Fuel? What's thatmean? And so, so then are you
saying, Joe, that that we mightnot expect this immediate summer
to be a big fire year in theGreat Basin, but maybe look out
Joe Smith (08:20):
A great overview, and, and I think, and that's
for next year.
exactly right, I think this thisbig, you know, this big winter,
we're going to see theconsequences of it, but we might
not see it until next year. AndI think another, another aspect
to think about, besides,besides, just how much fuel is
(08:41):
out there is, you know, howmuch, how much of that fuel is
dead versus alive? I think sothis is kind of where, this is
where you can, you can kind ofthink, okay, maybe, maybe this
fuel conditioning issue doesmatter a little bit for range
lands, but you just have tothink about it a little bit
differently than you do inforests. So in a in a year like
(09:04):
a year like this, you know, wedidn't have a lot of growth last
year. We've been climbing, youknow, the Great Basin has been
climbing its way out of adrought that, you know, peaked
in about summer of 2021 and sowe didn't have a lot of growth
in 2021 we didn't have a lot ofgrowth in 2022 we're getting
(09:26):
that growth now. We're gettingthat that fuels accumulation
now, but in this summer, a lotof the fuel, a lot of, a large
proportion of the fuel that'sout there is going to be green
stuff that grew this year. So Ithink there's, there is a little
bit of an element of, you know,the fuel condition matters. And
(09:48):
I think that when you have, whenyou have a larger proportion of
a fuel that's dead, you know,that's that standing dead, that
that carried over from pastyears. I think that's really a
recipe for, you know, a volatilefire year.
Megan Kay (10:06):
Let's take a quick break. I wanted to take a quick
break to talk about the Livingwith Fire Program. Maybe you
found this podcast and you'rewondering, what is the Living
with Fire Program? Well, we'vebeen around since 1997 we're
managed by the University ofNevada Reno extension, and we're
(10:29):
really a collaborative effortamongst federal, state and local
firefighting agencies as well asresource management agencies to
help people adapt, prepare andlive more safely with wildfire.
So if you haven't already, checkout our website,
livingwithfire.com where you'llfind all of our resources and
tools that will help you livemore safely with the wildfire.
(10:49):
Okay, back to the show.
Christina Restaino (10:50):
This was a good time, I think, for one of
you to just define what theGreat Basin is.
Jeremy Maestas (11:03):
The Great Basin, hydrologically, is where it's
like the Hotel California ofwater, rain and snow that falls
in the Great Basin stays in theGreat Basin and never leaves.
And so we have a series ofmountain ranges across the
region that run generally north,south, and in between all of
(11:25):
those ranges, we have these bigopen valleys where all the water
that comes off the mountainsgoes into the valleys and
evaporates in essentiallyterminal lakes. So instead of
flowing out to the ocean, watergenerally just stays within this
big region that we call theGreat Basin, centered, really on
(11:45):
top of Nevada, but spanningparts of Utah, Idaho, Oregon and
in California.
Joe Smith (11:53):
I think, like, like any of these polygons that we
put on maps, it has fuzzy edges,and those where those edges fall
depends on who you ask. And sothere's the kind of hydrologic
Great Basin where everything isinwardly draining, and that's,
that's kind of the common commonunderstanding. But then there's
(12:14):
also, I think, fry, if you askmore of a plant ecologist, or a
wildlife biologist, they'dprobably give you more of a
plant based definition. So thesort of unique thing about the
western portion of it is justhow dominated it is by by
(12:36):
wintertime precipitation. Sowhen you get into the the other
you know, the sage brushecosystems, more on the other
side of the Continental Divide,you're in much more of a summer
precips system. And so the theGreat Basin, when I think of the
Great Basin, I kind of think ofit a little bit broader than
(12:56):
than just the hydrologic GreatBasin I extended up into, you
know, further into southernIdaho and parts of Oregon that
don't really fit that, thatinwardly draining hydrologic
definition.
Christina Restaino (13:08):
Interesting.
Jeremy Maestas (13:08):
Yeah, I would add that it's, it's like Joe's
saying, really, um, arid, and,you know, climatically extreme,
where in the winter we get wecan get really cold and a lot of
snow, but in the summer, it'ssuper hot and dry, and so those
extremes drive the limitedamount of production we get in
(13:33):
terms of vegetation in theregion, and it's made it really
a tough place to live andsettle. And the evidence of that
is like, if you go on GoogleEarth at night, you ever seen
that map with like the lights atnight, it'll be one of the
darkest places left in NorthAmerica.
Christina Restaino (13:48):
And that's why we like living in it.
Jeremy Maestas (13:51):
Yes, exactly.
Christina Restaino (13:53):
I see really good stars from my backyard in
the Great Basin. Joe, I'mcurious you work in in the space
of predicting the probability ofwhat of what the probability of
fire will be for the fireseason. And I've looked at the
(14:14):
fire probability map for thisyear, and it is higher than last
year. So let's talk a little bitabout that, and why is it higher
than last year, and then kind ofdive in a little bit of you
know, who uses those maps? Howdo you make them, things like
that? But I'm just curious,because even though we're, we
didn't have a lot of growth lastyear, and we're, we're, why is
(14:38):
it expected that we might have alittle bit of an elevated
probability of fire this year?
Joe Smith (14:44):
Yeah, so, I mean, the short answer is that it's a
little higher this year, becauseyou can't really get any lower
than it was last year. You know,2021 like I said earlier, was
the depth of that drought thatwas, that was about the worst
that it got, so, really, atleast in sort of, you know,
(15:08):
recent memory, last, you know,decade or so, 2021 was really
one of the lowest productionyears that there was. So that's
why 2022 is just soexceptionally, you know, those
probabilities were, wereexceptionally low across most of
(15:28):
the Great Basin. So, you know,we've been sort of climbing our
way out. You know, I wouldn'tsay we're completely out of, out
of that drought yet, but we'vebeen climbing our way out, and
so it's just, it's, it's goingto be rising those I would
(15:49):
expect, actually the next yearis even going to be higher just
because of what's happened thiswinter. So yeah, that's, that's
kind of the short version.
Christina Restaino (16:02):
That makes l,msense, though, and I think
that helps people understand. Itcertainly helps me understand,
because I think that, you know,we have to understand, like, the
baseline probability of fire isalways going to be a certain
amount in the Great Basin,right? This is a fire prone
landscape, and so it's, it'sinteresting that we've, we've
(16:25):
been in kind of the lowestprobability of fire for the past
few years because of this bigdrought, right? And so now we're
expecting all of this newgrowth, which is going to
increase the fire risk, but it'salso going to bring all, you
know, it's a balance, becauseit's also going to bring more
forage to the range lands, moreproductivity, recharging of the
(16:46):
groundwater. It's also going tobring with it some flooding and
some fire risk. So it's likethese, these, these balances of
how these, you know, climaticvariations kind of influence the
day to day of life in the GreatBasin. I don't know if you want
to comment on that, Jeremy,before we move on to talking
(17:07):
about these maps a little bitmore.
Jeremy Maestas (17:09):
Yeah, the variability in conditions out
there is a definingcharacteristic of the Great
Basin, as we talked aboutearlier, wild fluctuations
between year to year, terms ofhow much moisture we get, how
the vegetation responds. And ofcourse, the wildlife
(17:30):
populations, the people thatdepend on these landscapes,
they're all following thosepatterns of boom and bust. And
so if you look at the maps thatJoe produced, because he was
able to leverage, you know, 30years of of satellite imagery,
we're able to go back in timeand kind of see that year to
(17:52):
year variation. So in any givenyear, the patterns of large fire
risk really aren't aren't thesame. But there are some
observations maybe we can diveinto here more in terms of like
the northern Great Basin, rightwhen you get up along the Snake
River plain, Eastern Oregon,kind of Winnemucca, Nevada,
(18:14):
North you know that area, moreyears than not, tends to have a
higher probability of largefires. And some of that goes
back to what Joe was talkingabout in terms of grass and fine
fuels. And the buildup of thatis more often happening in that
part of the Great Basin, asopposed to Southern Nevada,
(18:37):
where it's a rare, exceptionalyear, where you're going to get
enough production to really havea huge fire being likely.
Megan Kay (18:46):
Let's take a quick break. So speaking of grasses
and fine fuels, I'm sure you allhave noticed that due to all
this precipitation we've beenhaving. This spring, the weeds
are coming up like crazy,especially invasive grasses like
(19:06):
cheatgrass, and cheatgrass is ahuge fire hazard. It's also one
of the things that we get askedabout most often when we're
interacting with the public, is,how do I manage cheatgrass? How
do I get rid of cheatgrass?
Well, luckily, we do have someguidance for homeowners. A while
back, Living with Fire put outthe homeowner's guide to
cheatgrass, which is a greatoverview about cheatgrass and
(19:27):
why it's such a fire hazard, andgoes over some tips and tricks
and control methods thathomeowners can use to eradicate
cheatgrass on their propertiesand keep it gone. We've included
a link to that resource in theshow notes below, so check it
out, and we hope it's helpfulback to the show.
Christina Restaino (19:55):
So, Joe, you make these wild. Fire
probability maps, and we'vealluded to them quite a bit, but
let's get down to kind of whatgoes into making these, and why
are they necessary to make
Joe Smith (20:10):
Yeah. So these, these maps, are really sort of
designed to fit into a uniquegap in the existing fire risk
products that are already outthere. Now there's, there's a
lot of fire danger products thathave been produced, things like
(20:30):
the National Fire Danger RatingSystem. And then there's also
things there's, there's productsthat that look at fire risk
over, over really long, longtime periods. Right? What we
produced was a product that kindof looks at, you know, what's,
(20:52):
what's the, what's the fire riskfor the upcoming fire season? So
it's this intermediate timescale between products like the
National Fire Danger RatingSystem, which tell you about,
like, what's the fire risk inthe next like, 48 hours to maybe
a week, and then those longerterm products on the other side.
So we're kind of trying to fitit right in the middle there. So
(21:15):
that's, I guess that's sort ofthe context for for these
products that we developed. Andthe other, I guess, the other
important context is sort of thetechnology side of things. You
know, until very recently, wejust didn't have high resolution
data on vegetation productionthat was dynamic. So we could
(21:40):
say something about what wasproduced in an average year, but
we didn't. We didn't have adynamic product that told us,
you know, okay, what wasproduced last year? Was it above
average, or was it belowaverage? Now we have, like our
our models use data from therange land analysis platform, so
(22:01):
that that product gives usannually, percent cover and an
estimate of production in poundsper acre for every 30 meter
pixel of range lands across thewhole west. So that gives us
sort of a the missing, missinglink of fuel amount that that
(22:26):
you'd actually need to makethese sort of annual, longer
range forecasts for the GreatBasin. So what we're basically
doing is combining the cover,vegetation, cover and production
data that's at an annual timestep from from the range land
analysis platform with somedrought metrics and
(22:49):
precipitation metrics, from somesome gridded meteorological data
sets. And then we're, you know,combining, those with machine
learning models to try topredict what the what the
conditions are like, how ripe isthat, you know, for a fire at a
given given location. So that's,that's kind of the gist of the
(23:13):
models and what, what they do.
So we release them, we can, wecan make a prediction or a
forecast for the upcoming fireseason, starting in about in a
typical year, starting in aboutFebruary, and then we can update
that throughout the spring.
Christina Restaino (23:33):
Who uses the maps like, how is the data
ultimately right? Because it'skind of this complicated
distillation of a lot ofdifferent data. You've got the
vegetation data, you've got theclimate data. You use models to
bring it all together, and thenkind of, how is it applied and used?
Jeremy Maestas (23:54):
Yeah, the maps are especially beneficial to
like those federal landmanagement agencies, like the
Bureau of Land Management orforest service that are stewards
of a great portion of the regionjust because of the public land
ownership there. So you havesome of our local BLM fire and
(24:15):
fuel staff, who are starting tolook at this product alongside
those traditional metrics thatJoe mentioned, like the National
Fire Danger Rating System andother indicators so that they
can improve their preparednessgoing into the fire season. So
throughout the fire season,they're running around their
(24:37):
district trying to assess fireconditions. And imagine that
challenge of communicatingwhat's going on across your area
when, for example, you areresponsible for Harney County,
Oregon, which is six and a halfmillion acres in size, one
county. Okay, and sohistorically, they're using
(24:58):
climate and weather data andother Predictive Services that
can provide some courseestimates. They're using their
local knowledge and some fieldsampling of vegetation. But for
the first time, with Joe'sproduct, we've got a real time
forecast of vegetationconditions across every single
(25:20):
acre in their district. And it'sdynamic. So you can see the
change across the district isnot all uniformly distributed.
There's parts of it that mightbe higher probability of a fire
than others, and so they can usethat information to inform
things like resource allocation,where are we going to put our
(25:43):
firefighters, our dozers? Howmuch do we need to ask for this
year in our district? Do we needto talk about closures to the
public in certain areas atcertain time of the year, just
because what we know is likelyto happen, and so the public
might encounter those things,but have the agencies have the
(26:05):
data to better support therationale for why they would do that.
Joe Smith (26:10):
It's, you know, fire firefighters, the fire
suppression community, is reallythey are reacting in real time
to conditions on the ground. Youknow, they are really going to
be looking at things liketemperature and wind speed and
humidity. Those are like the bigthings that drive the decision
making process duringfirefighting. It's not how much,
(26:34):
you know, how much cheatgrassgrew there last year, or
whatever, like that. That's thatplays a role in what happens
during a fire. But the big, thebiggest drivers are, are
weather. So this is, this isreally, I think this, this
product is really aimed moretoward managers who can do
something about managementbefore a fire starts. This is
(26:58):
really about pre firemanagement, rather than the
actual act of firefightingitself.
Jeremy Maestas (27:05):
You know, one point that scientists have have
put out there in the last coupleof years is that more acres of
these range land ecosystems areburning than forested ecosystems
across the US, across the West,and that's especially true since
about 2000 so when we setnational policy, when it comes
(27:29):
to fire management, it's usuallyaround forest fire. But you
know, when you have more acresbeing burned on our grasslands
and our shrub lands today, Ithink there's a growing
awareness that we need toallocate more resources towards
that, to help affectedcommunities in the in the
(27:50):
region. And you know, this typeof work can help bring those
resources to the Great Basin ina timely fashion, to ensure
that, you know, we we enhancethe effectiveness of our
firefighting community beyondwhere it's at today, which is
really high. Like something like97% of all fires that start in
(28:12):
the Great Basin are put outbefore they become more than
1000 acres in size. So we'realready hyper effective that
fire suppression, but thereality is that that 3% that
gets away from us are gettingreally big.
Megan Kay (28:29):
Let's take a quick break. I hope you're enjoying
the episode so far. Just wantedto quickly let you know that
these wildfire probability mapsfor the Great Basin that we've
been discussing, they'reavailable online, and we
included a link to the maps inthe show notes below, so when
(28:51):
you get a chance go check themout. Okay, back to the show.
Christina Restaino (29:02):
Jeremy, you were just discussing how you
know, in the past 2, decades, Ithink you said so the past 20
years, you know, we'veexperienced most of our largest
rangeland fires. What's changingin the Great Basin that is
making these kind ofuncharacteristic large fires
(29:22):
occur.
Jeremy Maestas (29:23):
Yeah. You know, I always like to caveat our fire
discussions by saying fire isnot either bad nor good, it just
is. It's a part of this system.
But the reality is that it's not1850 anymore in the Great Basin.
By that, I mean before aEuropean settlement where we
brought livestock and invasivespecies and all these other
(29:46):
changes to the system. So today,when we have fire, we have
plants from other continents,invasive species, invasive
annual grasses, in particular,like cheatgrass, that are
waiting in the wings to takeover and replace the perennial
native vegetation thatcharacterizes the Great Basin so
(30:08):
historically large fire years inthe Great Basin happened, but
they were more rare, infrequentand driven by that accumulation
of our perennial, nativeperennial grasses, those bunch
grasses that are out there onthe landscape. And when we got
enough of that built up andenough dead material across the
(30:30):
landscape, we'd have a big fireyear what we see today, and when
we look at Joe's data, heactually mapped this out for us.
Looking back, you know over thelast 30 years is that we
fluctuate in our perennial grassproduction from year to year,
and that's largely stayed fairlystable in terms of the amount of
(30:55):
of grass production coming fromour native native grasses.
What's changed, though, is thatcheatgrass and other invasive
grasses have been slowlyincreasing over that 30 year
period, such that the amount ofabove ground production, or
grass biomass that's out therein some years can exceed the
(31:17):
amount of our native grassestoday. So in 2016 I think that
was the first year that wedocumented that happening, we
had more grass production comefrom invasive species than our
native grasses. Why does thatmatter? It means that those
years in which we're set up tohave enough fuel to have large
(31:38):
fires are becoming more and morefrequent because of invaders
like cheatgrass that have filledin the what used to be like bare
soil, inner spaces in a more ofa desert environment, right? We
didn't have anything growingthere, essentially. Now you put
this other plant in the middle,and it creates a very continuous
grass fuel bed that allows thosefires to become really large,
(32:05):
and that problem is largely whatwe think is driving some of the
patterns that we're observing interms of larger, more frequent
fires, especially in theNorthern part of the Great
Basin.
Christina Restaino (32:21):
Af ter these years, where we've seen a lot of
rain like and snow like we hadthis year, would we expect more
cheatgrass to grow?
Jeremy Maestas (32:31):
So we should see really good cheatgrass
production, unfortunately,because of higher moisture this
year.
Christina Restaino (32:39):
And so Joe, is the cheatgrass production
taken into account in theprobability maps that you guys
create?
Joe Smith (32:45):
So yes and no, it actually turned out that that
information didn't really add awhole lot in terms of how well
the models worked. So for rightnow, anyway, we're just relying
on last year and the yearbefore, but future iterations of
(33:07):
this might might use a bit moreinformation about current year's
kind of spring growth.
Christina Restaino (33:15):
But it does take into account, yeah, but it
does take into account last yearand the year before. Sheet grass
growth, like that plant is partof what you're seeing in the
models?
Jeremy Maestas (33:25):
Yeah, like what Joe mentioned earlier in the
podcast, all this water thatcame this year is going to have
consequences for us, possiblynext year, right? Because of all
this growing vegetationproduction is going to build up
out there, and there's no amountof livestock and insects in the
world that are going to eat itall. So it'll build up on the
landscape and probably show upnext year in the fire
(33:49):
probability maps.
Christina Restaino (33:50):
And the year after because its using the two
years. Yeah. So it could be alegacy that's kind of, you know,
to me, the moral of the storyhere is that really there's a
priming that has to occur for toget that big fire year in the
Great Basin right where it'slike, you have to have that big
winner, and then the productivespring and summer, and then fast
(34:15):
forward a year or two. And so ifwe have a really big drought
next year, that could really setit up even more, because we've
had all this growth, and theneverything will dry out, right?
So it's that combination ofproduction of grass and shrubs
and woody biomass in general,combined with, you know, what
(34:36):
are the current conditionsexisting on on the landscape
when a fire could be ignited,right? So it's like that
combination of the two. So likeanything in the Great Basin, the
story is complicated, but.
Joe Smith (34:49):
Yeah, that's a pretty good description. Actually, the
wet, dry cycles in the GreatBasin are pretty regular. That's
when we, you know. Should bereally worried is when we're
coming out of a wet cycle intothe into the dry portion of the
cycle.
Christina Restaino (35:06):
So to me, I would think the call to action
as a resident in the Great Basinis to spend this summer doing
some really good defensiblespace action around my home and
collaborating with my community,and kind of taking this time to
prepare, anticipating that nextyear will be will want to be on
guard for what could happen inthe sage rush ecosystems around
(35:29):
our communities.
Jeremy Maestas (35:30):
What a perfect tee up, Christina, because
that's where my head was going.
Like, you know, the upshot ofthis work is that we can
forecast with with a greatdegree of accuracy, the
probability of large fire. Wenow know that it's not just
driven by woody vegetation,which is often the focus of fuel
(35:53):
management, but in theserangeland or shrubland systems,
it's grassy fuels that drivelarge fire. So if you're a
community and you talk aboutdefensible space, in addition to
the woody fuels management youmight do around your
infrastructure and your roads sothat people can safely fight
(36:13):
fires, you need to think aboutgrass. So if you're doing mowing
alongside of roads, and you mowthe brush off so that your flame
lengths aren't too high, butthen all you do is open it up
for cheatgrass to explode.
That's something we'd ask you toconsider managing too. So maybe
(36:34):
some integrated treatments wherewe use herbicides to actually
kill that invasive annual grass,so we don't have that herbaceous
production alongside of ourroads or infrastructure that you
know might serve as an ignitionsource. We're doing this on
(36:56):
larger scales with landownersand the public land management
agencies, you know, to implementthings like targeted grazing,
where we focus livestock grazingin huge pastures, to try to
break up the amount of grassfuels that build up over the
landscape. So those aredefinitely things that this year
(37:17):
people should be thinking about,especially in those regions on
Joe's map that are kind of inthat upper, moderate to high,
elevated probability of fire. Soremember, grass fuels drive
these large fires. So it's notjust about managing your shrubs
Megan Kay (37:33):
Thank you for listening to the Living with
and trees.
Fire Podcast. You can find morestories and resources about
wildfire at our website,livingwithfire.com the Living
with Fire Program is funded bythe Bureau of Land Management,
the Nevada Division of Forestryand the US Forest Service, and
were managed by the Universityof Nevada, Reno extension, an
(37:55):
equal opportunity institution.
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