Bringing Fire Back to the Landscape

This article was originally published in The Midden – Great Basin National Park: Vol. 23, No. 2, Winter 2023.

Figure 1. Fire records from 10 sites in the Great Basin. Note the near absence of fires post 1900.

From Kitchen, S. G. 2015. Climate and human influences on historical fire regimes (AD 1400–1900) in the eastern Great Basin (USA). The Holocene:1-11. Used with permission.

By Bryan Hamilton, Integrated Resource Program Manager

Last year the park finalized its Fire Management Plan (FMP), as required for all park units with burnable vegetation. The FMP lays out how the Park will respond to wildfires and defines how the Park will manage fuels and use prescribed fire. The last FMP was completed nearly 20 years ago. Since then, we’ve learned a lot about the role of fire in the Snake Range.

Fires are regular and natural occurrence across the western United States. But applying site specific fire management actions to park landscapes has been a challenge. By incorporating dendrochronology, soil science, and historic records into landscape scale, GIS based modeling, we compared current conditions of vegetation with the “natural” conditions expected under a historic fire regime (Provencher et al., 2013). Before 1900, fires occurred frequently in the Snake Range (Kitchen, 2012; Fig. 1). These fires, ignited by lightning or Native Americans, were less intense than today’s fires and resulted in more bunchgrasses, wildflowers, and forbs; conditions which supported more abundant wildlife like sage grouse, bighorn sheep, mule deer, Bonneville cutthroat trout, marmots, and pygmy rabbits (Gruell and Swanson, 2012).

But around 1900, fire was functionally eliminated from the Snake Range (Kitchen, 2015; Fig.1). Colonization ended Native American fire use and lightning ignited fires were aggressively suppressed. Without regular “good” fires, heavy fuels and trees have dramatically increased (Fig. 2; Heyerdayl et al. 2011). This accumulation of woody fuels, in combination with higher temperatures (Sambuco et al., 2020) and more severe drought (Williams et al., 2022) of human caused, climate change, have left park ecosystems vulnerable to high intensity, catastrophic wildfires. The Strawberry and Black fires burned nearly 10,000 acres, destroyed campgrounds, caused floods, threatened safety, and blocked public access to popular areas of the park.

Figure 2. Historic photos of Baker Creek showing the change from open grassland, sagebrush, and aspen to heavy woody fuels. Note the enormous increase in white fir.

Photos by George Gruell.

The new Fire Management Plan offers an opportunity to reverse course. The FMP recommends fuel reductions on 21,024 acres of the park in the next 10 years. These projects would be accomplished primarily through prescribed fire and are critical to protect private property, homes, and water supplies (The FMP is available at https://www.nps.gov/grba/learn/nature/upload/GRBA_Final_2023_FMP_508_w_Append_A-C-D2-D3-E-F-I_20230407.pdf, appendix E). If we can accomplish this ambitious goal, we can reduce the severity of wildfires, restore plant communities, and improve wildlife habitat. But using prescribed fire as a management tool remains challenging.

Figure 3. The Baker Creek prescribed fire project is 800 acres. In year one, areas outlined in blue are targeted for treatment. Target vegetation types are aspen, riparian, and wet meadow and are indicated in the legend.

To accomplish fuels reductions at this scale, we will start small, build on success, and establish trust. The first prescribed fire will be in Baker Creek (Figure 3). This 800-acre project will reduce fuels; restore aspen, meadows, and riparian areas; improve wildlife habitat; and protect popular recreation areas and campgrounds.

Expect to see and smell more smoke in the air. We don’t want this to come as a surprise. During project planning and implementation, we will notify the public through press releases, social media, snake valley connection, and Planning, Environment and Public Comment (PEPC) website. We will also hold annual field trips and site visits to view and discuss projects. Continuing with the status quo is not an option. We have to act, there is too much at stake.

REFERENCES

GRUELL, G. E., AND S. SWANSON. 2012. Nevada's Changing Wildlife Habitat: An Ecological History. University of Nevada Press, Las Vegas.KITCHEN, S. G. 2015. Climate and human influences on historical fire regimes (AD 1400–1900) in the eastern Great Basin (USA). The Holocene:1-11.

KITCHEN, S. G. 2015. Climate and human influences on historical fire regimes (AD 1400–1900) in the eastern Great Basin (USA). The Holocene:1-11.

PROVENCHER, L., T. ANDERSON, G. LOW, B. HAMILTON, T. WILLIAMS, AND B. ROBERTS. 2013. Landscape Conservation Forecasting™ for Great Basin National Park. Park Science. 30:56-67.

SAMBUCO, E. N., B. G. MARK, N. PATRICK, J. Q. DEGRAND, D. F. PORINCHU, S. A. REINEMANN, G. M. BAKER, AND J. E. BOX. 2020. Mountain Temperature Changes From Embedded Sensors Spanning 2000 m in Great Basin National Park, 2006–2018. Frontiers in Earth Science. 8.

WILLIAMS, A. P., B. I. COOK, AND J. E. SMERDON. 2022. Rapid intensification of the emerging southwestern North American megadrought in 2020–2021. Nature Climate Change. 12:232-234.