Fire Ecology Annual Report, 2008: Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and Devils Postpile National Monument

Caprio, Anthony

A summary of fire ecology activities and program information for the Park/network including fire effects plot workload, staffing, management objectives and monitoring results, and planning, fire monitoring, communications, and research. Also included are staff accomplishments/areas of focus, future program direction and other optional information (e.g. data analysis graphics or presentations, annual highlights, publications, program challenges, unique solutions to problems, collaboration, photographs of monitoring/fire activities, and suggestions on FFI). There was significant fire activity in Sequoia and Kings Canyon N.P. (SEKI) during 2008, which contrasted markedly with 2007. A Type II team was in the Parks, for the first time since 1996, managing suppression activities on the 3,685 ac Hidden Wildland Fire. Other significant fire activity included eight prescribed burns (2,098 ac) and the interagency Tehipite Wildland Fire (11,596 ac with 4,140 ac within Kings Canyon). SEKI was also a prototype park for the new NPS Wildland Fire Management Policy. The Fire Ecology program was involved in all these activities to a greater or lesser extent. During the year thirty-two FMH plot visits were made within eight fire monitoring types. These included two new plot installations and preburn and postburn reads of two plots. Additionally, 14 fire research plots established at Redwood Mtn. in 1969 by Bruce Kilgore were resampled. This is the fourth read of these plots which are showing interesting long-term forest changes following burns in the 1970s, particularly the abundance of sugar pine reproduction. An analysis, using FMH data in FFI, of the effects of repeat burns on fuels and overstory species in giant sequoia-mixed conifer forest plots was completed and presented at the Southern Sierra Science Symposium in Visalia and at the 2008 CAFE Conference in San Diego. The analysis evaluated long-term fire effects (up to 25 yrs) and whether management objectives were being met. Additionally, FMH data sets were readied and rechecked after conversion from FEAT to the new FFI fire ecology database and analysis software prior to the start of the 2008 field season. All FMH data collected in 2008 was entered into FFI, along with data from several pre-FMH legacy data sets. Fieldwork also continued on several special projects that have or will provide supplemental information to the fire management program at both the local and national levels. This included CBI (composite burn index) field sampling for the National Landscape Assessment Project (burn severity mapping) with data collected on two prescribed burns and a “rare” wildland fire of moderate size in high elevation foxtail pine. Other projects included cheatgrass monitoring in prescribed burn units and an expanded data set evaluating fire and giant sequoia mortality (seedlings through monarchs). Special projects data has also been input into FFI. Fire ecology staff also participated as crewmembers on three prescribed burns, as READs during suppression and rehab activities on both the Hidden and Tehipite Fires, the 40th Anniversary of Operational Prescribed Fire in the parks, and in an interagency cross-boundary fire planning exercise with Sequoia NF. Additionally, the Fire Ecologist collaborated on a number of fire related research projects underway in the parks by USGS, USFS, NASA, or university researchers. Two summer seasonals were hired with NASA/NIFC funding in 2008 who collected data at random plot locations throughout the parks in support of data needs for an invasive species modeling study. Two studies funded by NIFC Reserve Funds were also underway. Field sampling for the WFU versus Rx fire study was carried out by USGS staff in the summer 2008 and preliminary analysis completed. Funds for the southern Sierra lodgepole fire regime study were obligated with a cooperative research agreement with Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research for field and sample analysis in 2009. The SEKI

Fire Ecology Annual Report, 2008: Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and Devils Postpile National Monument

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