Southern Utah Group, Fire Ecology Annual Report: Calendar Year 2008

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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). The 2008 Zion Fire Effects team enjoyed a productive year, drawing on the strong skills of new and transitioning members. Although the scheduled plot revisits were moderate in number, the crew remained quite busy because our fire program undertook multiple prescribed burns between May and October. The Fire Effects crew diligently completed the additional immediate post-fire plot reads and assisted in the prescribed fire operations. This additional work led to a total of 26 plots completed at Bryce National Park and 32 plots completed at Zion National Park for the year. The crew also spent several days sampling vegetation data for a study which is examining the effects of fire on small mammal populations. Several Northern Arizona University Graduate students (and assistants) continued their cooperative project with Zion, collecting additional data within two recent wildfires funded through two BAER plans, Kolob Wildfire 2006 and Dakota Hills Wildfire 2007. Their research is analyzing the effectiveness of several treatment combinations in hopes of finding effective ways to minimize the colonization of invasive non-native plants such as cheatgrass. The preliminary results presented to Zion this spring show some treatments had a significant effect, at least in the short term. Our monitoring program provided NAU with logistical assistance and joined one of their crews for a long day of data collection in the late spring. Final theses from the studies are projected to be complete between Fall 2009 and 2011. This was the first year Zion used the new database software, FFI. All existing data was exported from the older software programs into FFI and the new (2008) plot data was entered manually into the system. All data was analyzed using FFI and Excel. The team looks forward to further refinements and error corrections in the program in future versions of the program.

Southern Utah Group, Fire Ecology Annual Report: Calendar Year 2008

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