Fire Ecology Annual Report, Yosemite National Park [2008]

Smith, Gus; Hirschfield, Isaiah

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). It was a productive year for the Yosemite Fire Ecology program although not a busy fire season within the Park. As a result of high fire activity region wide, fire use fires were not permitted in Yosemite well into the fall for the second consecutive year limiting the program’s ability to reach its objectives. However several landscape scale prescribed burns were completed in the spring and fall. In Wawona, first entry spring and fall prescribed burns totaling 1,740 acres north of the community created a contiguous block of recently burned area with the 2007 Jack Fire, providing enhanced community protection from wildfire and reintroducing fire to areas far outside of normal fire return intervals. In Foresta, the community devastated by the A-Rock Fire of 1990, 55 acres were prescribed burned in complex fuels and terrain. Multiple second and third entry prescribed burns were conducted in the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias (units 1, 9, 10 and 13). In Yosemite Valley, prescribed burns were conducted in Rocky Point (unit YV-15) and Bridalveil North (YV-4); a first entry burn. In addition, hazardous fuels reduction treatments were initiated this fall along the Wawona Road (lop and scatter) and the Foresta Road (mastication). The Foresta mastication project was delayed when snow impeded the contractor’s progress. It will resume when conditions permit. Fifteen FMH plot visits were made this year including one pre-burn and 14 post burn reads. Twenty-three mechanical treatment plots, 25 wildfire monitoring plots, and 26 Sydoriak plots were also read. Additionally, 50 CBI plots were read in one Rx burn (PW-17) and in the 2007 Jack Fire, 40 PILA (sugar pine) survival plots read, and we made the final visit to 28 PILA tree plots five years post Tuolumne Fire to study the effects of heavy retardant slurry on mature tree survival. And finally, all the data from the field season was entered and quality checked.