Recovery After Fire

Dr. Rebecca Finger-Higgens is an Ecologist with the US Geological Survey based in Moab, UT.  She is a soil, plant, and landscape ecologist, studying how and why ecosystems look the way they do and how they respond to disturbances such as climate change, fire, invasive species, and human land-use practices. Rebecca’s research has brought her to numerous different ecosystems, ranging from the tundra of western Greenland, to rangelands of South Africa, and numerous National Parks in the SW United States. Rebecca also currently works with Science Moab as a Biocrust Instructor for the Science Certified Program and is the Chair of the Ecological Society of America Southwest Chapter.

USGS

Research

Science Moab talks with ecologist Rebecca Finger-Higgens who study of dryland ecosystems has taken her from the tundra of Greenland to the deserts of southeast Utah. Rebecca currently works with the US Geological Survey in Moab as part of the Southwest Biological Science Center. Today we are talking about ecological recovery from fire, and more specifically, the recovery of Pinyon juniper woodlands following the pack Creek fire of 2021.

Finger-Higgens:  The Pack Creek fire broke out in early June of 2021. In total, the fire burned just shy of 9000 acres. I definitely felt a vibe throughout the whole community that there was kind of this mourning and this real sadness with the Pack Creek Fire. Moab is actually this beautiful science hub, where we have some federal agencies, we have Utah State University, and then awesome nonprofits like Rim To Rim Restoration. So, a bunch of us got together from the USGS as well as the US Forest Service and partnerships with people with the BLM as well, and we just wanted to know, what can we learn from this fire? And what could we help with what parts of the Fire Restoration? That’s where this whole idea originally came from.  scientists that were interested in this fire and interested in understanding what it means for these local important ecosystems and what it means for this mountain system that’s right in our backyard.

Science Moab:  More specifically, you were looking at the Pinyon juniper recovery. In an ideal world, what would be the response of a Pinyon Juniper forest following a catastrophic fire?

Finger-Higgens:  We do have some colleagues and other researchers at the USGS led by Sasha Reed who have been working with a team out of Mesa Verde, where they’ve been tracking a series of Pinyon Juniper fires that have occurred there. There is not a lot of recruitment that usually comes after these Pinyon Juniper forests. Unlike Ponderosa and more Alpine systems that have a pretty good adaptation to regenerate after fire, we don’t necessarily see that in Pinyon Juniper systems. On top of that, there’s always this issue of climate change, where there’s some concern throughout the Southwest that climate change might be shifting what we’d call a climatic envelope. The perfect environment that Pinyon Juniper needs to thrive may be shifting due to higher temperatures and drier environments, which would make Pinyon Juniper recruitment all that much harder.

Science Moab:  What data are you looking for, to assess the recovery of these forests?

Finger-Higgens:  Right now, it’s really the small plants that are coming back that we’re thinking about more than the trees.  It’s only been two years, which is not enough time to see even the seedlings, they’re so itty bitty at this point. So a lot of the project working with The CNHA has focused on these smaller flowering plants, some of the shrubs and what we’d call early successional species. things that can grow quickly that are moving in:  grasses and flowers and small shrubs. After the fire, there was also immediate action on the part of the Forest Service and Rim-To-Rim Restoration in the seeding of wildflower species. part of our study was designed to see how effective the seed mix was.  When we went back this year, things we were collecting data on were what plants were there, what was the estimate of their total makeup on the ground, and did we see a difference between plots that had this seed mix placed on it and those that had not.

Science Moab:  What is the status of the project now ?

Finger-Higgens: Essentially, it’s definitely an ongoing project. Fire recovery is never a quick thing. One part of the project was funded by CNHA, was looking at the efficacy of this seed mix that was bought by the Forest Service, and to see if there was a difference if the seed mix was put in places that were previously thinned by the Forest Service and then planted with that non native forage wheat grass versus plants that didn’t see a thinning and have less or none of that wheat grass. So that data was collected this year in June.  We were getting an idea of what plants emerge, what’s their kind of average cover, how stable are the soils, and then taking pictures, and then that will ultimately be worked up, made available to the forest service,  then ideally, put in a scientific publication. I’m also working with Dr. Brooke Osbourne who’s faculty at Utah State University, and she’s using that data in some of her curriculum as a teaching module and an example of the complexities of natural resource management. The seeding that was done by the Forest Service, a bulk of that was placed by volunteers. So it was community members that cared about this forest that were mourning the loss of the forest and wanted to help give back and that was something that I think was really special to the Moab community and really incentivized me to do research here.   It’s right in our backyard. It is where we go in the summer to escape the heat, where we go in the winter to play in the snow. The La Sals are literally our lifeline of water and recreation and all kinds of things. It’s been really interesting to be a part of this.