![]() ![]() The results are noteworthy, Ellsworth said, as federal, state and local agencies in Oregon and other western states spend millions on land management methods to conserve habitat for native wildlife, including greater sage-grouse. ![]() “There are benefits to keeping some fire on these landscapes, including fires acting as fuel breaks, which will slow the spread of fire substantially, relative to the unburned control plots.” “Sagebrush steppe ecosystems that are in good ecological condition, with minimal invasive grass, can recover from prescribed fires,” Ellsworth said. Seventeen years after fire, the burned plots, with their low fuel loads, will slow the spread of the next wildfire, Ellsworth said. The researchers modeled fire behavior to predict how fire would move through the study area and found “dramatic differences” between the unburned and burned plots. The fuel loads – the burnable material – in the four unburned control plots were seven times greater than in the four burned plots. The OSU research team sampled eight research plots more than a mile high in the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge in southeastern Oregon, 17 years after prescribed fire. The study, published in the journal Ecosystems, shows there is not a “one-size-fits-all” solution to fire in sagebrush steppe habitats across the western United States, said corresponding author Lisa Ellsworth, a range ecologist in OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences. – Fire is not all bad news in healthy sagebrush steppe ecosystems, according to an Oregon State University study. ![]()
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