Science in Practice Portal

Increased woody plant dominance and degraded understory vegetation are important issues on rangelands
in the Intermountain West. Land managers implement woody plant reduction treatments of sagebrush
(Artemisia spp.), juniper (Juniperus spp.), and pinyon pine (Pinus spp.) to increase understory diversity and
cover, restore wildlife habitat, increase forage, improve ecosystem functions, and reduce or manipulate fuels
to increase ecosystem resilience to fire and resistance to invasive annual grasses. Woody plant reduction
treatments alter fuel orientation, continuity, and loading, and therefore have important implications for
wildfire behavior, effects, and management. Currently, there is a lack of knowledge of the longer-term
implications of these treatments on fuel loads and vegetation structure. Using data collected as part of the
Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project (SageSTEP), this guide summarizes fuel loads, vegetation
cover by functional group, and shrub and tree stem density 10 years after sagebrush and pinyon-juniper
reduction treatments. The data was collected at 16 study sites in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and
Utah, and is summarized by treatment type, region, and groups or woodland development phases based on
pre-treatment vegetation. These summarized data can be used by land managers and fire behavior specialists
to quickly estimate fuel loads in older treatments or to predict fuel loads 10 years after a potential treatment.
These fuel loading data can be used to create custom fuel beds to model fire behavior and effects