Interactive Supplement - When and How Often do Seedings Experience a Wildfire?

The invasive grass-fire cycle in the western US is one of the most difficult and complex socio-ecological problems facing natural resource managers. The Department of Interior is committed to the task of slowing and managing the invasive grass-fire cycle in sagebrush steppe, where property, livelihoods, and entire ecosystems are at risk. To manage this crisis, the government recently proposed to construct about 17,700 kilometers of fuel breaks and millions of hectares of fuel reduction treatments in six western states. Using the Land Treatment Digital Library, USGS researchers created a spatial analysis of seeding treatments and subsequent wildfire from 1990-2019, in order to assess the importance of this effort from the perspective of protecting previous rehabilitation and restoration seeding investments, including over 3,400 seedings covering about 24,540 square kilometers. 

This dashboard is a supplement to the publication summarizing that analysis: “Protecting Restoration Investments from the Cheatgrass-fire Cycle in Sagebrush Steppe.” Seedings from the Land Treatment Digital Library that fall within the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) Fuels Reduction and Rangeland Restoration in the Great Basin Analysis Area implemented between 1990-2019 are included in these visualizations. For more background and detailed descriptions, see the link to the paper under Publications below.