Post-Fire Vegetation Recovery

Mentee:

Rémi Bardou

Mentoring Team:

Gretchen Keppel-Aleks

Paige Fischer

Stella Cousins

Heidi Huber-Stearns

Partner Organization:

Vegetation Recovery and Species Shifts in a Changing Climate: 

Informing Replanting or Forest Planning/Reseeding Decision Making in New Mexico

Purpose

Fire-suppressed forests and ecologically managed forests respond to and recover from fire events in vastly different ways. Understanding the role of climate variations and human intervention in post-fire recovery informs our ability to evaluate the overall carbon balance of forests, which is important for understanding climate feedback from a natural sciences perspective. Moreover, climate feedbacks that influence the post-fire establishment window inform time-sensitive forest management decisions, such as reforestation plans. As climate change continues to affect seasonal weather patterns, the need for this type of information is growing in places in the west that have experienced wildfires and restoration challenges in determining when, where, what and how to replant. 

Bardou, R. et al. (2023)

Approach

Research Question

How do post fire conditions affect vegetation change, and what are the implications for: 

1. vegetation recovery, 

2. ecological community change, and 

3. manager/practitioner decision making? 

Objectives

Methodology

This project first used remote sensing and climate modeling to understand vegetation change of western forests due to environmental variability, climate change and human intervention. Second, the we applied this understanding to post fire management strategies and decision making such as planning and reseeding strategies. 

Landsat near-infrared bands are a great tool for detecting vegetation change from space

NDVI: Normalized Difference Vegetation Index

Bardou, R. et al. (2023)

Post-fire vegetation change in NDVI following the Black Fire on May 21, 2022 

Bardou, R. et al. (2023)

Analysis 

Moisture delivered in first couple of years post-fire seems to be strongly  correlated to recovery. This is particularly important for New Mexico where post-fire vegetation recovery is getting more challenging under a changing climate

Lag analysis showed that it is not the total moisture that matters most, but the seasonality of it. This has implications for informing post-fire forest management decision-making.

Bardou, R. et al. (2023)

Key Findings and Recommendations for Practice