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Consequences of Piñon-Juniper Woodland Fuel Reduction: Prescribed Fire Increases Soil Erosion While Mastication Does Not

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Abstract

Fire suppression has increased fuel load and the risk of catastrophic wildfire in forest and woodland ecosystems across the Western United States. In an effort to reduce fuel load and restore historical structure and function, land managers have implemented fuel reduction treatments on millions of acres. Reducing fuel loads protects people, structures, and in some cases, improves ecosystem health. However, the ecological risks of soil surface disturbance related to fuel reduction strategies, and subsequent soil erosion, may be significant in some cases. Here, we examined the effects of common fuel reduction strategies (mechanical mastication and two techniques for prescribed burning) on wind and water erosion in two upland piñon-juniper woodlands in SE Utah over 2 years. We also tested the impact of broadcast seeding coupled with fuel reduction as a way to mitigate erosional soil loss. Finally, we analyzed biotic and abiotic predictor variables to evaluate important drivers of soil erosion following fuel treatments. We found that both techniques for prescribed burning—pile burning and broadcast burning—increased wind-related sediment fluxes by an average of 11-fold and 58-fold, respectively. Mastication did not increase wind-related losses over untreated controls. Erosional fluxes measured at silt fences, that captured both wind- and water-driven sediments, followed similar trends with moderate increases from pile burning (fivefold) but larger increases from broadcast burning (17-fold). Seeding did not affect erosion rates. Our results suggest that prescribed fire significantly increases soil erosion in fuel-treated piñon-juniper woodlands and may be a degradation pathway when implementing treatments.

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Data Availability

The URL for the accessible data associated with the manuscript is here: https://doi.org/10.25810/GCHW-MB33.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Mandy Slate, Laura Dee, Bill Bowman, Caroline Havrilla, Richard Karban, and Mikaela Huntzinger for helpful comments on this manuscript. We thank Brian Keating, Gabe Bissonette, and Paul Plemmons from the Bureau of Land Management for treatment implementation. We would like to acknowledge the work of these lab members in contributing to the field and laboratory work: Sarah Castle, Scott Clingan, Bruce Condie, Gavin Dean, Matt Ellwood, Cody Flagg, Elizabeth Golden, Heidi Guenther, Drew Habig, Sofie Holmgren, Ian Mallams, Tegan McGillivray, Maegan McKee, Alisha Mercer, Conor Morrison, Michael Oro, Matt Peoples, Miranda Redmond, Matt Ross, Kayla O’Hara Reyna, Laura Schaffenacker, Stephanie Shepard, Sarah Topp, Matt Von Scoyoc, and Lindsay Young. This work was supported by a grant to Barger from the USDA National Research Initiative Managed Ecosystems Program (Proposal No. 2008-00776).

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  1. Author contributions MEM, JEH, and NNB designed the study. CCK and NNB analyzed the data, And CCK wrote the paper

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado Boulder, 1900 Pleasant Street, Campus Box 334, Boulder, Colorado, 80309-0334, USA

    Claire C. Karban & Nichole N. Barger

  2. National Park Service, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Wrangell, Alaska, 99566, USA

    Mark E. Miller

  3. USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range, Las Cruces, New Mexico, 880003-8003, USA

    Jeffrey E. Herrick

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Correspondence to Claire C. Karban.

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Karban, C.C., Miller, M.E., Herrick, J.E. et al. Consequences of Piñon-Juniper Woodland Fuel Reduction: Prescribed Fire Increases Soil Erosion While Mastication Does Not. Ecosystems 25, 122–135 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-021-00644-6

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