Post-Fire Technical Resources for SageCon Partners

Fires are a natural part of the sagebrush ecosystem and drive structural diversity across the high desert. However, in recent decades, larger and more frequent fires have occurred in southeastern Oregon, including many “mega-fires” of over 100,000 acres. Ranching and other resource-dependent livelihoods are intimately intertwined with functioning rangelands. Increasingly large, frequent fires and altered fire regimes therefore do not just impact plants and animals; they affect rural economies and community wellbeing.

2024 has been a very active fire season in eastern Oregon. More than 1.8 million acres have burned as of September across sagebrush, grassland and woodland vegetation types on the east side of the state. In addition to the impacts on communities, livestock producers and landowners throughout the region, fire also affects wildlife habitat. Nearly 507,000 acres of core sage-grouse habitat were burned this year in Crook, Lake, Harney, Malheur and Baker counties.

A practical synthesis of post-fire restoration from our own Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center

The Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center is a thought leader in ecology and management of sagebrush rangelands, based in Burns, Oregon. Led by Chad Boyd, Research Leader, the scientists and staff of the EOARC have synthesized the state of science on post-fire restoration in a concise and useful summary. It includes practical, science-based information on topics ranging from determining your seed mix to spatial planning to tips for successful implementation, and we guarantee you will find something useful in this synthesis!

Spatial data and tools for post-fire rehabilitation

Advances in spatial data for restoration planning across large, multi-jurisdictional landscapes have exploded in recent years, resulting in a large number of spatial datasets to aid in proactive pre-fire planning and post-fire restoration. The SageCon Landscape Planning Tool provides a curated collection of datasets to support landscape-scale planning, including information on vegetation condition, likelihood of post-fire annual grass invasion, biophysical characteristics of the landscape, burn perimeters, and more. Katie Wollstein and Chad Boyd introduced Threat-Based Strategic Conservation for post-fire planning at the 2024 SageCon Summit, which uses spatial data in the context of a strategic post-fire planning process to help inform restoration actions. In addition to the map layers available through the Landscape Planning Tool, burn severity maps for the larger fires in Oregon are available through the Burned Area Emergency Response website.