Strategic role of large herbivore grazing on succession, fuels, and fire dynamics in a changing climate

The HERBVIORY-BGC project enables a spatially explicit ecosystem process model, FireBGCv2, to simulate influences of grazing regimes in an interactive context with episodic disturbance (fire suppression, fuels management) under different scenarios for climate warming. The project addresses the following: To what extent can the strategic success of fuel management activities be contingent upon strategic (integrated) management of herbivore populations at landscape scales?

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS (Staff)

Robert E. Keane, Research Ecologist and Deputy Program Manager; Director of the Fire Modeling Institute; Supervisory Research Ecologist; Rachel A. Loehman, Research Ecologist

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS

Martin Vavra, USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, La Grande Forestry and Range Sciences Laboratory
Michael Wisdom, USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, La Grande Forestry and Range Sciences Laboratory
Rachael Cook, National Council for Air and Stream Improvement

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

Our results will articulate interactions between grazing regimes and the regimes of the other agents, and clarify the extent to which variance in grazing should modify strategic LFSM projections for stand-level fuel dynamics (Type I responses), landscape fire regimes (Type II responses), and landscape vegetation mosaics (Type III responses). We will synthesize our results statistically to provide insights to the functional and practical significance of grazing, and to provide guidance for incorporating its effects into process-based and management-support models.

FUNDING ORGANIZATION

Joint Fire Sciences Program, project ID 09-3-01-20