Guide for quantifying post-treatment fuels in the sagebrush steppe and juniper woodlands of the Great Basin

Invasive species and woodland encroachment have caused extensive changes in the fire regimes of sagebrush steppe over the past 150 years. Land managers and resource specialists of the Great Basin are increasingly required to implement vegetation treatments to maintain habitat, reduce fire risk and restore landscapes to a more desirable state. Often it is difficult to measure treatment effectiveness because gathering pre- and post-treatment data is time-consuming and costly. In two years of post-treatment sampling across six Great Basin states, researchers from the Sagebrush Steppe Treatment and Evaluation Project (SageSTEP) measured the vegetation response to prescribed fire, tree mastication and cutting, shrub mowing, and herbicide application. Treated plots were compared to untreated control plots.