Location: Water Management and Systems Research
Project Number: 3012-13660-010-037-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: Aug 22, 2025
End Date: Aug 31, 2028
Objective:
This project will use existing datasets collected by the ARS and CU Boulder, combined with new field data to assess the impacts of invasive plants on fuel structure and flammability in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. We will quantify spatial and temporal variation in fuel bed characteristics along topographic and climatic gradients for understudied invasive plant species identified by land managers as impactful. We will use these measurements to develop improved understory fuel models for invasions by specific species or functional groups that fire managers and fire behavior modelers can use to improve their projections of fire risk.
Approach:
We will conduct literature review, use existing information on species of concern from managers, and meet with stakeholders to identify species of concern across functional groups that are not well represented by current research. We will measure spatial variation in fuel bulk density and fuel load for those species, as well as temporal (weekly) variation in fuel moisture for a subset of species representing each plant functional type. We will use these data to develop allometric equations to estimate fuel load and bulk density from cover and height data which are more widely available. We will use these data to develop new understory fuel models for different functional types of invasive plants, at different phenological stages (fully green, green basal leaves and cured culms, fully cured), along with tools to estimate fire risk using remotely sensed indexes and climate data.