Monitoring for adaptive management of burned sagebrush-steppe rangelands: addressing variability and uncertainty on the 2015 Soda Megafire

Abstract

• Use of adaptive management supported by robust monitoring is vital to solving severe rangeland problems, such as the exotic annual grass invasion and fire cycle in sagebrush-steppe rangelands. • Uncertainty in post-fire plant-community composition and plant response to treatments poses a challenge to land management and research but can be addressed with a high density of observations over short time frames. • The monitoring for adaptive management of the 2015 Soda Megafire area (113,000 Ha) sampled up to 2000 observation plots in each of five post-fire years, and provided important insights on challenges, solutions, and insights that can be applied to monitoring future burned areas. © 2021