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Project ID: 01-3-2-12

Year: 2002

Date Started: 02/01/2002

Date Completed: 06/17/2004

Title: Weed Invasions Following Fire in Southwestern Colorado: Long-Term Effectiveness of Mitigation Treatments and Future Predictions

Project Proposal Abstract: The proposed research addresses post-fire weed invasion in pinon-juniper and shrubland habitats on the Mesa Verde cuesta in southwestern Colorado and may be applicable to other pinon-juniper woodlands and similar shrublands in the southwest. Within two years after the 1996 Chapin 5 Fire in Mesa Verde National Park, old-growth pinon-juniper habitats were very susceptible to invasion by invasive and ecologically harmful non- native weeds musk thistle and Canada thistle, while nearby, three different burned shrubland habitats supported primarily native species. Four mitigation treatments (aerial seeding, mechanical weed removal, biological control, herbicide application) were used and their success was documented for two years with Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation (BAER) funding. Information derived in the Chapin 5 incident served as a model to direct mitigation following the Bircher and Pony fires in 2000 on the Mesa Verde cuesta on tribal, BLM, and NPS lands. We seek funding to research the post-fire trajectories after the Chapin 5 Fire six years after the fire (2002) and 7 years after the fire (2003). These data will determine long-term effectiveness of mitigation treatments, information explicitly not funded by BAER. The proposed project also will develop fully a spatially-explicit weed-risk model that will predict wheriburned landscapes may be susceptible to noxious weed invasion after future fires in the pinon-juniper ecosystem. Reports concerning community-specific treatment effectiveness and the weed-risk model (with detailed instructions for its use) will be made available to all interested agencies and institutions.

Principal Investigator: Lisa E. Floyd-Hanna

Agency/Organization: Prescott College

Branch or Dept: Environmental Studies Program

Other Project Collaborators

Type	Name	Agency/Organization	Branch or Dept
Co-Principal Investigator	William H Romme	Colorado State University	Department of Forest, Rangeland & Watershed Stewardship
Federal Cooperator	George L. San Miguel	NPS-National Park Service	Mesa Verde National Park

Project Locations

Consortium

Southern Rockies

Southwest

There are no project locations identified for this project.

Project Deliverables

Final Report ("Results presented in JFSP Final Reports may not have been peer-reviewed and should be interpreted as tentative until published in a peer-reviewed source.")

There are no deliverables available for this project.

Supporting Documents

There are no supporting documents available for this project.

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