Restoration Initiatives

Assessing Greater Kaibab Plateau forest conditions

Analyses of forest conditions to support landscape-scale management planning and restoration efforts require a solid foundation in reliable vegetation composition and structure data that can be used to assess fire threat, plant invasion, wildlife movement, and other important trends that drive management. In collaboration with researchers from Northern Arizona University, we are deriving maps of vegetation composition and forest structure, using remote sensing technologies, novel statistical methods, and a Geographic Information System (GIS).

Introduction

After a century of heavy logging, grazing, and predator control, and decades of fire suppression, followed more recently by large and unnaturally severe wildfires, land managers and other stakeholders on the Kaibab Plateau have heightened concerns about fire dynamics and appropriate forest management. On June 23rd, 2006, the Warm fire escaped its “wildland fire use” boundary, eventually burning 24,000 ha of the Kaibab Plateau, including large portions of the Kane Ranch. Land managers in the region are interested in reducing the threat of stand-replacing fires by implementing fuels treatments in progressively larger areas. However, there is significant debate about how best to treat forests and, at the same time, connect and protect biodiversity. In this context, new scientific tools are needed to identify and evaluate the anticipated effects of treatments on ecosystem processes, including wildlife movement and habitat connectivity, before land managers recommend and implement broad-scale management programs.

The Kaibab Plateau supports healthy populations of many wide-ranging wildlife taxa. The Grand Canyon Trust, along with several other conservation organizations regard this landscape to be among the best in the Southwest for the conservation and reintroduction of gray wolves (Canis lupus). The ultimate effectiveness of wolf reintroduction efforts across the Plateau, however, will be largely determined by the long-term viability of the Kaibab Plateau mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) herd, whose winter range habitat has been precariously degraded by post-fire cheatgrass invasion. In this region, the management of high-profile species, such as mule deer, and the implications of wolf reintroduction necessitate an examination of landscape connectivity and a broad-scale understanding of how “strongly interacting” species respond to changes in their habitat due to fire, plant invasion, and grazing practices. We believe that the development of landscape-level models of these processes will allow an informed evaluation of wildlife habitat requirements and movement potential across the Kaibab Plateau under different forest and fire management scenarios. By linking these ascendant conservation challenges in a collaborative framework, we hope to add scientific depth to the ongoing discourse on the reintroduction of historical predator-prey relationships and fire regimes across jurisdictional boundaries in this region and, by example, across the western United States.

Approach

In collaboration with researchers at Northern Arizona University, we have developed a suite of landscape-scale datasets that describe forest structure, fire threat, and plant invasion across 345,000-ha Kane and Two Mile Ranches and the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. For example, using data collected at >600 ground plots in 2005, we have produced a predictive model and map of cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) occurrence across the Ranches. These datasets can be integrated to inform multi-decadal forest management strategies aimed at restoring low-intensity fire to the Kaibab Plateau, restoring wildlife habitat characteristics, preventing non-native plant invasion, and facilitating ecosystem resilience in the face of climate change. 

We are using these novel spatial models and tools to increase predictive capabilities relating to wildlife movement and landscape connectivity as a function of different forest restoration, fire management, and invasive species management scenarios. Understanding the implications of forest management on fire, fire on invasive plant spread, and these factors, in turn, on the movements of sensitive wildlife species, will place decision makers in a powerful position to consider complex ecological dynamics in management planning and project implementation.

Future Work

We have begun transferring all of the aforementioned datasets to the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the US Forest Service, and the National Park Service for use in project and long-term planning. A significant objective of this effort will be to promote the use of rigorous scientific information to bolster landscape-scale restoration planning and to inform a collaborative landscape assessment of environmental conditions and management strategies across the Kaibab Plateau. This collaborative assessment will bring representatives from land management agencies, the environmental community, universities, industry, and the surrounding community together to iteratively develop, compare, and prioritize management scenarios that are scientifically rigorous and socially viable.