AoR 157: Grazing for Fine Fuels Management and Wildfire Mitigation, with Sergio Arispe

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>> Welcome to the Art of Range, a podcast focused on rangelands and the people who manage them. I'm your host, Tip Hudson, range and livestock specialist with Washington State University Extension. The goal of this podcast is education and conservation through conversation. Find us online at artofrange.com.

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Welcome back to the Art of Range. My guest today is Sergio Arispe. Sergio is an Associate Extension Professor with Oregon State University and has been involved in research on invasive annual grass in shrubsteppe ecosystems, including some novel remote-sensing approaches to measuring fuel loads and what do we do about it and much more. Sergio, welcome.

>> Yeah, thank you for having me on, Tip. It's great to be here.

>> Yeah. We've known each other for a little while, and you've been involved in some larger-scale research projects involving quite a few people. But there's some new stuff going on now that I think I don't even know much about, which is why I was interested in talking about it. But say a little bit more about your current context and your background. How did you end up being an extension professor with sort of a joint research and outreach component?

>> Yeah. That's a great question. So I'm originally from Texas. And I grew up on the coastal plains and went down to South Texas to see family. And down in South Texas also just have thoroughly enjoyed visiting some of those refuges and have always really been in tune with conservation, wildlife. Because it was something so different than what I was used to seeing in an urban area growing up. And I did go to Texas A&M Kingsville in South Texas -- it's about two and a half hours north of the Texas-Mexico border -- and studied animal science there. And a lot of my colleagues were picking up this degree in rangeland science and wildlife science. And I really just kind of had an interest in it. And while I was an undergraduate, I went into Northern Mexico and worked with some cattle producers and sheep producers and saw just the challenge of the commons. A lot of these smaller communities shared rangelands or non-irrigated lands where those animals would go out and graze, and that was always a challenge. And I thought to myself like, wow, I've learned so much about animal science, livestock science, and feeding animals from a bag and less about grazing. And to develop that interest and started my range training at Texas A&M during my master's. And followed that up in a Ph.D. program where I incorporated that into my animal science program. So, you know what, it's been something that I've had an unwavering commitment to looking at and observing, you know, plant-animal interaction. And that's really what -- focussing on here in southeastern Oregon specifically. I'm in Malheur County, which borders, is it Humboldt County in northern Nevada and Owyhee County in southwestern Idaho.

>> And that is an area that has a lot of invasive annual grass. There's a few places down there where I drive through, and it makes me feel like my rangeland closer to home is actually in pretty good shape.

>> Yeah.

>> What was the impetus to start to do some work on invasive grass?

>> You know, so that's a great question. And, you know, looking at the sagebrush ecosystem, it's really important to kind of focus in on the great basin area and specifically the Northern Great Basin, which is in southeastern Oregon, northern Nevada, southwestern Idaho. And, you know, in this area we have really a wide variety of, you know, different elevations. And some great work came out of the Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research center in Burns. It's called the threat-based land management tool. And what that tool does is it really highlights the ecological threats to the sagebrush steppe in the Northern Great Basin. And at lower elevations we have the two ecological threats of, well, invasive annual grasses and lower elevation sagebrush rangelands where those soils are a bit warmer. And then as you move up in higher elevations that has more precipitation, there's juniper encroachment or juniper expansion rather. And, you know, out here you mentioned invasive annual grasses. And, Tip, last year I looked in our region -- kind of northern Nevada, southwestern Idaho, southeastern Oregon -- and within 24 hours there were about 2,000 lightning strikes. And these invasive annual grasses have really changed the sagebrush steppe ecosystem and -- in that there's a lot more fuel compared to, you know, historical, you know, back in history. And one of the challenges that we have with that is that these invasive annual grasses -- like cheatgrass, like Medusahead, like fentenata -- is that they're generating a lot more vegetation. And when we do have a lightning strike and when conditions are right, these fires can grow. And they're becoming more frequent, and they're also burning a lot more acres, which can devastate rangelands for public lands users. And I'm really going to be focussing and the work I do focuses on public lands. Because in Malheur County about 72 percent of the lands are publicly managed. Mainly by the Vale District Bureau of Land Management. And a lot of us, you know, a lot of individuals listening to this podcast really appreciate using public lands for hunting. For fishing. For camping. For recreating. For agricultural-based businesses or rangeland-based businesses. So all of those, when a wildfire comes through the region, are put in danger, and those benefits can no longer be rendered when an ecosystem is burned to the ground.

>> Well, and big fires on public lands also have big public costs.

>> Absolutely. And, you know, you're looking at, you know, some of the work and the information out at -- that the National Interagency Fire Center has is, you know, they do have numbers related to fire suppression. And some numbers that I've seen over the last 10 years, nationwide with federal agencies fighting fire, was to the tune of about $10 billion over the last decade for firefighting. So that is, indeed --

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-- a cost. And it's not only an economic cost, but it's also a safety, you know, cost and hazard for those individuals that are out fighting these wildfires on our rangelands. So that's, you know, a risk. And, you know, ideally, if there's a way to prevent that, and that's what a lot of the work, extension work as well as research is, is how can we prevent and mitigate these risks so that these large-scale wildfires, it can be, you know, mitigated or reduced?

>> It feels like one of the risks -- and I'm trying to think now who I was recently talking to about this. And I can't remember whether or not it's been on the podcast before. But one of the patterns that it seems like we're seeing all over, at least the inland northwest and I think much of the great basin as well, is where you have a decent remnant population of native perennial bunchgrasses, but then you have the interspaces between those bunchgrasses occupied now by things like cheatgrass, ventenata, and Medusahead. And so there's still -- there are still perennials in the system. But with the accumulation of more fine fuels, in particularly, the, you know, the aboveground dead material, the standing dead residual, both from invasive grasses and the perennial grasses, increases the risk of it -- of fire burning hot enough that it kills the perennials. So now, you know, you have had a previously somewhat fire resilient ecosystem. Not -- certainly not fireproof. If there's grass, it can burn. But the new situation is where there's continuous fuel, dryer fuel, dryer for more of the season fuel. And when that does burn, there's a significantly greater likelihood of killing the perennial grasses through fire. And I think a lot of people are not aware, people that are in the middle of this profession and this problem are. But people outside of that may not realize that the perennial grasses don't just bounce back from fire if it burns hot enough because it can kill them. And the invasive annual grasses are contributing to that problem. And, you know, one of cheatgrasses' biological mechanism -- same thing with Medusahead -- that promotes its own success is that accumulation of a thatch layer that allows that to be the only thing that can reproduce. Am I characterizing that accurately?

>> Yes. That's some great work down by Evans and Young back, wow, about 40, 50 years ago in the late 60s, early 70s. And, yeah, it really highlighted that the thatch layer, these invasive annual grasses, their goal is to grow and produce mature seed, which will then perpetuate their lifecycle. And what's unique and what you're hitting on is that the -- once it releases the seed, the remaining plant just kind of lays over and creates this perfect microclimate and maintains some of the moisture so that that seed that was released could then germinate. And, indeed, if you go out on the sagebrush rangelands where there are invasive annual grasses, you can kind of take a hand full of this thatch layer, and you can see, you know, after a good fall rain or in the spring, once the snow's melted, you can actually see some of those seeds that have -- where the roots have begun to, you know, to emerge. And you can either, you know, get several leafs on that seed before it even roots into the ground, which is pretty amazing. And it's all because of that thatch layer, that vegetation that lays over and, you know, keeps that moisture in there and that perfect environment for that seed. And so, yeah, what you're pointing out is -- are perennial brunchgrasses; right? And those are the bunchgrasses that have historically been in the sagebrush steppe ecosystem, especially here in the Northern Great Basin. And what we believe is to actively manage and -- to actively manage these perennial bunchgrasses within the sagebrush steppe ecosystem -- just for the greater benefit, right, for the watershed, for wildlife habitat, for, you know, rangeland-based businesses -- that's actually the multi-use purpose ultimately of, you know, the Public Lands Act from the U.S. Congress. It's FLPM. And it's really managing -- these lands and invasive annual grasses do get into these interspaces and can really, you know, promote the spread of fire. You know, if there's, you know, a lightning ignition or if, you know, fire comes a different way. And that's a little bit outside of my area, the fire dynamic component. But that fire, just as you said, can get really hot. And some of the work out of the Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center in Burns has focused in on looking at underneath the canopy of sagebrush, where the organic matter, that sagebrush can actually increase and generate temperatures that will kill those special growing points within the perennial bunchgrasses. And those shrubs, right, can generate this heat load, but it's that grass within the interspace, the invasive annual grasses that can really carry that fire across the landscape. And one of the focuses that we have out here is, you know, manage these -- managing these fine fuels is looking at what tools do we have to ultimately restore this degraded sagebrush steppe in the Northern Great Basin? And we're looking at all different types of tools to do that. And one of those is actually using grazing specifically in the dormant season when public lands out here in Malheur County are typically not grazed. That's around October 15th through February 28th, kind of the late fall and winter season. And we're actually utilizing grazing at a landscape scale, and we're talking about three different pastures in southeastern Oregon within the Vale District BLM specifically trying to remove that vegetation from the invasive annual grasses, trying to graze it so that that micro-site doesn't protect the invasive annual grasses from germinating. And over the last seven years we've removed about 6,000 tons of fuel during this late fall and winter that didn't carry over to the successive years. So that's some pretty unique work we're doing out here in -- within the Vale District BLM of southeastern Oregon.

>> Yeah. That -- I'm excited to hear about that. I've heard a bit of the background on that from some other folks like Dustin Johnson, but haven't heard more of the details. I want to back up just a minute, though, and talk a little bit more about efforts in the past to control cheatgrass with grazing. Because it seems like it's an obvious thing. You've got an annual grass that has a flush of growth and, when it's green and actively growing before it turns purple with mature seed, it's quite palatable and has decent forage quality. So there have been a lot of efforts to try to control cheatgrass with spring grazing, you know, during that window when it's both palatable and nutritious. Why has that not worked?

>> Yeah. So, you know, there's been some efforts looking at the spring grazing. And that's, I guess, one of the challenges is, you know, looking at pasture rotation. And now the sagebrush steppe and some of these efforts have really extended beyond the Northern Great Basin. And, you know, there's a lot of complexities that I'm not too familiar with there. But, you know, looking at some of the work, once again, coming out of the Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center in Burns, they have this kind of strategy. It's kind of the, you know, the green to brown strategy. And it's really looking at that time in spring where the invasive annual grasses are emerging. Like you said, the nutrition and the palatability of the invasive annual grasses during the spring is really high, high nutritional value. There's low fiber. A lot of protein in there. And to graze it during that time before the perennial bunch grasses begin to grow and grazing it while the invasive annual grasses are green, when the perennial bunch grasses are still dormant or, you know, before it initiates growth is really that particular challenge. But it needs to be beyond then, beyond that period of time. And by focussing in on the fall and the wintertime, traditionally when -- on public lands when cattle are not grazing or for the -- a lot of the permitees around here, they're not permitted to go out there. It's really trying to be proactive and targeting that time because some permits do begin before, you know -- in April, let's just say, you know, mid-March, April. And they're able to be on a rotation where they can graze during that time as well. So it's just another period of time. And so that's what we've been looking at here is really focussing in on the fall and winter grazing period.

>> Yeah. I mean, my impression of the problem with trying to stop cheatgrass with spring grazing is that you can't be everywhere during that narrow window. So say you've got 100,000 acres of land that have cheatgrass, and there's, you know, whatever, 1,000 cows on that 100,000 acres. They can only be in a few specific places during that narrow window when the cheatgrass is vulnerable to being grazed and when you could potentially stop seed production. And, of course, the other risk, I think, that we've seen is that, if grazing in mid-spring risks excessively grazing the native bunchgrass so that it interrupts their early spring growth cycle in an environment where you've only got maybe 90 to 100 days of active growth before soil moisture runs out, you've got to make use of every bit of that. So I'm actually pretty excited about the fall and winter grazing options. And I've heard from a number of ranchers that that has worked well for them. What -- in the last 10 minutes we've probably discussed a couple dozen different research angles and things that need to be better understood and investigated. What's the specific angle that you're looking at with the current research?

>> Yeah. So the current efforts that I'm involved in really started back in 2016. And the angle here is really a collaborative effort between public land users, specifically permitees. The Vale District Bureau of Land Management. Also other federal, state, local agencies that have been looking at different tools to really focus in and remove invasive annual grasses. And, you know, also, you know, an extension lens. An extension lens, so this is all a partnership. And this is, you know, something that started, once again, back in 2016 when the problem came up. This was just after the Soda Fire, which is one of the largest wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, right there at the rural-urban interface, just southwest of Boise. And 2016 we had the Cherry Road Fire, which was another wildfire. It was about 20,000 acres thereabouts. And some of the public lands users went to the Vale District BLM and said, you know, this needs to stop. What options do we have? And the Vale District BLM came to Oregon State University, specifically the extension service in Malheur County, and they said, hey, there's some great work that was, you know, at that time coming out of Nevada. I don't know if you remember, Tip, the other Schmelzer [assumed spelling] article, the Schmelzer and Perryman and Brad Schultz and a bunch of others, looking at, you know, fall and winter grazing to remove, you know, invasive annual grasses. And, you know, I contacted Barry and said, hey, you know, this is work that we'd like to do here in southeastern Oregon. And both Barry and Brad Schultz came up here, and we all met together to really put our heads together around a more comprehensive research and extension project here on the Vale District BLM, within the Vale District BLM. So --

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>> Yeah. At that point it was kind of a new paradigm for potentially how to deal with invasive annual grass, but not a ton of, you know, well-done, structured research at a/a broad enough scale to back it up too much. Am I --

>> Yeah.

>> -- remembering that right?

>> No, yeah. You know, that's right. And at this time, you know, once again, we're talking about 2018, 2016, 2017. And at that time there were about five papers done on fall-winter grazing. And, you know, the work out of Nevada was in there. And some work out of EAORC Burns was in there. And then also the University of -- New Mexico State University. And some work done, you know, in the Southwest was in the literature. But, yeah, what you said, that there is limited information about dormant season grazing and really using grazing to, you know, to shift and mitigate the invasive annual grasses. So that's really what, you know, was the impetus, was there's limited information out there. And, you know, it was at a small plot scale. And what's unique about this is this is more at the landscape scale. We're on three different pastures, a total of 27,000 acres on public lands. And we're working alongside of [inaudible] grazing operators as well as the Vale District BLM. And you have -- we're looking at how we can use grazing during different seasons of the year as well as no grazing and what that is doing to the invasive annual grasses and perennial bunchgrasses here in southeastern Oregon.

>> So what does the implementation look like? And what are the results that you're, you know, what plant community and plant-soil interface conditions are you measuring to evaluate whether or not the treatments are successful? So what is a treatment? And what's the results that you're measuring?

>> Yeah. So our treatments consist of no grazing. So we actually have some plots that are 150 meters by 150 meters. We also have grazing during the traditional, what we call the traditional season or the permitted season, which is typically from April through October 15th. We also have a particular treatment that is, you know, grazing just during the dormant season. And that is there, October 15th through February 28th. And then we also have a treatment that is there, where it's the traditional and the dormant season treatment, where cattle have access to the pasture, you know, from April 1 through February 28th. And around here in southeastern Oregon, there's typically a lot of snow. And so, you know, that's really one of the challenges is --

>> Right.

>> You know, about a decade ago we had what we called "snowmagedon" out here. And, you know, a lot of the public lands, you know, users, grazing operators are sensitive to whether or not there's going to be a harsh winter and will bring cattle, you know, closer to home. And so that's one of the challenges that we have here is the weather. So, and kind of characterizing this area. It's characterized kind of lower elevation, sagebrush rangelands that have historically burned about 85, 90 percent of the area, where we are has burned within the last 30 years. So there's really very little sagebrush cover where we are. And there's been reseeding with crested wheatgrass, some western wheatgrass. But we also have a lot of remnant native bunchgrasses like Idaho fescue, blue bunch wheatgrass. There's a lot of Sandbergs bluegrass that's out on the landscape as well. And so we -- and we intentionally focused on this area for several reasons, Tip. One, it doesn't have any major designations. There's no wilderness study areas or we're outside of the horse management area. And it also doesn't have any sensitive habitat for sage grouse, for example. But yet it's really close to primary sage grouse habitat to our east, to our southeast. And so looking at this area, I worked with our partners at Vale District BLM. We reached out to community partners as well who are intrigued and want to be involved in the public, you know, the scoping process. And we did go through the public comment period with this project and ultimately focused in on, you know, those four treatments. No grazing. Traditional grazing only. Traditional plus dormant season grazing. And dormant season grazing. And what we're measuring on the landscape for our treatments has biomass. We're looking at density. Cover. We're looking at gap, right, for fuel continuity. And we're also measuring shrubs. Wherever there are shrubs, shrub cover and density as well. And I don't know if I mentioned biomass, biomass mass out there as well. And, once again, we mentioned how, you know, invasive annual grasses can augment and increase the amount of biomass on the landscape. That's also one of the parameters that we're looking at and measuring.

>> So what have been the results?

>> Yeah. So, you know what, with this type of work, one of the challenges is that every year it seems that precip just changes the landscape. And, you know, really depending on the precipitation, we get different results. But, in general, I would say kind of the takeaway message is that, one, looking at our perennial annual grasses, we're not negatively affecting our perennial annual greases. We're looking at density. We're looking at cover. And so using dormant season grazing, we're not negatively affecting the landscape or plant communities. What we are seeing is that, you know, looking at our two extreme treatments -- the no graze, which has been in effect since the winter of 2017 and 2018 to current day -- that in some years we're seeing differences in biomass, where the no graze has significantly higher just biomass in general compared to our traditional and dormant season treatments. So we're not hurting the grasses by our, you know, using dormant season grazing. And in some years we're able to actually reduce the biomass by grazing. And we are authorized, Oregon State University is the authorized manager on these three different pastures within the Three Fingers allotment. And we're authorized to graze up to 1,700 cows during the late fall and in winter. And one of the challenges that we've had is getting up to that capacity. Because water is a very important resource, and, you know, also weather. Once again, I mentioned that sometimes it can snow. And, you know, sometimes that snow comes in mid-December, and that will just shrink the window of time that we have to really focus in and allow those cattle to graze those invasive annual grasses. Which, you know, in the fall after a nice fall rain, that thatch layer gets a little bit more palatable, and that new growth has a lot of nutrition to it. So there's a lot of protein there. And it really gets that rumin, gives the rumin the possibility of just eating more of that thatch layer and degrading that within the rumin. So that's kind of --

>> What does that look like? I've had a conversation with Barry Perryman about this, and we even recorded one long time ago. In fact, I think it was maybe one of the first 20 episodes on the podcast. But, so I have some ideas about how I think animals will graze cheatgrass int the wintertime. But if I'm somebody who's in a location where there's a cheatgrass or Medusahead problem, I think my initial response to being told that you could control it by winter grazing would be to say, that's junk vegetation in the wintertime. It's all dormant. It's like straw. It's litter. It's no good for them. Like will they even eat it? And if they did, is that a problem for the animal?

>> Yeah. That's a great question. And that's actually some of the work that my Ph.D. student Will Price is doing some of that work on. It's the cow performance work. And I would say this. That, you know, out here, typically in, you know, mid-October, those cows are in their second trimester, right, where their protein requirements are, you know, beginning to increase, but they're still low. But one of the things that, you know, actually Barry shows and, you know, if go out to the field with him is he'll pluck up that invasive annual grass. He'll pick up that germinated, that green, and it's been highlighted that, you know, cattle aren't selective grazers; right? Rather, they'll go for the green growth, which is really nutritious. And they'll pick up that -- the thatch with it. Or they'll pick up the, you know, the old growth. And the protein from that new growth really helps with the digestion of that, you know, the older growth. So looking out, you can see those cows really nuzzle and destruct the thatch layer and actually remove some of the thatch layer by getting at that new growth that has emerged. And after the first fall rain, after a nice green up, those cows are just, you know, they're really focussing in on the green-up for a lot of that nutrition. And what we've seen is they're not really going to depend on any protein supplement at that period of time. Because nutrition out on the landscape in the fall is really that good.

>> Yeah. To spell that out, the -- for those who are not aware, and maybe everybody is -- cheatgrass is a -- we call it a biennial. Is that right? That germinates in the fall and then over winters as a seedling. And that gives it a jump start on everything in the springtime. So in the fall, assuming we've got some fall moisture, it usually germinates cheatgrass. So you've got young green seedlings going into winter that are quite palatable. Did I say that right?

>> Yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, it can germinate in the fall. It can also germinate in the spring. But, yeah, once it does germinate, the nutrition of that seedling is really, really, you know, high. And it promotes just a great environment for that animal to digest or the -- actually, the microorganisms within the rumin to digest that older fiber.

>> And I apologize if I missed it, my connection seemed to blink out just a minute ago. But did you say whether and how much of a reduction you're seeing in cheatgrass densities in abundance over time in the winter grazed treatments?

>> Right. So it actually, it's the traditional plus the dormant season grazing treatments. In several years we've noticed a reduction in just overall biomass. What we are seeing is that -- in the no-graze treatments, we're actually also seeing those perennial bunchgrasses increasing. I mean, they're getting very large since they haven't been grazed over the last seven years. And we are, indeed, also seeing a decrease in invasive annual grasses. And now depending -- put a little bit of context in there, as you pointed out Tip, between these remnant perennial bunchgrasses, there's this interspace. And Dustin Johnson, as you pointed out, our good colleague at the Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center in Burns, you know, points out that this area is actually the interspace between perennial bunchgrasses, it's actually being used; right? If you look at the root system of perennial bunchgrasses, what we see aboveground, right, this biomass, right, is only about a quarter of the plant. And the roots are actually within those interspaces. And, you know, the further the perennial bunchgrasses are from one another, it does provide the opportunity for invasive annual grasses to, you know, to flourish. And so, I don't know, just going back, whenever these bunchgrasses, since they haven't been grazed in the last seven years, what we are seeing is there's -- are becoming fewer invasive annual grasses. And so that's just some of the data that we're observing, and we need to really focus in on that story a little bit more.

>> Yeah. What has been the reaction of the Bureau of Land Management to the results so far now that you're enough years in that it's not so much of an unknown?

>> Yeah. So I would say that the Vale District BLM has -- and just even broader than that. You know, up -- the Oregon-Washington Bureau of Land Management state office has been just a very consistent partner working with us. We shared data with them, all the data from this research. As well as we have meetings twice a year about what we're doing and about the data that are coming out. And so they're enthusiastic about this work. We recognize that this situation didn't come about, you know, overnight or over a period of a few years. Rather these efforts need to be sustained and long-term. And that's something that, you know, is kind difficult in science, Tip. It's -- you might get some funding for a couple years, and you can see how treatments are over a period of a year or two years, three years. What Vale District has been able to do is they've sustained funding from 20 -- originally 2018, and it's going to go through 2029. So that's just -- they've been a great partner in every aspect. And they're giving us guidance on what type of work that they would like to see. And, you know, the first work that was funded was through their range management program. And we were looking at reducing invasive annual grasses kind of in the short-term and the long-term looking at perennial bunchgrasses. And still have that focus, but we're also throwing in some precision conservation tools as well. You know, remote sensing on the landscape is using satellite imagery, using drone sensors to really get a sense and model out how our treatments are, not only affecting our plots, but what it looks like at the landscape scale. And we've partnered with Boise State University, with the Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center in Burns, and also have colleagues with the University of Leon in northern Spain who have been doing similar work in the deserts of northern Spain, which is really similar to what we have out here as well. So that's when it, you know, comes back to your answer on how the Bureau of Land Management and their perspective on this is they've been complete supporter and partners from the get-go. Because this is an endeavor that's near and dear to them as a land management agency.

>> Yeah. That makes me want to go back to this concept of the threat-based management framework. You know, you've mentioned that the vegetation change happens slowly. We don't get there overnight, but the damage can occur overnight. You know, these are place where's you said there's almost no sagebrush now. But at one time it was sagebrush grassland, the sagebrush -- sage steppe. And as I understand it, one of the goals of this threat-based management framework is to manage fuel loads to reduce the risk of expanding these areas that don't have any sagebrush, that are mostly converted to invasives and [inaudible] and less desirable shrubs. And I feel like that's one of the benefits of trying to measure this in large scale. Because we can measure stuff at a plot scale, and it's accurate. But is it accurate, you know, when you go four miles that way? These remote sense tools that allow characterization of the fuel loads, I feel, like may be one important tool to help us understand this at the landscape scale. Because that's one of the goals of these big frameworks like threat-based management and defend the core and a few others like it. I had another thought, and I lost it. I think it was that, you know, a lot of the research like from Matt Germino's shop has showed that, once it's fully converted, it takes a lot of money. And there's even with spending a lot of money, there's a low chance of success to recover something like a functional sagebrush bunchgrass ecosystem. Can you say more about this threat-based management framework? Because I think this may be applicable more broadly in the region --

>> Yeah.

>> -- as a way of deciding where to deploy things like winter grazing to try to stop cheatgrass.

>> Absolutely. And, you know, for those listeners looking, you know, if you're interested, look at the threat-based land management tool out of the Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center in Burns. And this was work, a collaborative endeavor with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. With the Nature Conservancy. With USDA Agricultural Research Service. With U.S. Fish and Wildlife. And also with Oregon State University. And what this does is, you know, I like to really highlight just the effectiveness of this particular tool, which is just a great work by those that created it. You know what, we're in a community of practice. So when we're talking about rangeland, rangeland-based ecosystems, and in this particular scenario, we're looking at the sagebrush steppe of the Northern Great Basin, we have a lot of contributors within this community of practice, Tip. You know, you've been at the table with agency personnel, federal agency personnel. You've been at the same table with state agency personnel, who, they have their own vocabulary. Well, you add your nonprofit organizations, and what happens, Tip? They have their own vocabulary, don't they?

>> Yeah.

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-- acronyms and, yeah.

>> Absolutely, absolutely. And what a threat-based land management tool does, it provides a vocabulary. And vocabulary and words are important, Tip. It provides a vocabulary for practitioners so they can come to the table and, instead of borrowing from, you know, all the different alphabet soup that we like to call them; right? The USDA. The, you know, BLM. OSU. Or U of I. Or WSU. They have their own vocabulary in the ecosystem to -- so whenever they speak, everybody within the community of practice, you know, in the Northern Great Basin focussing in on the sagebrush steppe can understand what they're saying. And just, in general, this tool focused on, you know, and highlights that there are a lot of different factors on the landscape. These non -- these abiotic factors, such as slope, such as heat load -- that really influences the vegetation. For example, if you look on the southern slope, those are going to be typically dryer compared to on the northern facing slope here in the Northern Great Basin and actually up in your part of the world, Tip, if I'm not mistaken. And just that aspect and the slope and how it's oriented is going to affect the vegetation. And what the threat-based land management tool focuses in on are these differences, these abiotic differences in the landscape. And, once again, at the lower elevation, where temperatures are a little bit warmer, where precipitation is a little bit less, the sagebrush steppe has one primary threat, ecological threat, and it's going to be invasive annual grasses. Now, the question is, well, are they at higher elevations? And actually they're not the threat, the primary threat in higher elevations. Because, as soil temperatures get cooling, there's a little bit more precipitation. Historically we're finding that invasive annual grasses aren't actually up that -- the sagebrush steppe at those higher altitudes. Rather there's more of a juniper expansion. And so, if you look at the transition zone, you can see when soils are getting a little bit cooler, yet they're still warm, that the invasive annual grass as well as the juniper expansion can coexist. And so with your sagebrush, with your bunch -- perennial bunch grasses and the sagebrush steppe, you can also have invasive annual grasses and juniper expansion as well. And so what this tool does is it highlights around nine different ecological states at different zones. We have the lower elevation zone, where the invasive annual grasses are the primary ecological threat. In contrast to the higher elevations where juniper is the primary threat. Then you have the intermediate zone, where you both -- you have invasive annual grasses and juniper expansion as a dual threat. And so that's just the fundamentals of the threat-based land management tool. And, you know, this can be applied to different ecosystems. But obviously there's going to be different, you know, a different rationale, different ecological threats that would need to be applied to it. But it's a great model to start with, Tip. And, you know, should be looked at by individuals that are working in an ecosystem with practitioners, with a lot of partners, really trying to focus in on ecological restoration for the well-being of private property as well as public lands.

>> Yeah. And, again, I think I want to reenforce just to verify that I'm understanding this correctly. These decision frameworks should be used in places where you have healthy shrub steppe ecosystems that are not currently invaded by cheatgrass. Because even in places where you have lower risk, as you mentioned at higher elevation with slightly cooler soils and little bit more precipitation, those are not automatically safe from the threat. Namely, because other -- often in continuity with lower elevation places that do have a lot of cheatgrass and that fire can carry. I'm curious if you know what the historical fire frequency was on some of these lower elevation rangelands? Because, if it was too frequent, they wouldn't have had sagebrush because it doesn't survive that. I think the numbers that I've seen for, you know, Wyoming big sagebrush ecosystems in the inland northwest is like 100 to 250 years between fires. Do you know anything more about that?

>> You know, that's similar to what I've read, Tip. It's been, you know, between 75, you know, the historical fire interval has been between 75 to 250 years. And so that's what I've read in the literature. And, unfortunately, with, you know, more people on the landscape, as you may have seen, you know, it's hard to be out on public lands without seeing someone these days. There are a lot of public lands users, and that's great. But one of the challenges that we have is that, you know, there are these ecological threats. And sometimes that can be perpetuated by having more people out on these landscapes. And, you know, that can be, you know, a wildfire, for example, due to maybe a campfire that wasn't put out. So all that --

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Absolutely. Yeah, all that to say is that, you know, these lands are being used, and active management and providing our public lands users and also our private landowners who are managing large tracts of rangelands need the best information so that they can then manage that land to ultimately provide our ecosystems the best services possible to be functional and healthy.

>> Yeah. Doing nothing really isn't doing nothing. Doing nothing is an active management decision that has predictable effects that we don't have the option of ignoring. I think my last question was, do you have any ranches in that area that are doing this on their own yet? Like are people adopting this dormant season grazing strategy for trying to suppress invasive grass?

>> Yeah. That's a great question. And, you know, I don't formally know of any ranches that are actively doing this on private property. Some of the -- I would say with -- in some conversations, people say, hey, this is something that we already do. So --

>> Right.

>> Yeah. I'm not sure, you know. I don't have any formal, you know, experience with someone coming out -- and, you know, with these active measurements to measure their effects on dormant season grazing. It's just kind of part of the management strategy that they have to reduce biomass during the fall and winter on their private property.

>> Well, that's a good point. A lot of times we do research to attempt to verify things that people are observing, but can't necessarily assign causality to or don't really what some of the explanations are. Yeah. I've seen quite a few rangelands in Washington, Oregon both that are winter grazed. And the winter grazed rangelands are often times the best looking, have the highest percentage of native plants left in the species composition and have, you know, more vigorous growth. And a number of ranchers have said that they were already aware that this was a strategy. But often times they're limited by these institutional barriers. As you said, the BLM typically permits -- and other federal agencies and state agencies, typically permit grazing during the, you know, what we would consider to be the growing season. And then the immediate -- beginning of the dormant period, after seed shatter and into the summer, but not so much in the winter. And as you mentioned, the Bureau of Land Management has proven to be willing to experiment with changing that up a bit in order to try to change the trajectory of these invasive annual grasses, particularly in sagebrush ecosystems. That's encouraging.

>> Absolutely. It truly is. And going back to partnerships and commitments to our rangelands and the, you know, to maintain functionally healthy ecosystems for -- that we can all enjoy is something that the -- our public land management agencies appreciate. And it's part of their values. And it's, you know, out here in the Pacific Northwest, where we have a lot of public lands, it's really consistent with the values of a lot of those public lands users. And so, as you put it, you know, so aptly, you know, to do nothing is really more detrimental than active management with a science-based approach. And we can rally around that because what the academic community with -- what the public management agencies and also what public lands users can do together is really solve some of these complex issues of large-scale wildfires that are becoming more frequent and are become larger. And partnering is the great -- is a great opportunity to maintain healthy landscapes for us to enjoy today as well as our kids and successive generations in the future.

>> Well, that's a good final word. It's also a good reminder that we will put some links to these things in the show notes. Notably, this threat-based land management framework and also the landscape planning framework around collaboration because fires don't observe property boundaries. And, as you said, people have to work with each other if there's going to be -- any successful strategy is going to be a cooperative or collaborative strategy. Sergio, this was really good. Thanks for your time.

>> Tip, thank you very much. And it's been great to be a part of the Art of Range. And I'm a longtime listener and appreciate the invite to speak on this podcast.

>> Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Art of Range podcast. Links to websites or documents mentioned in each episode are available at artofrange.com. And be sure to subscribe to the show through Apple podcasts, Podbean, Spotify, Stitcher, or your favorite podcasting app so that each new episode will automatically show up in your podcast feed. Just search for Art of Range. If you are not a social media addict, don't start now. If you are, please like or otherwise follow the Art of Range on Facebook; Linkedin; and X, formerly Twitter. We value listener feedback. If you have questions or comments for us to address in a future episode or just want to let me know you're listening, send an e-mail to show@artofrange.com. For more direct communication from me, sign up for a regular e-mail from the podcast on the home page at artofrange.com. This podcast is produced by CHANRS Communications in the College of Agricultural Human and Natural Resource Sciences At Washington State University. The project is supported by the University of Arizona and funded by sponsors. If you're interested in being a sponsor, send an e-mail to show@artofrange.com.

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