Last updated: December 5, 2022
Article
Saving Our Sagebrush Sea
A recent study underscores the importance of protecting sagebrush lands in national parks to prevent a national treasure from disappearing
By Tom Rodhouse
In September 2021, a late-season fire swept through Lava Beds National Monument in northern California. This was the second wildfire in that park in consecutive years. It was in an area almost entirely covered by intact sagebrush habitat. Sagebrush lands across the West are threatened by fire, which transforms them into grasslands dominated by invasive species. The National Park Service’s sagebrush assets are a relatively small fraction of the nation’s “sagebrush sea.” But scientists have discovered they play a big role in conserving these imperiled landscapes, making a compelling argument for protecting them.
A recent paper in Global Ecology and Conservation and related story map explain why sagebrush ecosystems in protected areas are so important and yet so imperiled. A team from the National Park Service and other institutions conducted the study. It evaluates sagebrush resilience to fire and resistance to exotic grass invasion across the national park system. The study also outlines concrete strategies to protect sagebrush lands, using two parks as case studies.
Utah State University graduate student Jamela Thompson is a coauthor on the paper and built the story map. Her research focuses on fire ecology in the sagebrush and juniper woodlands near her Logan, Utah, laboratory, so she was well positioned to help the National Park Service with its sagebrush crisis. She joined the study as a Scientists in Parks intern and helped outline the conservation strategy.
“The National Park Service stewards several million acres of sagebrush shrublands,” said Thompson. “Most of these millions are really under threat because of fire-driven change. I don’t believe it is an overstatement to say that we’re likely to lose vast park landscapes to weed invasion in just a few short years. But the kind of strategic mapping that we did can lead parks to aggressively protect the best remaining sagebrush.”
“The ink wasn’t dry; the park never had a chance to develop an action plan to protect itself. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and our options now post-fire are extremely limited."
As if on cue, the Lava Beds fire broke after Thompson wrapped up her internship. Frustrated, Thompson acknowledged that the fire behavior mapping scenario developed by the team failed to predict this unwanted surprise. Lava Beds Resource Chief David Hays shared her frustration. “The ink wasn’t dry; the park never had a chance to develop an action plan to protect itself,” he said. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and our options now post-fire are extremely limited."
It’s a story that has become increasingly familiar in the West—larger and more destructive wildfires are outpacing our capacity to respond. Fire transforms sagebrush landscapes into weedy, exotic annual grasslands. These don’t provide adequate habitat for sage grouse and other wildlife. They also fall far short in carbon storage, water cycling, and other important services compared to intact ecosystems.
To help address this challenge, Thompson and her colleagues set out to describe, for the first time, how much of the nation’s sagebrush is managed by the National Park Service. They developed a list of 71 parks with at least some sagebrush and 40 parks with substantial amounts of sagebrush. The authors hope their work will raise awareness of the importance of the National Park Service to broader national aspirations for saving these vast but fragile landscapes. They suggest assembling these parks into a network, sharing tools and know-how for managing sagebrush ecosystems.
In the second step of their study, the researchers compared over 15,000 vegetation data records from John Day Fossil Beds and other national parks. They also examined detailed maps of wildfire histories and other park attributes. They confirmed that sagebrush parks are experiencing more unplanned fire and being transformed into exotic annual grasslands as a result. This is especially evident in the hotter and drier low-elevation sagebrush steppe, a type of ecosystem that is particularly vulnerable to fire. As climate change causes more drought and extreme fires, the authors say this study and others underscore the urgency with which we must act in order to save sagebrush landscapes.
The third and final portion of the study was a logical next step—to weave the findings into a mapped narrative that supports park planning. The study team assembled multiple layers of information into geodatabases ready for park staff to use in mapping applications. These geodatabases contained data related to things like soils and resiliency, current vegetation, fire history, and fire risk. The team developed geodatabases for nine parks with important sagebrush resources. The paper also highlights applications for Lava Beds National Monument and Great Basin National Park.
“In spite of a lot of uncertainty and a lot of logistical hurdles, we are in a much better position to try and meet this challenge head on.”
In the Lava Beds case, recent fires have hamstrung park options. The goal there is post-fire restoration in strategically chosen areas that have a high likelihood of success. In Great Basin National Park, substantial amounts of intact sagebrush remain and are already mapped. “A variety of well-tested tools, such as reduction of woody fuels, and newer ideas, including reseeding with drought-hardy genetic strains of native plants, are available to us to try,” said Meg Horner, a biologist at Great Basin. “In spite of a lot of uncertainty and a lot of logistical hurdles, we are in a much better position to try and meet this challenge head on.”
The National Park Service faces a steep road ahead in confronting the challenges of protecting or restoring dozens of sagebrush landscapes. The task will require an unusual degree of coordination, both inside and outside the agency. “We sometimes call these ‘wicked problems’,” Fossil Beds Superintendent Roy Zipp said. He acknowledges, “There are so many moving parts that we can’t control very well, so getting the agency into a more proactive position to prevent fire losses is a rather monumental aspiration.” But he also said, “We have no choice but to use the moment, the crisis at hand, so to speak, to break down old barriers and move into new realms of possibility.”
About the author
Tom Rodhouse is an ecologist with the Upper Columbia Basin Network Inventory and Monitoring Program. He also holds a courtesy faculty appointment at Oregon State University. He helps parks that have sagebrush ecosystems address the complex challenges presented by climate change, fire, and weed invasion. He continues to support the National Park Service's participation in the North American Bat Monitoring Program. He also studies rare plant populations. He lives in Bend, Oregon, with his family, including a brace of corgis, fish, and a hamster. Image credit: Oregon State University-Cascades.