Download or read book Pre-fire Treatment Effects and Understory Plant Community Response on the Rodeo-Chediski Fire, Arizona written by Amanda M. Kuenzi and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: High severity wildfires have been increasing across southwestern ponderosa pine forests in recent decades. As the effects of wildfire become more widespread across the landscape, the need for information about the ecological effects of fire on understory vegetation is mounting. We investigated understory plant community response to the Rodeo-Chediski fire by conducting parallel studies on the White Mountain Apache Tribal lands (WMAT) and the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests (A-S). We estimated plant canopy cover by species and quantified total plant species richness on 1000m2 plots. We established 71 plots on WMAT lands. Plots were stratified by fire severity (low and high) and pre-fire treatment (cut/burned and untreated). We found significantly higher plant cover on areas that were burned by severe fire, but did not detect significant differences due to pre-fire treatment. There was no significant difference in cover of exotic species between high and low severity sites. Indicator species were primarily early successional species or species that were included in the post-fire seed mix.