Grassland Wildfires in the Southern Great Plains: Monitoring Ecological Impacts and Recovery

Jean L Steiner,Stephen Teet,David Brown,Xiaocui Wu,Yuting Zhou,Xiangming Xiao,Shelby Robertson,Jeffrey Wetter,Jie Wang

doi:10.3390/rs12040619

Abstract

Devastating wildfires in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas in 2016 and 2017 resulted in significant social, economic, and environmental losses, with the agricultural sector among those severely affected. Several satellite-based indices were evaluated as potential monitoring tools for post-wildfire ecological recovery and management of grasslands. All indices evaluated provided useful information and indicated rapid vegetation recovery from wildfire. The Leaf Water Stress Index (LSWI) and Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) showed a distinct response to the wildfire events, and differentiated between burned and unburned areas throughout the post-wildfire growing seasons better than the Normalized Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetative Index (EVI). In particular, the LSWI may provide a useful tool for mapping the footprint of wildfire, with potential utility for organizations that provide post-fire recovery resources. The GPP, which estimates the biomass productivity of vegetation, can provide information to livestock operators to guide the re-stocking of cattle in the aftermath of wildfire. In sum, satellite-based proxies can provide timely information both to characterize a wildfire’s footprint and to guide post-fire grazing management in a manner that balances short term needs for forage with long-term productivity and ecological function.

Highlights

The grasslands of the Great Plains support a large beef cattle industry that produces a significant portion of the US beef supply and is an important economic driver of the region
While wildfire has always been a part of grassland ecosystems, Donovan et al [3] found that large wildfires have increased in the grassland and savanna biomes of the Great Plains of North America from an average of 33.4 annually from 1985 to 1994 to 116.8 annually from 2005 to 2014
Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) data have been evaluated at many CO2 eddy flux tower sites [24,25,26,27,28] and the results show that the Vegetation Photosynthesis Model (VPM) produces very good consistency with tower-derived GPP

Summary

Introduction

The grasslands of the Great Plains support a large beef cattle industry that produces a significant portion of the US beef supply and is an important economic driver of the region. The area burned increased by 400% and the probability of large wildfire increased by 70%. Their analysis showed no change in the seasonality of wildfire in the Great Plains. Dennison et al [4] found that large wildfire numbers and area burned increased from 1984–2011 across the western US, including the Southern Plains region, and that increased wildfire was associated with enhanced drought severity. Wang et al [8,9] mapped the rapid encroachment of J. virginiana into the grasslands of the Southern Great Plains in recent decades, which has significant implications for wildfire risks in the region. While prescribed fire is a common practice to limit J. virginiana encroachment in portions of the sub-humid Great Plains, the practice is not common in the semi-arid to arid regions

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