Fire--The Big Picture

[Speaking: Robert Fisher, USGS Research Biologist]

Fire is one piece of this process that we've now entered in and the fire, maybe, has direct mortality effects on certain kinds of species. It's just directly killing them as it passes through the landscape. But in addition to the direct impact there's the indirect impact from the ash, and it could have toxic effects on the recovery of non-native vegetation, on mobilizing the slopes, debris flow that might effect the riparian system. So, really the fire is just the first piece of a series of events that are going to effect biodiversity locally and we're concerned that we don't just monitor what the fire footprint was, but we monitor that whole process and the recovery process. So we understand where the process is breaking down and how do you adapt a management to obtain biodiversity in this landscape.