Post Fire--Invasive Plants

[Speaking: Robert Fisher, USGS Research Biologist]

So these lands are recently purchased as Department of the Interior lands. The Otay watershed itself has been pretty severly burned. The area we're standing in was burned in 2003 and now it's burned again in 2007. We're concerned about that multiple burn and its effect on the plants abilities to grow, on invasives taking over. Over here you can see the Arundo which is an invasive raparian species and it's already aggressively coming back in this site and its probably benefiting a lot from the ash that's here. And the concern is that it was more localized. There was a patch here, a patch there, some other patches down the creek but as it comes back it'll probably much quicker than the rapairan habitat will recover in and may replace a lot of the raparian habitat that was here. And we're very concerned about that because its got a lower biodiversity. It serves as a less habitat for species, native species, then the natural raparian habitat does. It's got less structural components to it and it's got dense matts that are impenetrable to a lot of species so it takes a lot of effort and funding to try and remove it and control it in Southern California. Yet is seems like it's going to be at a preferential benefit from this fire in the short term at least.