Land managers across the western US are faced with selecting and applying effective tree-removal treatments on sagebrush rangelands, but current understanding regarding long-term ecohydrologic responses to tree removal remains inadequate.� This study used vegetation measures, rainfall simulations, and overland flow experiments to evaluate the impact of prescribed fire, tree cutting, and shredding tree-removal treatments on vegetation and hydrology and erosion processes at two sites 9 yr after tree removal.� All treatments were effective at recruiting sagebrush steppe vegetation, but burning also increased cheatgrass cover in isolated patches around burned trees. �High rates of runoff and erosion were reduced by tree removal treatments at one site, but were minimally altered at a second more degraded site.� Collectively, the study demonstrates that prescribed fire and mechanical tree-removal treatments can effectively re-establish sagebrush steppe vegetation attributes and improve hydrologic function, but also show that hydrologic recovery can require more than 9 yr on more degraded sites as vegetation increases over time.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.