Wildfire has substantially increased in sagebrush ecosystems resulting in degraded wildlife habitat, reduced forage, and altered fire regimes. Mechanical mowing, prescribed burning, and herbicide are fuel treatments aimed to reduce woody or herbaceous fuels; however, their long-term effect on plant community composition, as well as the response after wildfire, is unknown. We utilized data from three SageSTEP sites (https://www.sagestep.org) to examine plant community composition before and after fuel treatments, as well as after three sites had burned in a wildfire. After fuel treatments, reductions in sagebrush coincided with increased native perennial bunchgrass cover but also annual, invasive grass cover. Perennial forb increases were ephemeral after treatments. Immediately prior to wildfire, sites differed in species composition with control plots having the most shrubs and the prescribed fire plots having the most perennial grasses. Aft er wildfire, shrubs were substantially reduced. Perennial grass cover generally increased, particularly in prescribed fire plots, although perennial grass responses were site dependent. Annual grass invasion varied by site and treatment after wildfire, and invasive forbs were dynamic post-wildfire. These results illustrate the need for long-term data to understand plant community dynamics after both fuel treatments and subsequent wildfire. Long-term monitoring of post-wildfire community trajectories will help deduce how strongly historical fuel treatments affect pre-wildfire composition and consequent post-wildfire recovery.
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