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Foltz, R.B; Robichaud, P.R. 2013.
Effectiveness of P\post-fire Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) road treatments: Results from three wildfires.
RMRS-GTR-313. Fort Collins,
CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 40 p.
Keywords: erosion, assessment, values at risk, recovery, road failures
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Abstract:
Wildland fires often cause extreme changes in the landscape that drastically influence surface runoff
and soil erosion, which can impact forest resources, aquatic habitats, water supplies, public safety, and
forest access infrastructure such as forest roads. Little information is available on the effectiveness of
various post-fire road treatments, thus this study was designed to evaluate common treatments implemented
after fire. The 2006 Tripod Complex, 2007 Cascade Complex, and the 2008 Klamath Theater
Complex Fires were selected because of their large size and extensive use of road treatments. Two of
the three locations had below average precipitation and all three had precipitation that did not achieve
the post-fire road treatment design storms. With this amount of precipitation testing, all of the treatments
we monitored met the design objectives. All three of the locations had large soil loss in the first year
after the fire followed by a quick recovery of ground cover to 40 to 50 percent at the end of year one.
Soil loss from roadside hydromulch was not statistically significant from control (no treatment) on the
Tripod Complex sites. Soil loss at the Cascade Complex sites was a statistically significant difference
on the straw mulch compared to the control (no treatment), but there were no different pairwise differences
among straw mulch, Polyacrylamide (PAM), and WoodstrawTM. This suggests that the amount
of cover is more important than the type of cover. Three studies and 5 years after beginning the studies,
we think the best approach to assessing the effectiveness of post-fire BAER road treatments is to
gain a limited knowledge of many sites along a road system rather than a detailed knowledge of a few sites.
Moscow FSL publication no. 2013h
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