Project Details

Fires significantly alter ecosystems and ecosystem restoration projects are often limited by monitoring post-treatment to determine the success of project treatments and to predict future needs. Remote sensing is a tool to map the current conditions of the landscape and then map imagery to use in modeling the ecosystem to predict current and future ecosystem health. Remote sensing covers larger landscapes with less time and effort as well as helps land managers understand the impacts of management practice treatments and give insight into soil stability and erosion that therefore impacts water quality. The primary goal is to map, measure, and model the watershed post-fire to assess the current condition and predict the future health of the re-establishment of native plant vegetation and to help keep non-native vegetation and invasive wetland species at low levels while also continuing to support ecological biodiversity and provide for wildlife (i.e., greater sage-grouse, big game species, and endangered fish species (i.e. Razorback Sucker, Colorado Pikeminnow, Bonytail, and Humpback Chub) and permitted livestock grazing. An additional outcome of this monitoring is improving monitoring of erosion control through soil stabilization. Soil stabilization efforts' goals are to limit soil movement to reduce the risk of alluvial slides moving onto roadways. Treatment areas contain primarily downy brome but other noxious and invasive species may be present. Invasive wetland species of concern include cattails and phragmites. Little is known about plant community composition changes in response to fire in wetland systems in NE Utah. This project is needed to elucidate those effects to aid in guiding future management efforts.

Provide evidence about the nature of the problem and the need to address it. Identify the significance of the problem using a variety of data sources. For example, if a habitat restoration project is being proposed to benefit greater sage-grouse, describe the existing plant community characteristics that limit habitat value for greater sage-grouse and identify the changes needed for habitat improvement.

Provide an overall goal for the project and then provide clear, specific and measurable objectives (outcomes) to be accomplished by the proposed actions. If possible, tie to one or more of the public benefits UWRI is providing.

LOCATION: Justify the proposed location of this project over other areas, include publicly scrutinized planning/recovery documents that list this area as a priority, remote sensing modeling that show this area is a good candidate for restoration, wildlife migration information and other data that help justify this project's location.

TIMING: Justify why this project should be implemented at this time. For example, Is the project area at risk of crossing an ecological or other threshold wherein future restoration would become more difficult, cost prohibitive, or even impossible.

The proposed project will meet multiple objectives found within different plans; Upper Colorado River Recovery Program works to recover endangered fish in the Upper Colorado River Basin while water development proceeds following federal and state laws and interstate compacts.; the Green River Comprehensive Management Plan, ensures that the ecological health, scenic attributes, recreation opportunities, and irrigation are maintained into the future; -ARMPA; In PHMA, integrated Vegetation Management will be used to control, suppress, and eradicate noxious and invasive species; treat areas that contain cheatgrass and other invasive or noxious species to minimize competition and favor establishment of desired species. This project will also serve to inform the BLM's Vernal Resource Management Plan, Pareitte Prescribed Burn Plan.
The Utah Elk Statewide Management Plan has the following applicable objectives and strategies:
Habitat Objective 2, strategy d -- Initiate broad scale vegetative treatment projects to improve elk habitat with emphasis on calving habitat and winter ranges.
Habitat Objective 2, strategy h -- Emphasize improvement of upper elevation winter ranges to encourage elk to winter at higher elevation than mule deer.

-The Utah Mule Deer Statewide Management Plan has the following applicable objectives and strategies:Support all habitat objectives and strategies in this plan to protect and improve mule deer habitat including energy development mitigation in crucial mule deer habitat.
*Habitat Objective 2, Strategy D; Initiate broad scale vegetative treatment projects to improve mule deer habitat with emphasis on drought or fire damaged sagebrush winter ranges, ranges that have been taken over by invasive annual grass species, and ranges being diminished by encroachment of conifers into sagebrush or aspen habitats, ensuring that seed mixes contain sufficient forbs and browse species.

List management plans where this project will address an objective or strategy in the plan. Describe how the project area overlaps the objective or strategy in the plan and the relevance of the project to the successful implementation of those plans. It is best to provide this information in a list format with the description immediately following the plan objective or strategy.

The fire in the identified polygons burned hot and left a higher percentage of bare ground. No action would likely result in an increase in cheatgrass, noxious weeds, and increased sedimentation into the Red Creek, Price River, and Green River drainages. Priority and critical habitat for sage-grouse and several big game species are found within the proposed burned treatment polygons. Wildland Urban Interface Values at Risk: 
-Highway 6 corridor
-Railroad corridor
-The communities of Helper and Martin, are located downstream of potential surface runoff and soil erosion from the fire. 
-Municipal water treatment plant: Price River Water Improvement District. 
-Historic mine structures. 
-Coal Mine infrastructure 
-Price River watershed and tributaries. 
-Price Canyon Recreation area. 
-Bristle cone pine stands and trail. 
-Wildland Urban Interface, values and infrastructure within 1.5 miles of the fire perimeter includes: Simplot's Clay Basin Booster Station: along the phosphorous pipeline from Vernal UT to Rock Springs WY the booster station recompresses the phosphorous to transport to Rock Springs WY. 
-Clay Basin Storage facility: Clay Basin is on the Wyoming-Utah border and is the largest underground storage reservoir of natural gas in the Rocky Mountain region. 
-Clay Basin man camp: (WUI) permanent community of workers associated with the Clay Basin Storage facility including primary residences, travel trailers, and other structures associated with the resident population. 
-Oil and Gas infrastructure: pipelines and well locations. 
-Green River

The project is targeted to inventory noxious and invasive species within the Bear, Richard Mountain, Stewart Lake, and Pariette Wetlands Fire burn areas. Invasive annual grasses can alter natural fire cycles by increasing the fire frequencies, often resulting in shrublands being converted to annual grasslands. Noxious weeds may continue to spread with increased fire frequency. Over time native plant communities can be replaced by noxious and invasive weeds post-fire. The inventory of noxious weeds will further reduce the threat of weed spread throughout the burn area by helping land managers treat more effectively.

If applicable, detail how the proposed project will significantly reduce the risk of fuel loading and/or continuity of hazardous fuels including the use of fire-wise species in re-seeding operations. Describe the value of any features being protected by reducing the risk of fire. Values may include; communities at risk, permanent infrastructure, municipal watersheds, campgrounds, critical wildlife habitat, etc. Include the size of the area where fuels are being reduced and the distance from the feature(s) at risk.

The Red Creek, Price River, and Green River Watersheds: Monitoring efforts are designed to help improve recovery efforts by analyzing grass, forbs, shrubs, and aquatic vegetation to help stabilize soils, and prevent erosion. Bare soil can lead to an increase in runoff, soil loss, and erosion (Thurow and Hester 2015). Erosion can lead to a reduction in soil productivity and can also increase non-point source water pollution, thus having the potential to affect water quality within a watershed over time (Thurow and Hester 2015). Water quantity may be improved by improving and promoting new shrub growth with a productive understory reducing overland waterflow. If this treatment is not done, there is a greater potential for cheatgrass and other noxious weeds to dominate and reduce the hydrological storage capacity within the local environment. The Red Creek watershed is an Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) that has been identified to manage to continue the reduction of sedimentation into Red Creek, and the downstream Green River. (VFO RMP 2008). Additionally, little is known about how prescribed burns in wetland ecosystems affect sedimentation rates, which can be measured through the monitoring of erosion.

Describe how the project has the potential to improve water quality and/or increase water quantity, both over the short and long term. Address run-off, erosion, soil infiltration, and flooding, if applicable.

Description of efforts, both completed and planned, to bring the proposed action into compliance with any and all cultural resource, NEPA, ESA, etc. requirements. If compliance is not required enter "not applicable" and explain why not it is not required.

The project will upgrade/replace surveying equipment that will collect aerial multispectral imagery data with survey-grade equipment and be used for measurements and modeling on a watershed scale the impacts of wildfire management practice efficiencies for vegetation response monitoring, soil stability, and future forecasting of ecosystem health.

-Collect aerial remote sensing images from an unmanned aerial system in collaboration with USU's Unmanned Aerial System Program from Price. 
-Collect ground truthing data points to train and improve model post-processing vegetation identification.
-Analyze images for vegetation response and soil stability to assess vegetation response of burn areas with models to forecast future ecological system classes similar to the TNC's Landscape Conservation Forecasting methods.
-Model vegetation response, soil stability, and wildlife response to post-fire restoration response using LANDFIRE, a Watershed and Land Management Simulation Model to assess current conditions and identify current problems.
-Process and analyze data with input from UDWR, BLM, and other stakeholders.
-Work with the stakeholders to customize the model input parameters to meet stakeholders' current and future needs.

Describe the actions, activities, tasks to be implemented as part of the proposed project; how these activities will be carried out, equipment to be used, when, and by whom.

Describe plans to monitor for project success and achievement of stated objectives. Include details on type of monitoring (vegetation, wildlife, etc.), schedule, assignments and how the results of these monitoring efforts will be reported and/or uploaded to this project page. If needed, upload detailed plans in the "attachments" section.

List any and all partners (agencies, organizations, NGO's, private landowners) that support the proposal and/or have been contacted and included in the planning and design of the proposed project. Describe efforts to gather input and include these agencies, landowners, permitees, sportsman groups, researchers, etc. that may be interested/affected by the proposed project. Partners do not have to provide funding or in-kind services to a project to be listed.

Detail future methods or techniques (including administrative actions) that will be implemented to help in accomplishing the stated objectives and to insure the long term success/stability of the proposed project. This may include: post-treatment grazing rest and/or management plans/changes, wildlife herd/species management plan changes, ranch plans, conservation easements or other permanent protection plans, resource management plans, forest plans, etc.

Potential for the proposed action to improve quality or quantity of sustainable uses such as grazing, timber harvest, biomass utilization, recreation, etc. Grazing improvements may include actions to improve forage availability and/or distribution of livestock.