Prescribed Fire Impacts on Sagebrush-Steppe Rangeland, 2003-2010

A sagebrush site on the Caribou-Targhee National Forest in Idaho received a prescribed burn in 2003. This dataset contains measurements from 2003 to 2010, including bulk density, ground cover, soil loss, weather, and hillslope runoff, collected by the US Forest Service. The study aimed to quantify fire impacts on surface erosion, runoff, sediment production, and belowground soil properties and insect communities.

Use Cases

• Modeling post-fire erosion and runoff based on soil cover and weather data mentioned in the description
• Analyzing changes in insect diversity and numbers following prescribed fire as described in the study hypotheses
• Studying the recovery of soil chemical and physical properties over a multi-year period after a burn
• Correlating temporal changes in precipitation and temperature with hillslope runoff plot measurements

Strengths

• Data collection spans approximately 7 years, from 2003 to 2010, providing a multi-year time series
• Includes diverse measurement types such as weather, soil properties, ground cover, and insect counts as described
• Study design includes both treated plots installed in 2003 and control plots installed in 2004

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• The precipitation gauge stopped functioning after spring 2007, creating a potential data gap

Provenance

Source

US Forest Service

Collection Method

Field measurements from installed plots and a weather station on a study site.

Time Range

2003 to 2010

Geography

Sagebrush site near Red Mountain, Caribou-Targhee National Forest, northeast of Montpelier, Idaho, USA