Postfire Rehabilitation

A risk analysis is used to evaluate postfire conditions and determine the rehabilitation needed.  The risk of increased runoff and erosion following a fire is dependent on the climate, soil, topography, size and severity of the fire, and the biotic communities within the burned area.  This erosion risk, which changes over time, has to be balanced against 1) the potential damage that may occur to valued resources such as water quality, buildings, roads, and cultural resources; 2) treatment costs, 3) availability of treatment materials; short and long term effects of treatment applications; and 2) the amount potential runoff and erosion mitigation that a specific treatment may provide.  The choice to rely on natural recovery processes and not implement any rehabilitation treatments is often the preferable alternative.

Management is responsible for overseeing the stages of postfire rehabilitation:

• Deciding what areas to treat
• Treatment options and known effectiveness
• Monitoring treatment effectiveness

Since the 1987, this management decision-making process has been delegated to an ad hoc team of specialists, the Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation (BAER) team, brought together after a fire.  Most BAER teams include a soil scientist, hydrologist, engineer, and ecologist with additional members chosen as needed for the area (e.g., aquatic ecologist, fisheries biologist, archeologist, forester).  The BAER report form (2500-8) provides the framework for the risk-based analysis described above.  However, for many of the factors involved in rehabilitation decisions, quantified information is not available, and BAER teams often have to rely on their collective experience and perceptions to evaluate and compare erosion potential, recovery rates, and treatment choices (Robichaud and others 2000). In recent years, research has focused on the development of erosion risk prediction tools and the quantification of treatment effectiveness.  These new tools and data will allow BAER teams and other land managers to make risk assessments less subjectively.