HYDRO20750

• Permit No: C1980007
• IBM Index Class Name: Hydrology
• Doc Date: 7/5/2005
• Doc Name: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Postfire Rehabilitation Treatments
• From: MCC
• To: DMG
• Permit Index Doc Type: Correspondence
• Media Type: D
• Archive: No

debris clearing was closer to the Burned Area Report
average with 71 percent. On the other hand, 69 per-
cent of monitoring reports on straw bale check dams
were favorable. For major channel treatments, BAER
teams appear to be making fairly reasonable projee-
tiona of success. Too few road treatments were rated
for effectiveness or evaluated in monitoring or re-
search reports to evaluate the reliability of success
projections for those treatments.
Not only were BAER treatments expected to be
successful, they were projected to save million of
dollars in damages. For every $1 spent on treatments,
$LO to $Z00 in losses was proposed to be saved (fig.16).
These eatimatee were made with very few data to
verify the effectiveness of most BAER treatments.
Based on our results, projected benefits from aerial
seeding may need to be adjusted downward to reflect
lower realistic probabilities of £u•st-year success.
Sullivan and others (1987) suggested that a high
probability of success is required For a treatment to be
economically coat effective.
As the coat of action or no action alternatives are
based on professional judgment and past experience,
they are very approximate. It might be better to use
these estimates to rank treatment options. They do
not provide real dollar values of what might happen,
suggesting that an alternative ranking system might
be preferable to compare treatment alternatives
and no treatment options. Ranking could be based
on actual damages that occurred in nearby similar
watersheds.
$AER teams contained soil scientists and hydrolo-
gists moat of the time, with a wide range of other
disciplines represented as needed on particular foes.
Although wildlife biologists were often on teams, ecolo-
gists were included relatively infrequently except in
Region 4 (table 13). Many monitoring reports and
interviewees identified a need for better information
on the ecosystem impacts of fire and vegetation recov-
erypotential (discussed further below) when evaluat-
ing the necessity for emergency treatments. In many
cases, natural revegetation of burned areas occurred
more quickly than expected, Including ecologists and
botanists on BAER teams more frequently might help
to better assess natural recovery potential.
BAER Project Monitoring
Monitoring of BAER projects has been done for a
wide variety of reasons. Consequently, there was no
standard format or content to the monitoring docu-
ments we collected. The most common type was a
memo reporting on a trip to visually assess the results
of BAER treatments or natural rewvery after fire.
These reports provided qualitative evaluations of
treatment effectiveness and watershed condition,
but relatively few quantitative data. Unti11998, there
was no funding specifically available for poatimple-
mentationmonitoring ofBAERtreatments. Anymoni-
toring had to be done out of Forest Service apprepri-
ated funds. Thus the trip reports were probably all
that could be squeezed into the normal plan of work on
busy National Forests.
Most of the reports fell into the categories of "imple-
mentation" or "effectiveness° monitoring. They as-
sesaedwhethertreatments,especially structures such
as straw bale check dame or wntour-felled logs, were
properly installed and operating as designed. In the
case of structures, accumulation of sediment behind
the barrier, structural integrity after the first winter,
and lack of flooding or sedimentation problems down-
stream weregenerallyregarded aeindications oftreat-
ment success. Seeding operations were regarded as
successful if the seeded species were observed to be
growing well. Moat monitoring was done a few months
to 1 or 2 years after a fire. Only a few National Foreets
monitored projects lasted longer than that. The im-
pacts of treatment on the emergency condition can be
evaluated in this time period, but the ecosystems
impacts of treatments, especially of seeding on native
plant recovery, may not be adequately assessed.
Where quantitative data werecollected, details other
than the variables being measured were often omitted
from reports (which were generally intended for inter-
nal use). For monitoring results to be informative for
others with similar soils or vegetation types, details
such as soil type and texture, slope angle, aspect,
watershed or analysis area size, fire severity indica-
tors, and othervariables~houldbeincludedinreport~.
Where treated areas are compared to untreated areas,
it is especially important to know how comparable the
sites are in other physical and biological attributes.
These data are relatively easy to collect in most cases.
Quantitative reports also often noted that measure-
mentaweremade in "typical" areas, with no intention
of providing statistical sufficiency. Some description
ofhow"typical"was determined orhowrepresentative
the sample plots were of the overall fire area would
make the results more useful to future inveatigatora,
both on and offthe specific National Forest. Tho low
number of samples taken in most efforts may have
resulted in overstatement of treatment impacts (as
either effective or ineffective), because inherent site
variability is not captured in the reeulta. With greater
funding available for monitoring, this limitation may
be alleviated in the future.
Quantitative monitoring efforts were generally re-
stricted tovery small areas of a fire, while the qualita-
tive trip reports analyzed a much larger proportion of
the burned area in less detail. Both kinds of reports
have obvious value for assessing the results of BAER
projects. We found few cases where both kinds of
46 USDA Forest Service Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-63.200