Cooperating Agencies:

• Grand Canyon National Park

Location:

Roughly 62 miles (100 km) northwest of Flagstaff, Arizona, on the Coconino Plateau (South Rim) and Kaibab Plateau (North Rim) of the Grand Canyon.

Date Initiated:

1997

Description:

The forests of Grand Canyon National Park form a unique natural landscape in northern Arizona, having never been commercially harvested, and having been protected for almost 100 years from widespread grazing by domestic livestock. On both sides of the canyon, the Park encompasses majestic forests with numerous large, old trees; the South Rim forests range from pinyon-juniper woodlands through ponderosa pine and Gambel oak, while the North Rim includes these forest types up plus higher- elevation mixed-conifer, aspen, and spruce-fir. Though all of these forests have been affected by 20^th century fire suppression to one degree or another, many have maintained a semblance of their pre-Euro-American-settlement fire regimes, and can therefore serve as “reference sites” against which to compare other area forests that have been more degraded and overgrown.

The overall preservation of the national park environment makes this area a unique study site in which to investigate the structure and ecological functioning of southwestern forests, including how they adapt to changing fire regimes. Landscape-scale study areas (2,000-4,500 acres) were established across each of the North and South Rim forests, and between 1997 and 2001 ERI field crews installed almost 300 monitoring plots to measure contemporary ecosystem structure (trees, shrubs, forbs, grasses, and dead biomass) and to collect dendrochronological (tree-ring) and other ecological data used to reconstruct past forest structure and fire occurrence. The data collected in these studies have improved our knowledge of present forest conditions, as well as the historic stand structure and fire history of the forests, and helped inform management decisions in the Park.

Another benefit to installing such a large number of permanent plots across a wide landscape is the ability to study the effects of large-scale ecological processes, such as wildfires. In the past few years several wildland fire use fires have been allowed to burn through portions of the North Rim study area for their beneficial ecological effects, and ERI researchers returned afterwards to re-measure the plots. Data from these re-measurements will teach us about the ecological effects of fire in these near-natural forests, and inform us of how other south-western forests should function after restoration treatments. Preliminary analyses suggest that old-growth pine forests on Powell Plateau were relatively resilient to low-intensity fires, while high-intensity fires in spruce-fir forests have changed the understory communities by increasing diversity and composition.

Project Status:

No new monitoring plots are planned for the present, but as mentioned above, many of the existing plots have been re-measured after wildfires, and the site continues to provide valuable data.

For More Information:

• Contact Daniel Laughlin, at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Publications:

Peer-reviewed:

• Alcoze, T.A., and M. Hurteau. 2001. Implementing the archaeo-environmental reconstruction technique: rediscovering the historic ground layer of three plant communities in the greater Grand Canyon region. Pages 413-424 in: D. Egan and E.A. Howell, eds., The Historical Ecology Handbook; 2001. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
• Fulé, P.Z., A.E. Cocke, T.A. Heinlein, and W.W. Covington. 2004. Effects of an intense prescribed forest fire: is it ecological restoration? Restoration Ecology 12(2):220-230.
• Fulé, P.Z., and W.W. Covington. 1994. Double sampling increases the efficiency of forest floor inventories for Arizona ponderosa pine forests. International Journal of Wildland Fire 4:3-10.
• Fulé, P.Z., W.W. Covington, M.M. Moore, T.A. Heinlein, and A.E.M. Waltz.2002. Natural variability in forests of the Grand Canyon, USA. Journal of Biogeography 29:31-47.
• Fulé, P.Z., W.W. Covington, H.B. Smith, J.D. Springer, T.A. Heinlein, K.D. Huisinga, and M.M. Moore. 2002. Comparing ecological restoration alternatives: Grand Canyon, Arizona. Forest Ecology and Management 170:19-41.
• Fulé, P.Z., J.E. Crouse, A.E. Cocke, M.M. Moore, and W.W. Covington. 2004. Changes in canopy fuels and potential fire behavior 1880-2040: Grand Canyon, Arizona. Ecological Modelling 175:231-248.
• Fulé, P.Z., J.E. Crouse, T.A. Heinlein, M.M. Moore, W.W. Covington, and G. Verkamp. 2003. Mixed-severity fire regime in a high-elevation forest: Grand Canyon, Arizona. Landscape Ecology 18:465-486.
• Fulé, P.Z., T.A. Heinlein, W.W. Covington, and M.M. Moore. 2003. Assessing fire regimes on Grand Canyon landscapes with fire-scar and fire-record data. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 12:129-145.
• Gildar, C.N., P.Z. Fulé, and W.W. Covington. 2004. Plant community variability in ponderosa pine forest has implications for reference conditions. Natural Areas Journal 24(2):101-111.
• Huisinga, K.D., D.C. Laughlin, P.Z. Fulé , J.D. Springer, and C.M. McGlone. 2005. Effects of an intense prescribed fire on understory vegetation in a mixed conifer forest. Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society, 132(4):590-601.
• Korb, J.E., M.M. Moore, S.R. Powers, and J.D. Springer. 2005. Soil seed banks in Pinus ponderosa forests in Arizona: clues to site history and restoration potential. Applied Vegetation Science 8:103-112.
• Laughlin, D.C., J.D. Bakker, M.T. Stoddard, M.L. Daniels, J.D. Springer, C.N. Gildar, A.M. Green, and W.W. Covington. 2004. Toward reference conditions: wildfire effects on flora in an old-growth ponderosa pine forest. Forest Ecology and Management 199:137-152.
• Laughlin, D.C., J.D. Bakker, P.Z. Fulé. 2005. Understory plant community structure in lower montane and subalpine forests, Grand Canyon National Park, USA. Journal of Biogeography, 32(12): 2083-2102.
• Laughlin, D.C., and J.B. Grace. 2006. A multivariate model of plant species richness in forested systems: old-growth montane forests with a long history of fire. Oikos 114:60-70.
• Moore, M.M., W.W. Covington, and P.Z. Fulé. 1999. Reference conditions and ecological restoration: a southwestern ponderosa pine perspective. Ecological Applications 9(4):1266-1277.
• Moore, M.M., and D.W. Huffman. 2004. Tree encroachment on meadows of the North Rim, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, USA. Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research 36(4):474-483.

Non-peer-reviewed:

• Fulé, P.Z., T.A. Heinlein, W.W. Covington, and M.M. Moore. 2000. Continuing fire regimes in remote forests of Grand Canyon National Park. USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-15. pp.242-248.
• Kaufmann, G.A., and W.W. Covington. 2001. Effect of prescribed burning on mortality of presettlement ponderosa pines in Grand Canyon National Park. USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-22. pp.36-42.
• Laughlin, D.C., and P.Z. Fulé. 2006. Meeting forest ecosystem objectives with wildland fire use. Fire Management Today 66(4):21-24.

Last updated:

February 11, 2008