Cooperating Agencies:

• Grand Canyon National Park


• Kaibab National Forest

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:

While some remote forests in Grand Canyon National Park have maintained relatively frequent fire regimes, the majority of the forests around the Grand Canyon experienced effective fire exclusion throughout most of the 20^th century. The results of this fire exclusion, along with grazing and logging on the adjacent National Forest lands, are similar to those seen in forests around the region: dense, overgrown stands of young trees, diminished growth of understory vegetation, and increased susceptibility to dangerous crown fires.

The ERI initiated a cooperative research project to test restoration alternatives on three small-scale (80-acre) experimental restoration blocks located on National Park and adjacent Kaibab National Forest lands on the North and South Rims of the Grand Canyon. Designed as collaborative ecosystem management experiments, in which researchers and land managers test several restoration treatments in a rigorous scientific fashion, the study involved the establishment of long-term monitoring plots, development of site-specific treatment prescriptions, protection of old-growth trees, thinning of unnaturally dense stands of young trees, treatment of accumulated forest floor fuels, and reintroduction of fire. Each experimental block incorporates four treatment units, including a full restoration treatment (thinning tree stands to replicate pre-fire exclusion conditions and re-introducing fire), a minimal thin treatment (thinning dense young stands around mature old growth trees and re-introducing fire), a burn-only treatment (the current management strategy in the National Park), and a control (no treatment). Comparing these various treatments will help provide scientists, managers, and the public with tested practices and procedures for restoring ecosystem health in the unique Grand Canyon setting.

Project Status:

The experimental block on the Kaibab National Forest (just outside the National Park boundary on the South Rim) was thinned and burned in 1999, and re-measured in 2004 after five growing seasons. The site continues to provide valuable information on the response of Grand Canyon forests to the variety of restoration techniques tested. The two experimental blocks within the National Park were not treated until 2003 due to controversy over cutting trees in the Park. The compromise adopted by managers at the Grand Canyon was to apply all the previously described treatments, but to only cut trees up to 5 inches in diameter. These sites too were re-measured in 2004, after one growing season.

For More Information:

• Contact Joe Crouse, at
• Information on restoration activities within Grand Canyon National Park

Publications:

Peer-reviewed:

• 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., W.W. Covington, M.T. Stoddard, and D. Bertolette. 2006. “Minimal-impact” restoration treatments have limited effects on forest structure and fuels at Grand Canyon, USA. Restoration Ecology.14(3):357-368.
• Fulé, P.Z., D.C. Laughlin, W.W. Covington. 2005. Pine-oak forest dynamics five years after ecological restoration treatments, Arizona, USA. Forest Ecology and Management 218:129-145.

Non-peer-reviewed:

• Heinlein, T.A., W.W. Covington, P.Z. Fulé, M.M. Moore, and H.B. Smith. 2000. Development of ecological restoration experiments in fire adapted forests at Grand Canyon National Park. Proceedings: Wilderness Science in a Time of Change. USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-15-VOL-5: 249-254.