{"id":20226,"date":"2012-03-11T21:00:41","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T05:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/?p=20226"},"modified":"2012-03-11T21:00:41","modified_gmt":"2012-03-12T05:00:41","slug":"post-fire-studying-how-plants-bounce-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.kqed.org\/climatewatch\/2012\/03\/11\/post-fire-studying-how-plants-bounce-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Life After Wildfire: Studying How Plants Bounce Back"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>After a fire at a California state park, volunteers used satellite imagery to study the recovery<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"State Parks - Henry Coe\" href=\"http:\/\/www.parks.ca.gov\/?page_id=561\">Henry Coe Park<\/a> in Santa Clara County is big: 87,000 acres of former ranch land, dotted with oak trees, meadows that burst with wildflowers each spring, and vast stretches of chaparral. Given that Coe is nestled near Silicon Valley, it makes sense that the retirees who volunteer here bring a certain technical bent to their appreciation of the place.<\/p>\n<p>Case in point: <a href=\"http:\/\/cdfdata.fire.ca.gov\/incidents\/incidents_details_info?incident_id=215\">the Lick Fire of September 2007<\/a> (Craig Miller reported on it for <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.californiareport.org\/archive\/R709071630\/a\">The California Report<\/a><\/em>). Named the Lick Fire after it was first spotted from the nearby Lick Observatory, the wildfire burned 47,760 acres in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.org\/ourinitiatives\/regions\/northamerica\/unitedstates\/california\/placesweprotect\/mount-hamilton.xml\">Mt. Hamilton Range<\/a> by the time it was contained, eight days later.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kqed.org\/assets\/slideshow\/lickfire\/_files\/iframe.html\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"580\" height=\"420\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Since then, citizen scientists who volunteer for the park have been paying close attention to see how the burned land bounces back. In particular: Bob Patrie, a former project manager in Silicon Valley, and Winslow Briggs, Director Emeritus at Carnegie Institution of Washington&#8217;s Department of Plant Biology. Together, they\u2019ve pored over satellite imagery to document the impact of the fire on various plant communities in Coe Park.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>They used data from the <a href=\"http:\/\/landsat.usgs.gov\/about_landsat5.php\">Landsat 5 satellite<\/a> (before it failed last November). There have been seven Landsats, each designed to provide overlapping coverage of nearly the entire surface of the earth on a regular basis.<\/p>\n<p>Patrie and Briggs zeroed in on a technique for determining the severity of wildfires known as Normalized Burn Ratio, or NBR.<\/p>\n<p>Patrie explains that the chlorophyll in growing plants soaks up red and blue light to maintain photosynthesis, but reflects infrared light to keep from overheating. \u201cThis pattern of reflectance is unique to growing green plants. Thus the difference in reflectivity between near-infrared and visible red light from any particular patch of land (NIR-RED) is strongly correlated to the level of photosynthesis from that same patch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Patrie and Briggs <a href=\"http:\/\/coefire2007.info\/images\/ndvi.html#\">decided to study<\/a> four plant communities:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Mixed chaparral<\/li>\n<li>Gray pine oak woodland<\/li>\n<li>Mixed oak woodland<\/li>\n<li>Ponderosa woodland<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cThese communities are not mono cultures, nor was the burn intensity uniform over each area,\u201d Patrie says. Just so, they found something interesting: plant life bouncing back after a fire, \u201ctops off\u201d at the same point as before the fire. \u201cYou can see that there\u2019s an intrinsic limitation to the amount of any given plant in any given territory,\u201d says Patrie. \u201cIt\u2019s true in each kind of ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What they haven\u2019t been able to answer is why bulb flowers \u201cjust went crazy\u201d after the fire. Briggs says \u201cNative Americans knew that. They\u2019d do a burn, then harvest the bulbs, some of which are edible.\u201d But the question remains, \u201cWhat signals to the bulb to flower? The smell of smoke?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a question they\u2019re still exploring&#8211;and can explore further, now that it\u2019s clear the park will stay open, a story told on <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.californiareport.org\/archive\/R201203120850\/a\">The California Report<\/a><\/em> on Monday.<\/p>\n<p><em>Explore KQED&#8217;s <a title=\"TCR - Rocks\" href=\"http:\/\/www.californiareport.org\/specialcoverage\/ontherocks\/\">entire series<\/a>, &#8220;California&#8217;s State Parks: On the Rocks,&#8221; at our special coverage page.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a fire at a California state park, volunteers used satellite imagery to study the recovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":251,"featured_media":20238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[106,408,430,496,676],"coauthors":[],"series":[],"affiliates":[],"programs":[],"collections":[],"interests":[],"class_list":["post-20226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-getinvolved","category-thescience","tag-citizen-science","tag-on-the-rocks","tag-plants","tag-satellites","tag-wildfire"],"acf":{"template_type":"standard","featured_image_type":"standard","is_audio_post":false},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.13 - 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I also guest host for KQED\u2019s Forum, as well as the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. \u2022 I speak periodically on media, democracy and technology issues, and do voiceover work for documentaries and educational video projects. \u2022 Outside of the studio, you'll find me hiking Bay Area trails and whipping up Insta-ready meals in my kitchen. \u2022 I do not accept gifts, money, or favors from anyone connected to my reporting, I don't pay people for information, and I do not support or donate to political causes. \u2022 I strive to treat the people I report on with fairness, honesty, and respect. I also recognize there are often multiple sides to a story and work to verify information through multiple sources and documentation. 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