Rationale for seeding grass on the Stanislaus Complex Burnt

Abstract

An emergency survey of the 147,000-acre (59,491 hectare), Stanislaus Complex Burn found that large, continuous, land areas were intensely burned, resulting in strongly hydrophobic soils, with potential to yield catastrophic volumes of flood runoff. The potential cumulative effect of greatly increased runoff efficiency on contiguous watersheds threatened serious downstream flooding, instream damages, and loss of upland site productivity. The interdisciplinary team developed a systematic method to evaluate seeding grass as an emergency watershed treatment. The evaluation used site specific data to determine where to seed or not seed grass, and concluded that seeding grass on the flood source areas could significantly decrease the potential threat to human life and property.

Parent Publication

• Proceedings of the symposium on fire and watershed management

Citation

Ruby, Earl C. 1989. Rationale for seeding grass on the Stanislaus Complex Burnt. In: Berg, Neil H. tech. coord. Proceedings of the Symposium on Fire and Watershed Management: October 26-28, 1988, Sacramento, California. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-109. Berkeley, Calif.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station: 125-130