Excerpt from Winter Injury of Sagebrush and Other Wildland Shrubs in the Western United States Weather extremes are a recognized important environmental element in the survival and natural selection of plants. The low precipitation period during the winter of 1976 - 77 may have been an example of Such an extreme. Precipitation during this period was near the lowest in recorded history over most of the West. Following that winter, extensive areas of sagebrush kill were observed in Idaho, Nevada, Utah, western Wyoming, and western Colorado. Severe damage to other shrub species was also observed. Winter injury appeared to be the primary cause. Some plant species appear to have been killed or damaged by drought alone. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This document provides managers with a literature synthesis of the historical conditions, current conditions, fire regime condition classes (FRCC), and recommended treatments for the major ecosystems in southern Utah. Sections are by ecosystems and include: 1) coniferous forests (ponderosa pine, mixed conifer, and Engelmann spruce-subalpine fir), 2) aspen, 3) pinyon-juniper, 4) big and black sagebrush, and 5) desert shrubs (creosotebush, blackbrush, and interior chaparral). Southern Utah is at the ecological crossroads for much of the western United States. It contains steep environmental gradients and a broad range of fuels and fire regimes associated with vegetation types representative of the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin, Northern Arizona and New Mexico, and the Mohave Desert. The Southern Utah Demonstration Area consists of contiguous state and federal lands within the administrative boundaries of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fishlake and Dixie National Forests, National Park Sevice, and State of Utah, roughly encompassing the southern 15 percent of Utah (3.24 million ha). The vegetation types described are similar in species composition, stand structure, and ecologic function, including fire regime to vegetation types found on hundreds of millions of hectares in the 11 western states.