Wetlands Ecology and Management
Wildfire and Habitat Management Planning in Clark County Wetlands Park, Southern Nevada
The Las Vegas Wash and adjoining riparian habitat is critical to the southern Nevada watershed and the water supply of Las Vegas. The riparian area also contains unique vegetation associated with the extra water in the climatically dry region and provides important wildlife habitat including for a diversity of birds. Precisely because vegetation growth is fast in this wet habitat, fuel accumulates rapidly and is burnable during dry times of the year. In this project, Natural Resource Conservation LLC worked under contract with Clark County to prepare a fuels and fire management plan for Clark County Wetlands Park. Work for the plan involved establishing a network of fuels and vegetation monitoring points throughout the park to identify changing conditions, evaluating effects of past fires on trees and wildlife habitat, and synthesizing information known for fuels and fire management in the region's unique riparian habitats. The plan included a series of potential management strategies for reducing fuel hazards while simultaneously conserving native wildlife habitat.
We developed fuel profiles for different habitat types of Clark County Wetlands Park. The profiles show different heights above the ground on the left side and the corresponding amount of fuel (shown as coverage) as bars from left to right. Orange colors signify woody fuels and green colors signify herbaceous (non-woody, such as grasses) fuels. There are major differences in the vertical positioning of fuels above the ground and in the amount of fuels among these different habitat types. For example, the tall tree type contains nearly all of its fuel in the canopy and little on the ground. The "heavy herbaceous" fuel type, in contrast, contains a large amount of fuel from the ground to a height of 2 meters (6 feet) or more above the ground. The heavy herbaceous fuel type is among the fuel types creating the most hazardous fuel conditions for fire and that would challenge fire suppression efforts the most. Developing these fuel models was an important part of the project and they can be used for fire management planning in several ways, such as by establishing minimal-fuel vegetation types in areas prioritized for quickly limiting fire spread.
More broadly, this project provided a foundation for meeting the challenge of managing a unique habitat reserve containing flammable vegetation in close proximity to urban Las Vegas.
