- Author: Travis M Bean
New research published in PNAS (Fusco et al 2019) highlights the role of invasive grasses in creating new wildfire regimes at not just local but regional scales. Weed scientists are familiar with the concept of the grass-fire cycle (D'Antonio and Vitousek 1992): exotic grass invasions promote hotter or more frequent fires, which in turn facilitates more extensive grass invasion, causing more fires, etc. Perhaps now is the right time to better educate non-scientists about this critical concept as wildfires take up more of the public's...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
- Re-posted by: Gale Perez
When wildfires burn in California, people often call them forest fires or brushfires, but the odds are high that an invasive weed is an unrecognized fuels component, says a UC Agriculture and Natural Resources scientist.
“We have all of the nasty non-native Bromus species here in California, and these weeds are key drivers of increasing fire frequency,” said Travis Bean, UC Cooperative Extension weed science specialist based at UC Riverside.
The invasive, non-native Bromus species aggressively outcompete native plants, forming dense stands that grow fast and dry out quickly, becoming highly flammable. Fire can move...
- Author: Thomas Getts
There was a post written a few months ago by Rebecca Ozeran entitled “A Tale of Two Grasses,” describing her experiences with cheatgrass and contrasting its characteristics with another invasive annual, medusahead. It was an excellently written blog, and I encourage you to check it out!
http://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=23889
As I rode my bike through a haze of smoke this morning, I decided it would be appropriate to describe the impacts I see this invasive annual having up in the northeastern corner of the state, because it is just about everywhere! (And I have some cool fire photos to share…) Cheatgrass...
- Author: Rebecca Ozeran
As you can tell by going through archived blogs on this site, medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae) is an extremely popular grass. Well, an infamous one, perhaps. I am fairly certain that none of us actually like it. In this blog I will add to the plethora of medusahead posts; but first, a public service announcement.
On May 2, 2017, there will be a Medusahead Management Workshop at Lindcove REC, in Exeter. Online registration is available at ucanr.edu/medusahead. This workshop aims to inform attendees about medusahead biology, its economic impact on cattle operations, and a variety of tools available to...
- Posted by: The Weed's Network
- Re-posted by: Gale Perez
Abstract: Cheatgrass and its cousin, red brome, are exotic annual grasses that have invaded and altered ecosystem dynamics in more than 41 million acres of desert shrublands between the Rockies and the Cascade-Sierra chain. A fungus naturally associated with these Bromus species has been found lethal to the plants' soil-banked dormant seeds. Supported by the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP), researchers Susan Meyer, Phil Allen, and Julie Beckstead cultured this fungus, Pyrenophora semeniperda, in the laboratory and developed an experimental field application that, in some trials, killed all the dormant soil-banked Bromus seeds, leaving none to germinate the following year. The team's work opens the way to a commercial...