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Home → Publications → Forest Nursery Notes → 2009 Winter Forest Nursery Notes → 2009 Winter Forest Nursery Notes - New Nursery Literature → Effectiveness of Aerial Seeding and Straw Mulch for Reducing Post-Wildfire Erosion, North-Western Montana, USA

Effectiveness of Aerial Seeding and Straw Mulch for Reducing Post-Wildfire Erosion, North-Western Montana, USA

Groen, A. H. and Woods, S. W. International Journal of Wildland Fire 17:559-571. 2008.

We used rainfall simulations to compare the erosion and runoff rates from adjacent 0.5-m2 plots treated with aerial grass seeding and straw mulch with untreated control plots following the July 2002 Fox Creek Fire in north-west Montana. In the first summer after the fire, plots seeded at a rate of 9 kg ha -I had a mean of less than 5% ground cover and the seeding treatment had no effect on the rainsplash erosion rate. In contrast, straw mulch application at a rate of 2.24 Mg ha -I resulted in ~I 00% ground cover and an 87% reduction in rainsplash erosion relative to the control (P = 0.00 I). Measurements on a subset of the plots in the second summer after the fire indicated that ground cover in the treatments and the control averaged 39%, and neither treatment provided a significant increase in ground cover or reduction in erosion relative to the control. These results add to the growing weight of evidence that straw mulch application is highly effective in reducing erosion in the first year after fire, whereas grass seeding is often ineffective because of the limited increase in ground cover that it produces.


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Author(s): Amy H. Groen, Scott W. Woods

Section: General and Miscellaneous

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