Study Site
This research took place in the hills on the south side of White Water Ranch in timber stands that were decimated in the Holiday Farm Fire in 2020.​ After a forest fire, the remaining debris is gathered into piles and burned to reduce fuels for a potential future fire. These are called burned slash piles.​ It was in these burned slash piles that the Ponisio Lab seeded native wildflowers in plots. Our work focused on assessing the success of those wildflower populations in 21 burned slash piles across the White Water Ranch property.
Methods
Assessing wildflower planting success in burned slash piles was conducted through quadrat surveys.
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For each wildflower plot, we identified what species had been seeded there, determined its presence or absence, and recorded the number of individuals, the number of blooms, and the area of the quadrat covered by that species.
