Dozer Line Impacts to Vegetation Recovery Post-Wildfire

Dozer lines can play a key role in the containment of a wildfire; they can also result in long-lasting impacts to vegetation and soils. Despite this, their post-fire ecological impacts are understudied. I assessed vegetation recovery associated with 29 dozer lines within five wildfires that burned between 2018 and 2021 across the Klamath Mountain ecoregion in northern California. Sampling occurred between one and five years post-fire along transects beginning within and extending out 30 m from the dozer line. Vegetation recovery was lowest within the dozer line, where average percent cover ranged from 3 to 5% regardless of years post-fire. Non-native species were found across all sites but were not significantly greater in cover within or outside the dozer line compared with native species. Non-native cover was best explained by elevation and canopy cover, where lower-elevation sites with reduced canopy cover had the greatest cover of non-natives. More research should be done to investigate longer temporal trends in non-native cover post-fire near and within dozer lines.