Resiliency through Disturbance
Misunderstood Relatives in the Fight Against Climate Change
August brings smoky skies to the Salt Lake Valley. I step outside and the sun shines red. A haze lingers between canyons. Is this smoke from nearby, or did it blow in from a far away place? Maybe it is a blend of both.
Across the Western United States, fires are burning through forests, grasslands, and towns. Increased fire intensity and frequency is undeniable. As global temperatures rise, landscapes have been left vulnerable by centuries of fire suppression. Many of these landscapes will change drastically, becoming a scar across the earth. We witness the devastating aftermath on the news every summer. In times like these, it might be hard to imagine that there is more to fire than destruction. But sometimes flames leave a surge of rebirth in their black, smoldering wake.
Cultural burn moving across the landscape. Photo by Olivia Chase
Fire is a classic example of what ecologists call disturbance–an event that causes significant change to an ecosystem. Other examples include floods, avalanches, insect infestations, and even drought. The aftermath might be shocking at first, but nature has neat ways of adapting to disturbance.
In the case of fire, many species have evolved to withstand it through unique traits, like thick bark or self-pruning limbs. Many species, like lodgepole pines, even require the presence of fire to release their seeds. Others, like willow and fireweed, send up new shoots from their surviving root systems underground.
It would seem that as time passes, change is inevitable. Nature has shown us that this is no cause for despair, but rather an opportunity to be creative.
When disturbance is introduced to an ecosystem, species rearrange themselves in response to change. It has been shown that more diverse conditions are better able to tolerate disturbance than uniform conditions.
I asked Stream Ecologist Rose Smith, head of the Riverscape Restoration program at Sageland Collaborative, about the relationship between disturbance and ecosystem complexity in the context of river ecosystems.
“Our restoration work is tied to the idea that complexity builds resilience.”
“We know that more habitat complexity is associated with ecological health in rivers and streams. The inverse is also true. When rivers are straightened or channelized they also lose their ability to re-assemble to a healthy state after disturbance. They lose their resilience.”
Resilience – A capacity to withstand change and adversity. Complex ecosystems are able to withstand disturbance when it comes, and it always will. The evolutionary goal of nature has not only been to evade hardship, but sometimes to endure it, and even become stronger for it.
I am enamored by the role fire plays in Western ecosystems. For the past two years, I have studied fire science in Northern California, both in school and from my tribal community. My tribe, the Hupa, has stewarded our ancestral homelands with fire since time immemorial. Our burns were ignited at high frequencies, across vegetation types, and for a myriad of objectives.
Tribal member lighting grass with a pitch stick. Photo by Olivia Chase
I spoke with Dr. Brian Codding, an ecological anthropologist from the University of Utah who has studied Indigenous fire ecology for several years. “A very common pattern that keeps repeating itself, whether you're talking about boreal forests in Canada or spinifex sand plains in Australia, is that Indigenous fires tend to be smaller, less intense and more frequent than wildfires.”
Indigenous burns are a tool for ecosystem maintenance and community safety. For example, wildfires caused by dry lightning are a common occurrence during Northern California summers. Rather than reacting with suppression tactics of today, my people historically burned the area during the cool season to keep wildfire intensity low and ecologically beneficial when it inevitably ignited. There was no need to “fight fire” in those days.
But Indigenous burns are not merely a maintenance tool. The regeneration of fire-adapted plant species is crucial to our livelihoods. I have been taught to burn California hazel shrubs and riverbank willow for basketry materials. When disturbed by fire, an abundance of young shoots are produced. These shoots are straight and pliable, the perfect material for a masterfully woven basket. Oak woodlands that bear beloved acorns become more productive after a burn. When fire reduces brush in the forest understory, it encourages the growth of grasses and forbes that animals like to eat, and the people use for medicine. For California’s Indigenous peoples, fire has shaped every aspect of our lives, and we continue to shape our homelands with fire.
Traditional Karuk baskets. Courtesy of the Karuk Tribe / Photo by Stormy Staats
Tending to the giving nature of fire during the height of the wildfire crisis has given me hope in the restoration of cultures and ecosystems. I believe it is a misunderstood relative. Legacies of Indian removal and genocidal policies enacted across the United States left the land without caretakers for generations. The outlaw of fire has inflicted much suffering on both Indigenous peoples and landscapes. Without frequent, low intensity fires and the diversity it promotes, forests have grown thick, dry, and homogenous. For the land to erupt into an inferno would only take a stroke of lightning.
I asked Dr. Codding how the removal of Indigenous fire stewardship has affected general ecosystem health today. “Fuels built up over time by removing [Indigenous] ignitions. Ecosystems evolved with those patterns of ignition, and removing Indigenous people from the landscape created a huge fuel deficit that we're dealing with today.
“Very clearly, we would be in a much more resilient habitat ecosystem if small, frequent fires were continued for the last 150 years.”
Indigenous and Western sciences agree that fire disturbance is not a question of if, but rather when. Additionally, we must ask ourselves what kind of fire we want to see. As it stands now, the vast majority of Western landscapes are not able to withstand such disturbance, leaving everyone at risk.
In my time studying fire and ecology, I have learned just how tightly woven every element of our ecosystems are. Strong enough to hold the world together, like a fire born hazel basket. Every element of the world trickles into the next, and completely depends on one another to function. I have found it impossible to steward the landscape without trying to understand all of its moving pieces. In the aftermath of so much exploitation and neglect, it all needs tending to, from fire to water, and all things in between.
Coming to Utah for the summer, I am lucky to have found a place at Sageland Collaborative. My favorite project I have worked on is Riverscape Restoration. Wading through streams is incredibly different from hiking through brush with a trail of fire behind me (though I trip just as much). I have met summer flowers and butterflies I never have on an autumn burn unit. I have been awestruck by macroinvertebrates that build villages on river rocks, and mother ducks that nest in the tall grass. A stream is much more than water trickling across land, entire communities take root on the banks and within the channels. But more than anything, I have been most pleased to be introduced to some incredible architects–beavers.
As we make our way through streams, degradation is apparent. We traverse through deep rips in the earth where the water has eroded the banks. I find ruins of beaver dams that once were, but have been broken through and sunbeaten. At the end of one of our stream assessments, I wondered how the water would ever rise back to its original floodplain. But my fellow stream restorer Jake Atkinson took me to see a sight I’ll likely never forget: a beaver dam so large one might think humans built it. He told me generations of beavers had built this dam, and as it trapped water and sediment behind it, the beavers were actively changing the shape of the terrain.
Beaver dam, pond, and lodge. Photo by Olivia Chase
Beavers are world creators. They influence the land around them, and create homes for others. When they build their dams, a pond forms, and the upstream water floods the surrounding area. Wet meadows sprout and trees grow. Beaver dams once scattered streams throughout the country, creating what many people call “mosaics” in the landscape. The complexity of conditions creates a refuge of biodiversity.
I asked Rose Smith about the role of beavers in their ecosystems. “They are often called 'ecosystem engineers' for how effectively they change the course of rivers and streams,” She said.
“The ponds and wetland complexes that emerge from a beaver’s flooding disturbance quickly become home for other wildlife.”
Smith went on to provide a stunning set of examples. She told me about shallow, silty ponded areas growing nutritious food for moose, and fish navigating through dams, side channels, and tunnels built by beaver to spawn in headwater streams.
Beavers create riparian islands of life, as well as networks of life throughout stream systems. They demonstrate that disturbance can act as a catalyst for biological abundance, not just loss.
Research conducted by Emily Fairfax at the University of Minnesota showed how beaver disturbed ecosystems influenced the impacts of wildfire. Her results showed that as wildfire met a flooded beaver area, it was left largely unaffected. The abundant biodiversity that found refuge in the beaver’s area of influence was safe from major disturbance.
Although I am only beginning to grasp the functions and processes of streams, when I learn about beavers, I cannot help but think of Indigenous fire lighting. Before our burns were outlawed, we spread fire across the landscape in unique patterns as it interacted with an array of plants at different stages of life, distributions, and soil moisture. Fire was not a threat in moments like that–it was another world creator.
But much like Indigenous fire, beavers became misunderstood as the world changed under colonization. Their influence on stream systems disturbed the plans of settlers, who wished to profit from the land, especially through grazing. Beavers became targeted as a “nuisance species” and they were killed in large numbers. Their populations today are a fraction of what they once were.
As a Native person, that story feels all too familiar.
Contrary to the common belief that American lands were once “pristine wilderness,” every landscape has been influenced and shaped by world builders like Indigenous fire lighters and beavers. The land has not only been shaped by their presence, it has also evolved to depend on them. This was not understood by those early settlers, who nearly eradicated our populations. Our communities, wildlife, and landscapes are deeply wounded by colonial violence, whether it was enacted out of ignorance or intent.
With the onset of climate change induced drought and rising temperatures, countless communities are facing a fiery future, one without water. But by drawing from and uplifting Indigenous knowledge systems and the wisdom of the natural world, we are given the opportunity to befriend disturbance brought by fire lighting and beavers once again.
Sageland Collaborative’s Riverscape Restoration program works to mend Utah streams through restoring beaver habitat. A major way this is accomplished is through the construction of beaver dam analogs (BDAs). This low-tech restoration method mimics the effects of a real beaver dam, installed in places where beavers are now absent or minimal. These structures help trap sediment, which halts the process of steam incision. It also provides beavers the opportunity to build off of the BDAs, which I was lucky enough to witness for myself on one of our stream assessments.
BDA construction sites. Photos by Sierra Hastings
As for fire, a great shift is also happening. In the state of California, a bill was recently passed that allows a pathway for prescribed burning to take place on a much larger scale, and also allows an avenue for federally recognized tribes to conduct cultural burns on their ancestral lands, led by expert cultural fire practitioners. This achievement could not have come sooner, as the threat of catastrophic wildfire faces the western US every year.
I asked Kyle Yurkovich, a US Forest Service Fire Prevention Officer, about the status of prescribed fire efforts in Utah. He explained that a major objective of burns along the Wasatch front is watershed quality. “When you get fire in the wrong spot at the wrong time, it can burn at high severity, which can sterilize the soil. In certain circumstances, it can create soil hydrophobicity, which creates huge erosion issues. You can wreck a drainage with really hot fire.”
Prescribed burn crew member watching a hillside burn. Photo by Olivia Chase
He went on to explain how prescribed fire can help mitigate the risk of high intensity wildfire. “From the Wasatch Front to the western Uintas, the goal is to break up continuity so you don't have a wick of continuous heavy fuels. We burn to break that up so wildfire can't make a run.” He said.
It’s comforting to know that despite the trauma inflicted upon the land and people, there is work being done by our communities to make things better again. It takes a diverse group of people, from tribes to ranchers, scientists to volunteers, each with their own specialized roles and gifts to help restore what supports us all.
Sometimes as I look towards the future, I fear my gaze will fall upon a barren world, completely decimated by fire. But I know better. Disturbance is a part of life, and a catalyst for change. It cannot be evaded. But we have the power to shape the world we want to live in. We have been given beautiful lessons from so many teachers, from basketweavers to a family of beavers.
What is the strength of complexity, of diversity in our world? When I touch a sacred flame to the surface of my earth and acorns fall in abundance the next fall, or I find butterflies and wildflowers exploding from the banks of a beaver pond, I remember that we must build this world with each other in mind. When things change, our differences make each other stronger. We need it all.
Change is on the horizon, and I intend to see a world with all of us there.
Hayah-no:nt'ik' (the end)
Article by Olivia Chase