4th USGS WILDLAND FIRE
SCIENCE WORKSHOP
CALL FOR POSTERS
On December 6, the first evening of the workshop, there will be a reception and poster session. USGS is involved in a wide variety of fire science related projects and activities. If you are involved in fire science activities as a USGS employee, collaborator, or interested party, you are invited to share your work as a poster in the Tuesday evening poster session/reception so others can benefit and learn from your experience.
Poster Abstracts
Final poster abstracts are due
Please use a common text file format (preferably a Word
document), use Times New Roman 12-point font throughout, add bold font and caps
for the title, and follow the structure as presented in the following example:
EVALUATING POSTFIRE SEEDING TREATMENTS TO SUPPRESS
CHEATGRASS (Bromus tectorum) IN
Bridget Lair1, Matt Brooks2,
Curt Deuser3
1Ecologist, US Geological
Survey, Western Ecological Research Center, Las Vegas Field Station, 160 N.
Stephanie St. Henderson, NV, 89074. telephone:
702-564-4616; fax 702-564-4600; email: blair@usgs.gov
2 Research Botanist, US
Geological Survey, Western Ecological Research Center, Las Vegas Field Station,
160 N. Stephanie St. Henderson, NV, 89074. telephone:
702-564-4615; fax 702-564-4600; email: matt_brooks@usgs.gov (project contact)
3 Supervisory Restoration Biologist, National Park Service,
Abstract:
The interaction between fire and invasive plants is of great concern to land management agencies on the Colorado Plateau. Both prescribed fire and naturally occurring wildfire are increasingly resulting in a dominant understory of the invasive annual grass cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), which has the potential to create excessively short fire return intervals, and impede the establishment of later successional plant species. There is some evidence that where native perennial grasses such as the cool season grass bottlebrush squirreltail (Elymus elymoides) and the warm season grass blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) occur naturally after fire, cheatgrass dominance is low and diversity and cover of native perennial grasses, shrubs, and forbs is high. This suggests that native perennial grasses may be competing with and reducing the dominance of cheatgrass. We designed a project to evaluate effects of postfire seeding of bottlebrush squirreltail (3lbs /ac pls) and blue grama (2lbs/ac pls) on dominance by cheatgrass. The study area is located on the Shivwits Plateau on the western edge of the Colorado Plateau. NPS and BLM Fire Management personnel conducted a prescribed fire in a sagebrush meadow in October 2003 in an ongoing program to reintroduce fire into the ponderosa pine ecosystem. In November 2003, seeding, seeding plus raking, and unseeded controls were each randomly applied to 6 replicate treatment plots (n=18 total plots), each 25m x 50m (1,250m2). Immediate postfire vegetation and soil seed bank data were collected in fall 2003 to establish burn severity and baseline plant community data. Two years of post treatment data have been collected in spring of 2004 and 2005. Sampling will continue for an additional 2 years. The study site will also be maintained by the Lake Mead National Recreation Area as a demonstration site where the long-term effects of the seeding treatments can be observed and the information integrated back into the process of land management planning.
Your abstract will not be edited by us, so be sure to proofread your abstract and the accompanying personal information. Abstracts for accepted posters will be posted on the Workshop website and compiled in the permanent record of the conference that will be maintained by USGS. Also, final poster compositions will be requested after the conference (in .pdf or .ppt formats) for inclusion in the permanent record.
If you have questions or will require special arrangements, contact us at the email address above, or phone 208.387.1351.
Poster Set-up
The poster session will be from
Set up poster in
Take down poster by
Posters will be a paper product hung on 4’ X 8’ poster
boards in the
Presenters are welcome to bring additional handout materials to the conference for distribution.
If preferred, you can mail your materials to the Westward
Look Resort at
Poster session participants are encouraged to claim their products at the conclusion of the session. All posters not claimed will be discarded.
Poster Guidelines
The poster boards are 4 feet high by 8 feet wide and free standing. Posters should be designed for maximum impact on the audience. Your poster needs to readily impart the information you wish to convey to busy participants. Be concise, focusing on three or four main points. Provide further details in a handout if necessary.
Helpful guidelines for successful posters:
- No more than seven words in the title
- No more than 25 words in figure captions
- No more than 50 words of text in one place
- The smallest text on the poster should be at least one-quarter inch tall.
- Use an attention-getter near the title. It should be the element with the most visual impact of the entire poster. It may be a photo, a map, a drawing, a graph or a title that stops the passer-by.
- Keep the subject to no more than three or four points: do not crowd the critical information: create logical flow: include a title, introduction and conclusion, but do not label them so.
- Design your poster in panels or components of manageable size. The header panel should contain only the title, author information, introduction and attention getter.
- When doing your rough layout, carefully consider illustration choice and presentation. For example, don’t use one 8” X 10” close up photo and the rest 8” X 10” far off shots; the close-up will pull the viewer’s eye to its location on the poster, and away from the overall context.
- Mix drawings, photos, graphs, and texts to help prevent big blocks of text and make the poster more interesting.
- Use color sparingly to aid viewers and complement your poster. Use a unique color to draw attention to a point.