Using a Diverse Seed Mix to Establish Native Plants on a Sonoran Desert Burn

Revegetating burned areas is a formidable challenge facing resource managers in southwestern United States arid lands. Natural revegetation of desert burns by native species may be slow, or dominated by exotic annual grasses that perpetuate a frequent-fire regime. Resource managers may have several reasons for actively revegetating burns with native species, such as for providing competition with exotic species, minimizing soil erosion and dust pollution, and improving aesthetics. The use of native species in revegetation has been limited by a lack of available seed and by findings that native desert species are difficult to establish (e.g., Bainbridge and Virginia 1990, Banjerjee et al. 2006). Seeding may be one of only a few feasible options for reintroducing propagules to large desert burns covering thousands of hectares. Our objective was to assess the outcome of a 28-species (all native) operational seeding project for revegetating a 2005 burn in the Arizona Upland Subdivision of the Sonoran Desert