'Figure 2.— A dense piny on- juniper comrmnity after a clean bvam. Conditions the day of 



this hum added to the simple score of 126. 



Evaluation of Fire Success 



The degree of success of each burn varied considerably in the 30 burning attempts 

 (table 1). Objective rating of burn success is difficult in these highly volatile 

 pinyon- juniper vegetation types; the consumption of fuel by the fire seems to be the 

 same whether the fire carries well or whether only the immediate ignition area burns. 

 For this reason, the success rating falls into three simple categories: (1) after the 

 ignition area is lit, the fire carries by itself, burning the area clean, with only 

 some retorching necessary; (2) the ignition area needs to be continually lit during the 

 entire burn period and some unburned islands occur; (3) the fire does not carry beyond 

 the ignition area. 



RESULTS 



Pinyon-Juniper Communities 



When discussing prescribed fire it is important to categorize the various pinyon- 

 juniper communities. Blackburn and Tueller (1970) describe five general communities 

 of pinyon- juniper and give a species cover percentage for each named community. By 

 adding a range of percent tree cover to those named communities, the following divisions 

 were made: 0-2 percent open, 2-9 percent dispersed, 9-23 percent scattered, 23-35 per- 

 cent dense, and 35+ percent closed. 



3 



