When Emily Fairfax became assistant professor at Cal State Channel Islands, I knew the beaver world was in for a treat. But I couldn’t have possibly guessed how much of one. Emily and beavers are the subject of a glossy new pair of articles in Ojai & Ventura Co Edible, and she just published her fire research in the journal of Ecological Applications. I can’t decide which one to write about first, but I’ll just give a preview.

Smokey the Beaver: beaver‐dammed riparian corridors stay green during wildfire throughout the western USA

The articleS in Edible are a two fold, one is a slam dunk look at whether beavers belong in Ventura county (they do) with a fantastic discussion with Rick Lanman and look at our research lovingly written by Leslie Baehr. The other is a walk and talk with Emily about the good things beaver dams bring. Well save the first one for another day.

Tour a Stream with a Beaver Expert

Emily Fairfax, PhD., is an ecohydrologist and assistant professor of environmental science and resource management at CSU Channel Islands. Emily researches how beavers, which are native to California, change waterways and riparian ecosystems. In particular, she studies how beaver damming makes drought and fire resistant patches in the landscape. Her students and colleagues can affirm that when Emily says she can talk about beavers for hours, she’s not kidding.

Click twice on the image to see it larger.

STREAMS WITHOUT BEAVER are mostly characterized by what you don’t see. They tend to be a single straight and deep channel that doesn’t meander much through the landscape. As a result, the water does not spread throughout the landscape and the vegetation tends to be a lot smaller, scrubbier, and drier. There is also a lack of wildlife.

Oh my goodness Emily, who do I thank at the Channel Islands for hiring you? You could have ended up in Wisconsin or Colorado and we are soooo grateful for you being in California!

Contrary to popular depiction, a healthy riparian ecosystem often looks less like a stream and more like a wetland. One of the first things you will notice about STREAMS WITH BEAVER is how green they are. Vegetation tends to be healthier, bigger, and more abundant. Vegetation also stays greener further into the dry season. In fact, vegetation in some of the local beaver areas I study has become even greener into the dry season.

The heavy ponds also push water into the ground, recharging our aquifers. This groundwater is then released to the surface when pond-levels are low, buffering drought and creating year-round stream flow.

Locally, in the Los Padres where I study, we see dams between one and three feet tall and maybe 20 to 50 yards long, which is not that big for a beaver dam.

Lucky, lucky beavers in Los Padres. And lucky, lucky people that get a chance to learn from her.

Beaver habitat is characterized by abundant wildlife. Birds, insects, and frogs all thrive here and larger mammals may use the ponds as a watering hole.

Many researchers are particularly interested in the habitat’s effect on fish like salmon and our endangered steelhead who are born in streams, live their lives in the sea, and migrate back to the stream to reproduce. The beaver ponds provide slow-water rest areas for fish swimming upstream, abundant food for the young swimming downstream, and deep water protection from predators for both. This results in increased fish numbers and size.

Oh my goodness. I’m officially hiring you as the new beaver publicist of the golden state. It’s so nice to think someone will take over for me when I retire.

It’s not just wildlife that benefit. Beaver make for great ranching buddies since they create watering holes for cattle and healthier grazing pasture. An ecosystem that captures water can act as a natural fire break with fires fizzling out when they encounter the wetlands.

You might also find humans in this verdant ecosystem. In many areas, such as wine country, beavers attract tourism.

Okay I’m sold. Where do I sign up? Check out Emily’s new article complete with some very good reasons for California to befriend beaver.

Abstract

Beaver dams are gaining popularity as a low‐tech, low‐cost strategy to build climate resiliency at the landscape scale. They slow and store water that can be accessed by riparian vegetation during dry periods, effectively protecting riparian ecosystems from droughts. Whether or not this protection extends to wildfire has been discussed anecdotally but has not been examined in a scientific context. We used remotely sensed Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data to compare riparian vegetation greenness in areas with and without beaver damming during wildfire. We include data from five large wildfires of varying burn severity and dominant landcover settings in the western USA in our analysis. We found that beaver‐dammed riparian corridors are relatively unaffected by wildfire when compared to similar riparian corridors without beaver damming. On average, the decrease in NDVI during fire in areas without beaver is 3.05 times as large as it is in areas with beaver. However, plant greenness rebounded in the year after wildfire regardless of beaver activity. Thus, we conclude that while beaver activity does not necessarily play a role in riparian vegetation post‐fire resilience, it does play a significant role in riparian vegetation fire resistance and refugia creation.

I’ll post the full article or your perusal but here’s the whopping conclusion and my favorite part:

As it stands today, wetland habitat is very limited and beavers can create and
maintain wetland habitat that persists through flood, drought, and as we have shown in this study – fire. This has immediate relevance to scientists and practitioners across the North America and Eurasia – particularly in places with increasing wildfire risk and existing or planned beaver populations. Perhaps instead of relying solely on human engineering and management to create and maintain fire-resistant landscape patches, we could benefit from beaver’s ecosystem engineering to achieve the same goals at a lower cost.

And scene! Emily is our hero. I believe she can do anything. Here’s the famed researcher gamely trying out Bob Rust’s junior beavercycle at a certain beaver festival.

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Go read the whole thing. And share if you share any friends with the Governor.

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