Sagebrush To Cheatgrass: Big Changes, Serious Consequences

Our high desert landscape may appear as enduring as the mountains themselves, but in fact there are big changes going on out here.

Experts say in a few decades we'll be looking at a much different rangeland and in one way or the other we may all feel the impact.

Each year wildfires leave some of this land scorched and lifeless, but even as it recovers the land will be changed.

And those changes are lasting and they are visible. You can see them in a number of places if you look. The lighter patches among the darker sagebrush? That's from a scar of a fire.

These scars track the history of wildfire in our area.

Two years ago the Washoe Drive fire marched down the hill to the very back door of Galena High School in south Reno. Today, the scar shows us just how far and how close it came.

The sage, bitterbrush, greasewood and native grasses that once grew here did not return.

In their place, an opportunistic exotic, native to Central Asia, known as cheatgrass.

It made its way here, probably before the turn of the last century in shipments of wheat.

On its own it has little chance of getting a start in a natural healthy landscape. It needs a helping hand. Something or someone disturbing the soil.

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Sagebrush To Cheatgrass: Big Changes, Serious Consequences