{"id":78137,"date":"2026-06-09T08:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T15:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=78137"},"modified":"2026-06-09T08:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T15:36:10","slug":"cactus-wildfire-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/cactus-wildfire-recovery\/","title":{"rendered":"One tiny cactus could be key to understanding post-wildfire recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Dragon Bravo and White Sage\u00a0fires roared through northern Arizona last summer, they\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0just destroy the Grand Canyon Lodge and hundreds of thousands of ponderosa pine trees. They also affected a humble yet ecologically important native succulent: the\u00a0paradine\u00a0plains cactus.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s\u00a0not a plant many Four Corners visitors are likely to notice. Shaped like a tiny green hedgehog, the\u00a0paradine\u00a0plains\u00a0cactus grows just an inch or two above the ground and could fit in the palm of your hand. In winter, when\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0cold and dry,\u00a0the entire plant often recedes underground, lying dormant until warmer and wetter conditions return.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When\u00a0<\/span>Clare Aslan<\/span><\/b>, an associate professor\u00a0in\u00a0NAU\u2019s School of Earth and Sustainability, heard the White Sage\u00a0Fire had spread across much of the plant\u2019s native range, she worried\u00a0the species\u00a0would suffer irreparable damage.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI knew some really high-severity burns had occurred right where these cacti grow,\u201d Aslan said. \u201cI went up there in October, right after the fire was 100%\u00a0contained. I saw that lots of them were very charred, but to my surprise, some areas were\u00a0totally black\u00a0except for these little green dots. It was\u00a0the cacti. I thought, \u2018How is this even possible?\u2019\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks to a grant from the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0Forest Service, Aslan is about to find out just how resilient these succulents can be.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the next three years, Aslan and assistant professor\u00a0<\/span>Sara\u00a0Souther<\/span><\/b>\u00a0will venture out to a series of White Sage Fire burn sites on Forest Service land and\u00a0monitor\u00a0the lifecycles of every\u00a0cactus they find. While\u00a0they\u2019ll\u00a0take note of cacti that were completely charred by the fire and cacti that\u00a0remain\u00a0completely green,\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0most interested in the plants that have burned outer spines but remain green in the center.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"woman<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re studying those most closely to find out whether they make it in the long term\u2014whether they regrow or not,\u201d Aslan said. \u201cWe\u2019ll\u00a0also track reproduction. Some plants look like\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0not reproducing this year, but\u00a0we\u2019ll\u00a0see if that changes in the future. If it does,\u00a0we\u2019ll\u00a0be able to see new baby plants appear.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Aslan said the work will help the Forest Service understand which fire-burned areas need restoration work and which are better left to regenerate on their own, allowing them to\u00a0allocate\u00a0taxpayer dollars more wisely.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey have to be careful with limited resources,\u201d Aslan said. \u201cIf we\u2019re seeing sites that are more resilient, that seem to be recovering just fine, they might skip restoration in those areas and save it for other sites that need it more.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the study\u2019s impact could extend far beyond succulents in the Southwest. About a quarter of the U.S. has been in a megadrought since the year 2000. Ecologists like Aslan have measured the effects on plants in a wide variety of biomes, from the coast to the desert\u2014and\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0worried.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a strong drought response\u00a0in\u00a0these plants,\u201d Aslan said. \u201cPlant diversity has taken a hit. There are fewer pollinators. A lot of the ecosystem is at its limit now; the plants\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0have many free resources. To add a big fire on top of that is incredibly damaging and could make it\u00a0really hard\u00a0for plants to recover.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet, as Aslan has seen, some plants do recover\u2014including some small succulents like the\u00a0paradine\u00a0plains cactus. If ecologists\u00a0can\u00a0monitor\u00a0plants across all fire-prone areas and track which species do and do not recover well without human intervention, governments can do a more effective, efficient job at preserving these environments in the future.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn lots of places, from California to Minnesota, we\u2019re getting bigger fires and more prolonged droughts,\u201d Aslan said. \u201cUnderstanding how our plant communities can make it through those kinds of shocks is a huge question in restoration. If we can\u00a0identify\u00a0sources of resilience, we could help improve resilience across\u00a0all\u00a0our ecosystems.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/span><\/p>\n


\nJill Kimball | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-2282 | jill.kimball@nau.edu<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the Dragon Bravo and White Sage\u00a0fires roared through northern Arizona last summer, they\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0just destroy the Grand Canyon Lodge and hundreds of thousands of ponderosa pine trees. They also affected a humble yet ecologically important native succulent: the\u00a0paradine\u00a0plains cactus.\u00a0 It\u2019s\u00a0not a plant many Four Corners visitors are likely to notice. Shaped like a tiny green…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":78139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78137"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78142,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78137\/revisions\/78142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}