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Leesa Love: Welcome to Open Invitation, a podcast in which we invite students and faculty from across the University of Idaho to discuss all things open access. I'm Leesa Love, the Open Publishing Librarian here at U of I.

In this inaugural season, I and some of my fellow librarians will be talking with three recent award recipients of the University's Open Access Publishing Fund or OAPF. For those who are unaware, this limited fund is run by the Library and Issues Awards to eligible faculty, staff, and students for articles published in fully open access journals. For more information on the fund, including eligibility requirements, you can visit lib.uidaho.edu/open/oapf.

Joining me as co-host on this episode is my colleague Jeremy Kenyon, professor, research librarian, and unit head for research and experiential learning here at U of I library. Jeremy is also the liaison to the College of Natural Resources.

Together we'll be talking to first time OAPF applicant Grace Peven about her article "Montane Springs Provide Regeneration Refugia After High-severity Wildfire," published September of 2024 in the journal Ecosphere.

Prior to beginning her PhD, Grace has held many positions throughout the region, including working with the Payette National Forest on Hydrology and Forestry projects, conducting stream surveys in Eastern Oregon, mapping suitable beaver habitats in Washington State, and working as an environmental consultant for agencies like NOAA and the International Sea Bed Authority.

Her education and work experience have given her a well-rounded understanding of the region's waterscapes and the role humans play in shaping them.

Today we're here to talk about your article that was recently partially funded by the OAPF. Montane Springs Provide Regeneration Refugia After High-Severity Wildfire. All words that I'm not super familiar with, so I'm excited to talk to you about this.

For context, the following interview was recorded in summer of 2025.

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So I guess we'll start with something simple. Can you tell us a little about your background and what led you to this field?

Grace Peven: Yeah, so I grew up in Wenatchee in central Washington around a lot of rivers and cool places to explore. My parents were rafting guides earlier on in life, and they took us rafting. We were fortunate enough to grow up whitewater rafting and exploring rivers in Idaho and Oregon and Washington. And I think that really got into my bones of wanting to study water and being really fascinated with these wild watersheds and wild places and understanding how rivers flow.

And especially on these multi-day rafting trips, something that I really enjoyed as a kid was finding these small tributary streams and just crawling up the streams and exploring what was around every bend and seeing all the little fish and insects and whatnot and plants in the stream.

So I think that led to an interest in trying to understand how water supports ecosystems and shapes ecosystems and places. And so that led me to study geography and GIS at Western Washington University for my undergrad with a focus on a spatial analysis of watersheds in Washington.

And I worked for a bit after my undergrad and then decided that I wanted to keep exploring hydrology and water resources. So I was looking into grad programs to study hydrology and I found a cool project happening out at Taylor Ranch in Central Idaho, University of Idaho owns Taylor Ranch, studying springs and mapping springs and trying to inventory the springs out in this area. So I thought that sounded like a really interesting project and something that aligned with my interest. So that's where I'm at today.

Leesa: Yeah, that's awesome. I'm originally from Florida, I just moved here recently. So this is my first experience in the Western half of the United States. So like I can definitely see where you'd get so much inspiration from that because it's so beautiful here and so unique. Like it feels so different than what I'm used to over in the other corner.

So what about this particular research topic, what inspired you about that?

Grace: So I didn't come to grad school with the intention to study wildfire. I always put myself more in the water camp and so this just happened from an observation I made in the field. I was starting my research project out at Taylor Ranch and I was hiking to map springs because the first step is just understanding where they are on the landscape.

And so, hiking around, mapping springs and this is a place that burned very high severity about 25 years ago. And I noticed that these places that used to be full of trees, fully forested, there was just no regeneration and forest recovery happening even 25 years after a fire, and I thought that was pretty interesting.

And I noticed at some of the springs that there was actually a lot of forest regeneration occurring and small trees growing just around the springs. And so I started to wonder whether anyone had looked into this. What the intersection between springs and forest recovery was and whether springs kind of act as these focal points for regeneration because of their, they have more water compared to the surrounding landscape, especially in the landscape that I was studying that's quite dry and dry and hot in the summer months especially.

And so after reading and looking into this, no one to my knowledge has asked this question before whether springs are focal points for regeneration and there's more trees that are regenerating after fire around springs.

Jeremy Kenyon: I think in your article you mentioned that maybe 50% of springs are unmapped. Could you talk a little bit about why that might be? And obviously I guess then, the implication of that.

Grace: Absolutely. Yeah, it's estimated that over 50% of springs are unmapped in the Western US. And from what I've experienced in the field that might be an underestimation of how many springs are unmapped out there.

And springs can be really cryptic on the landscape. They’re often small points where there's increased soil moisture, sometimes seepy, maybe a spot that's just a little bit muddy. That's considered a spring because it's where the groundwater reaches the earth's surface and flows, and so they can be tricky to see. Especially, it's a little bit easier,

And what was cool about this study in my study location is that it had burned a lot and, so it was easier actually to see the springs when there wasn't a lot of forest cover in vegetation. And so I could see a point on the landscape either looking at satellite imagery, Google Earth, or just hiking around. I could see, okay, that spot is really green. There must be a little water there because there's more plants growing.

And so in forested watersheds, especially in forested landscapes, it's really hard to see springs because they might be in the middle of a forest. And they're just not noticed because of their size. And they also, they've just been underprotected and not really seen as important, an important ecosystem or really seen as an ecosystem at all. So they've just been, they're kind of the underdog of the landscape.

Leesa: Interesting.

Jeremy: So for listeners who are unfamiliar with the concept of forest regeneration, can you explain the transition from forest to non-forest and its effects on the environment?

Grace: Yeah. So forests are really important. They provide a number of ecosystem services, which are just any positive benefit from an ecosystem or a place to wildlife or people. And they filter air, they filter water, they create cooler, sometimes more humid micro-climates, and they also provide habitat and shelter for wildlife. And so there's just a number of things that the landscape and the ecosystem around them have evolved to expect with a forested place.

So when a wildfire comes through, especially at high severity, which is when most of the trees and a forest die after a wildfire, there's this transition. And this is normal, disturbance is a natural part of our landscape. But disturbance, historically, wildfire disturbance, historically has occurred not as at high frequency as it is now. It's occurring at higher frequency, higher severity, and more, and more areas burning at that high severity.

And so what happens when a fire comes through at high severity and doesn't leave many surviving trees is that there's no seed source for regeneration to occur. And so there's these early, what's called early successional plants. So like fireweed and Ceanothus shrubs, grasses, things like that. That's normal to see that growth immediately after a fire.

And then eventually if there are seed sources around, they'll be trees reestablishing. But when there's not a seed source around like in a high severity wildfire, then there's really no way for the forest to recover again.

So refugia are places where species or communities can survive through unfavorable conditions. And they're different from the surrounding landscape because maybe in the context of a fire, there could be fire refugia, for example. And so those are places that don't burn or they burn at lower severity compared to the surrounding landscape. So it's this refuge oasis. That's why it's called refugia.

So it's this place that species can survive through these disturbances like drought, wildfire, climate change. There's different types of refugia. And refugia is different for different types of species as well, they require different conditions to survive.

So regeneration refugia aren't necessarily places that remain unburned or burn at lower severity. Like the springs in my study, they seem to burn just as much as the surrounding landscape.

But regeneration refugia is that there's suitable micro site conditions and suitable conditions to facilitate regeneration of trees after fire.

So in the context of springs, there's greater soil moisture and they often, that often leads to increased plant growth, which then builds off of itself and creates even cooler, shadier micro climates.

And that's something that's really important for conifer species like Douglas fir and Ponderosa Pine that we have here in Idaho. They need wet and cool places, especially early on when they're seedlings and just germinating and growing. They're very fragile and sensitive, so they need these favorable conditions.

And often there'll be pulses of regeneration if it's a really wet spring or a wet summer, thinking about that regional climate and regional weather conditions more. But these micro site conditions can be, can provide this suitable habitat as well.

And so springs are an example and something I investigated as part of this study to ask whether they were regeneration refugia or not because they do provide those favorable site conditions that could be inducible to forest regeneration.

Jeremy: So what would, do you say is the most challenging aspect of this research?

Grace: I think just getting to the springs physically. It's a really steep and rugged place to do research. It's very mountainous. It's in the middle of the Frank Church wilderness. It's difficult to access, and so it's just physically exhausting to find the springs.

And I can look on a map and say, okay, that looks like a spring. That's very green right there. But then it's easier to look at a map and see that. But then actually navigating to that place is pretty challenging.

So I would say just getting a large enough sample size to be able to conduct this study was challenging. It was really fun. And I got to do a lot of hiking and backpacking to get to these sites. So I think that that was a big challenge of the study.

And another challenge I would say that I think is common in field research in general is being able to design your sampling effort and monitoring effort in a way that leads to interpretable statistical analysis and setting up your study.

So it's an easy transition into then analyzing that data. And that can be tricky when you're in the field, something you might see a way to collect this data that's more efficient and makes more sense in the context of that particular site.

But then when you get behind the computer, it can be a little more challenging to be like, oh, if I had collected it this way, I could just do this really simple analysis. But that just wasn't, you know, what happened in the field. And so that leads to more challenges and creativity to analyze the data.

Jeremy: I guess two questions there. One is kind of how long does it take to go out and sort of collect that data, typically?

Grace: Yeah, it depends where the spring is. I would base out of Taylor Ranch, and so I would stay there typically. I wouldn't camp out in the field.

And so at each day I would go in and out from Taylor. And, you know, there are some springs that it would take five hours to hike to, six hours to hike to one spring. And these surveys, once I got to the spring, would probably take a couple hours per spring. And then at that point, it's like, it's time to head back to the ranch for the day.

So it was really variable depending on where these springs were. And there were a few times that I had to, they were long enough distances away where I had to backpack out there and camp and be able to sample multiple springs in a day.

Jeremy: Was this your first time collecting data like this? So were you kind of going out there and doing this for the first time? Or had you done this kind of thing before?

Grace: I had done something similar. I had a seasonal position with the Forest Service and Forest Service in McCall as a silviculture technician. And we would go out to different places around the forest and do forestry plots.

And so we would age trees using a borer, which is what I did in this study. We would also count the density of seedlings. We would collect the height and the diameter of the trees too. So I had some forestry experience collecting data like this.

And what if anything surprised you about this project?

I think it made a lot of sense that there were more trees around springs. So the result, I think the major results didn't surprise me that much, but they, that just hadn't been quantified before and really this hard physical evidence hadn't been collected to prove that.

So the major results of the study weren't necessarily super surprising, but I would say that I had several, I think it had seven different springs in my study that had burned twice in the last 20 years. And more and more research is coming out that fire frequency is increasing. And that's leading to less surviving seed sources, less regeneration. The ecosystem doesn't have time to recover. And so that's leading to less regeneration in general.

And so I was kind of expecting at these sites that burned twice that there might not be, there might be lower density of trees and there might be different patterns occurring, but that wasn't the case. There's still a higher density closer to springs. There's still regeneration occurring.

And I think my sample size wasn't large enough to really make a big conclusion about that. And so I think there needs to be more research to look at, to look at reburns and look at, maybe there was one surviving seed source nearby that between the two fires that was enough to keep regenerating.

Leesa: Yeah, and I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but while reading it, I think you said something about the annual precipitation levels, not being as much of a factor. And I feel like I was really surprised by that because you'd think that, like, well, one year you have more moisture, that that would have more of an effect.

Grace: Yeah, that was also surprising too, because there is a lot of research that does show in years with greater precipitation or cooler spring, summer temperatures that that's going to be more inducive to regeneration.

And I think that was probably because I was using modeled climate data. It could have been the model data that I was using. It could have been how I modeled the data. And then also what I did with that is I looked at cumulative precipitation over five years, post-fire.

And I could have played around with maybe different time periods that maybe it's just the first year, maybe it's a couple years. Typically, that's what similar studies have done. Starting at five years of cumulative precipitation. But it just didn't, yeah, in this particular fire, in this particular case, it didn't have a large effect on my study.

Leesa: Interesting.

Jeremy: Can you talk a little bit more about the effects of this study and further research and what effects that could have on the reforestation efforts?

Grace: Yeah, so because we're seeing an increase in high severity, fire, and less regeneration of forests after fire, there's a lot of effort to plant trees after fire.

And so with this study, understanding where those trees could have a higher success of survival is important for those on the ground decision-making management efforts to prioritize, okay, where should we think about planting? Where is going to have the greatest success of survival?

So I would say there's kind of a direct management implication of that. And I think also the first step is really mapping more springs and understanding where springs are occurring in a burned landscape and where we could prioritize planting after that.

Jeremy: Yeah, it seems like anytime anybody engages in a kind of receiving effort or a rehabilitation effort just having that basic information would be pretty critical.

Grace: Absolutely.

Leesa: For the average person Idaho or in the West generally, how are they going to be affected by what we're learning about regeneration and refugia?

Grace: Yeah, I would say similarly with the replanting efforts that are occurring more and more reseeding efforts after fire, I think having that information of where to plant and where we can recover the forests more and more.

I mean, again, forests provide really valuable ecosystem services, a lot of our drinking water, I think it's over, I've heard a statistic over 90% of our drinking water in the West is sourced from forested areas.

And so the risk of not having forests regenerate is pretty significant and could have negative impacts on people and the non-human world too. So I think adding this small amount of information to the science is, it could be beneficial for the replanting efforts.

Jeremy: So are you planning to continue going in this direction? What's next for you?

Grace: Well my PhD defense is next Friday, so that's immediately what’s next. Yeah, probably after this recording is released.

Leesa: Good luck

Grace: But yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I'm really interested by this research topic and I would love to continue digging into it. I think there's a lot more to study about springs and about springs and fire. So yeah, we'll see what's next. TBD.

Leesa: So why did you choose to publish via open access?

Grace: Yeah, I think publishing open access is really important to make a broader impact with your research. So more people are able to view that article that might not have a subscription to that particular journal or not, maybe not work for an institution that subscribes to that.

So it creates more visibility of your work, access, and then maybe policymakers or decision makers or on-the-ground managers could then see this research and be able to use that.

Jeremy: What was your experience going the open access versus traditional publishing if you've published in the traditional sense too?

Grace: Yeah, so it's expensive to publish open access. You know, it's more challenging because you can go the traditional route and if you don't have funding, yeah, that's open access may not be an option.

So it was really great that the library had this open access award, publishing award that made it possible for me to publish and it was really critical in being able to do that.

Leesa: Yeah, I think some people still have a little bit of a misunderstanding about open access publishing. People are still a little bit skeptical of it, so I think it's important to talk about how the process is generally the same.

Obviously the APCs are an issue and it's something that even us tackling, trying to find ways around it like with this fund and other approaches. But it's good to hear that the experience wasn't completely and totally different, right? Nothing scary or weird or less scholarly in any way.

Grace: Yeah, it's really the same exact process and you can often choose to after the fact, after your paper is published, you can then pay the article publishing fee to make it open access.

So it really doesn't change the peer review process or maybe who the reviewers are. It's really, it's been the exact same in my experience and I've done it both ways.

Leesa: What would you say to other scholars who are deciding whether or not to publish via open access?

Grace: I would say do it. I mean, I think it's just beneficial for their own research and hopefully for the broader impacts of that research.

Jeremy: Well, our last question, do you have anything about your research or your publishing experience that you'd like to share?

Grace: Yeah, I would just say, like, re-emphasizing, you know, going back to Springs, which I love talking about Springs.

So, yeah, really prioritizing the mapping of Springs and highlighting their ecological importance and not underestimating how these really small places on the landscape can have these really large scale impacts and potentially be the focal points of regeneration for an entire forest. I think I think that's really significant.

Leesa: And then I did actually just think of one other random question that might not have an answer to it, but I know the university has been talking a lot about more experiential learning opportunities and I wonder if you have a take on how more students might get involved in projects like this?

Grace: That's a good question. Yeah, I mean, I can speak to experiences at Taylor Ranch specifically since that's been my experience in what I know, but there's, there's summer internships out there for undergrads, so anyone can apply if you're an undergrad.

You don't have to be in the College of Natural Resources specifically and you have six to eight weeks at Taylor Ranch and you're getting ranch experience, but you're also taking on these small science projects and research projects that can be really beneficial and I've had some of these undergrad interns help me with my own research and hiking to springs.

So I think that's a really great opportunity that maybe not everyone knows about, every summer. That there's funding for that.

Leesa: I had heard about the projects going on at Taylor Ranch, but not that it was open to people not in the major, so that's pretty important information. Thank you for sharing.

And thank you for, you know, talking about your research with us and your experience. This has been a really nice talk.

Jeremy: Thank you.

Grace: Yeah, thanks for having me.

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Leesa: Thanks for tuning in to our first season of Open Invitation. Please check out the show notes for links to the articles we discussed as well as the open access publishing fund.

If you'd like to know more about U of I Library’s publishing support or have a question about open access you'd like us to answer on future episodes, fill out the contact form on our website.

See you at the library!

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