Official Web Site of the City of Phoenix

Below are photos from a prescribed burn for the south Hayfield demonstration wetlands cell was held on Saturday, January 13, 2007.

Reasons for Prescribed Burns

Prescribed burns for treatment wetlands provide critical vegetation management, which is required for efficient wetlands operation, as well as vector control. Prescribed burns help remove the dense, dead vegetation from the surface of the water, which serves to increase oxygen transfer to the living plants as well as remove habitat for mosquito breeding.

Benefits of a prescribed burn to vegetation management include:

• Provides important inputs (debris and litter) to the water body;
• Retains nutrients, sediments, and energy in the system; and
• Releases plant nutrients to the wetlands following the burn

Benefits of a prescribed burn to avian populations include:

• Makes new green shoots, roots, and rhizomes of grasses available to waterfowl;
• Exposes fallen seed for waterfowl;
• Makes wetlands suitable for ducks, muskrats, and nutria by eliminating sour marsh conditions of flooded and decomposed organic matter, and impenetrable growth of climax species of plants such as common reed, bulrush, saw grass, cord grass, and cattail, and promotes growth of seed-producing plants; and
• Creates deep pools and edges for nesting and feeding waterfowl.