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Among the first plants to reestablish in burned areas are Redshank, Silvergreen, and Cord Moss, also known as the “fire mosses.” Researchers at Northern Arizona University studied burn scars on the Colorado Plateau to see how quickly these special, plushy pads of green cover the landscape after a wildfire. They found fire mosses favor north-facing slopes and cool conifer forests. Moss-covered sites had double the resistance to erosion and almost twice as much capacity to soak up rain compared to places where moss didn’t grow.
Could ecologists harness the power of moss to restore a burned site? Ecologist Henry Grover says that’s a question his research team would like to answer. He’s experimented with seeding mosses on a fire scar on Kendrick Peak north of Flagstaff. At first, ants carried the moss away before it could spread. So he turned to an ancient reseeding technique: coating a bit of moss in clay to make a pellet that dissolves in the rain.