Winter grazing decreases the probability of fire-induced mortality of bunchgrasses and may reduce wildfire size: a response to Smith et al.

A recent commentary by Smith et al. (2016) argues that our study (Davies et al. 2016) containedmethodological errors and lacked data necessary to support our conclusions, in particular that winter grazing may reducethe probability of fire-induced mortality of bunchgrasses. Carefully reading Davies et al. (2016) and relevant literatureprovides strong evidence that the comments of Smith et al. are unfounded. Most notably, Smith et al. (2016) state thatthermocouples placed in the air have no correlation to temperatures experienced by vegetation. However, in our study,thermocouples were placed inside the centre of meristematic crowns of bunchgrasses, as was clearly stated in the methods.Nowhere in the manuscript does it say that thermocouples were placed in the air. Duration of elevated temperatures hasbeen repeatedly linked to an increased risk of fire-induced mortality of vegetation in the literature, contrary to claims bySmith et al. (2016) that no evidence of a relationship exists. The conclusion that winter grazing may decrease the likelihoodof perennial bunchgrass mortality was not based solely on data collected in this experiment, but also Davies et al. (2009),where post-fire bunchgrass density and production in ungrazed areas were less than half those of grazed areas.