[quoteI am guessing BOTH..... I have not seen a guvmint worker in the last 15 years that could safely make his/her way out of a wet paper bag.][/quote]



Excuse me, I work for the government here.

Well, there's more to the spiral story. I gave the coordinates to a buddy of mine that I used work with on satellite image analysis software. He immediately pointed out I obviously didn't look at the 1994 historical imagery. The spirals are faint and hard to see, but they definitely existed before the fire.

My new theory is that someone went out there with a single blade planter, putting some sort of grass seed into the ground, probably trying to improve forage for cattle. When the fire came through, it crept along the ground up to the spiral. The grass that was planted in the spirals burned hot and killed the sagebrush in the spiral, and you can see where it crowned in a few spots killing the sagebrush for a short distance as it passed through the spiral.

kevbert wrote:The spirals are faint and hard to see, but they definitely existed before the fire.

Most of the fire scars are there in the 1994 image, they are just very very faint. If you toggle back and forth from 2001 to 1994 it's easier to find them.

tcj wrote:Educated guess is these are prescribe fire blocks, possibly a study area comparing results of mowing vs burning vs mowing and burning of sagebrush.

I think tcj has it figured out pretty well, looks like Hart Mountain Refuge has been using prescribed burns for habitat restoration since the '80's. The Rock Creek area is being used currently for sagebrush and cheatgrass control experiments, here's a more recent shot taken close to the spirals:
which I found here: http://www.sagestep.org/locations/high- ... _burn.html