Wildfire futures and aboveground carbon (C) dynamics associated with forest restoration programs that integrate resource objective wildfire as part of a larger treatment strategy are not well understood.
All wildfires in the United States are managed, but the strategies used to manage them vary by region and season. “Managed wildfire” is a response strategy to naturally ignited wildfires; it does not prioritize full suppression and allows the fire to fulfill its natural role on the landscape, meeting objectives such as firefighter safety, resource benefit, and community protection.
Methods and models to design, prioritize and evaluate fuel break networks have potential application in many fire-prone ecosystems where major increases in fuel management investments are planned in response to growing incidence of wildfires.
Historically, wildfire and tribal burning practices played important roles in shaping ecosystems throughout the Klamath Siskiyou Bioregion of northern California and southern Oregon.
An increasingly important goal of federal land managers in seasonally dry forests of the western US is restoring forest resilience. In this study, we quantified the degree to which a thinning treatment in a dry forest of eastern Oregon restored aspects of forest resilience by focusing on key functional attributes of our study system.
Fire suppression has become a fundamental approach for shaping contemporary wildfire regimes. However, a growing body of research suggests that aggressive fire suppression can increase high-intensity wildfires, creating the wildfire paradox. Whether the strategy always triggers the paradox remains a topic of ongoing debate.
Natural disturbances (wildfires, droughts, beetle outbreaks) shaped temperate forests for millennia, including dry forests of the western USA. Could they now best restore and adapt dry forests to climate change while protecting nearby communities?
Assessing the effectiveness and measuring the performance of fuel treatments and other wildfire risk mitigation efforts are challenging endeavors. Perhaps the most complicated is quantifying avoided impacts. In this study, we show how probabilistic counterfactual analysis can help with performance evaluation.
Yellow pine and mixed-conifer (YPMC) forests of California’s Sierra Nevada have experienced widespread fire suppression for over a century, resulting in ingrowth and densification of trees, heavy fuel accumulation, and shifts in species composition.