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Restoration goals in fire-prone conifer forests include mitigating fire hazard while restoring forest structural components linked to disturbance resilience and ecological function. Restoration of overstory spatial pattern in forests often falls…
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Determining whether forest landscapes can maintain their resilience to fire – that is, their ability to rebound and sustain – given rapid climate change and increasing fire activity is a pressing challenge throughout the American West. Many western…
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Climate change is causing increased wildfire activity across the western US and creating post-fire conditions that are warmer and drier than they were in the past. Scientists and managers are concerned with the potential for post-fire tree…
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Large wildfires (>50,000 ha) are becoming increasingly common in semi‐arid landscapes of the western United States. Although fuel reduction treatments are used to mitigate potential wildfire effects, they can be overwhelmed in wind‐driven…
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In the western United States, restoration of forests with historically frequent, low‐severity fire regimes often includes fuel reduction that reestablish open, early‐seral conditions while reducing fuel continuity and loading. Between 2001 and 2016…
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Prescribed burning is an effective method to reduce hazardous fuels and restore ecological conditions across a variety of ecosystems. Twenty-one states have laws or policies that direct state agencies to oversee formal training programs to certify…
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Background: Surface fuel loadings are some of the most important factors contributing to fire intensity and fire spread. In old-growth forests where fire has been long excluded, surface fuel loadings can be high and can include woody debris ≥100 cm…
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Fuel-reduction treatments have been used effectively in dry, fire-adapted forests to reduce risk of high-severity crown fire, but it is less certain if they achieve their ecosystem restoration objectives. To date, there has not been a comprehensive…
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To increase ecosystem resiliency, and achieve the desired future condition of stands with large tree retention and low fuel loads, federal agencies have actively implemented a large number of fuel reduction and forest restoration projects in low-…
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This project had three objectives. The first objective was to identify variation in discrimination of Δ13C and intrinsic water use efficiency (iWUE) in Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) tree rings from 1800 to 2012 at two Fire and Fire Surrogate…
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In response to increasing wildfire severity and extent across the dry forests of the western United States in the last several decades, federal policy initiatives have encouraged joint vegetation management and fuels treatments to restore ecosystem…
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The prevailing paradigm in the western U.S. is that the increase in stand-replacing wildfires in historically frequent-fire dry forests is due to unnatural fuel loads that have resulted from management activities including fire suppression, logging…
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The implementation of US federal forest restoration programs on national forests is a complex process that requires balancing diverse socioecological goals with project economics. Despite both the large geographic scope and substantial investments…
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Mixed conifer forests of western North America are challenging for fire management, as historical fire regimes were highly variable in severity, timing, and spatial extent. Complex fire histories combined with site factors and other disturbances,…
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Forests that historically burned in mixed-severity fire regimes prove difficult to manage, especially when they border homes and prized recreation areas. This management challenge was the focus of the Fuels Reduction and Restoration in Mixed-Conifer…
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The scientific basis for restoration of fire-excluded western larch/mixed-conifer forests is not as well developed as that for dry fire-frequent forests. We compared the effects of wildfire and restoration (combined thinning and prescribed fire) in…
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Mick Harrington and Steve Arno, retired research foresters with the USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station, took participants of the May 2014 Large Wildland Fires Conference through a 300-year-old stand of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and western…
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Terrie Jain, Russell Graham, Andrew Hudak, and Bill Elliot with the United States Forest Service’s (USFS) Rocky Mountain Research Station, led a tour of fuels treatments in mostly moist mixed-conifer forests in the Priest River Experimental Forest (…
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Large areas of federal lands in the western states are currently at high risk of severe wildfire and have many insect and disease problems, indicating a significant decline in forest health and resilience. Although research studies have not been…
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Stand-level spatial pattern influences key aspects of resilience and ecosystem function such as disturbance behavior, regeneration, snow retention, and habitat quality in frequent-fire pine and mixed-conifer forests. Reference sites, from both pre-…
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