Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction

Wildfire is a keystone ecological process in many forests worldwide, but fire exclusion and suppression have driven profound shifts in forest structure (e.g., increased density, canopy cover, biomass) that have contributed to increases in large, high-severity fire in many seasonally dry forests and woodlands of the western United States.

  Indigenous communities in the Pacific West of North America have long depended on fire to steward their environments, and they are increasingly asserting the importance of cultural burning to achieve goals for ecological and social restoration. We synthesized literature regarding objectives and effects of cultural burning in this region within an ecosystem services framework.

Supporting wildfire management activities is frequently identified as a benefit of forestroads. As such, there is a growing body of research into forest road planning, construction, andmaintenance to improve fire surveillance, prevention, access, and control operations.

For over 20 years, forest fuel reduction has been the dominant management action in western US forests. These same actions have also been associated with the restoration of highly altered frequent-fire forests.

Recent fire seasons brought a new fire reality to the western US, and motivated federal agencies to explore scenarios for augmenting current fuel management and forest restoration in areas where fires might threatencritical resources and developed areas. To support this effort, we modeled the scheduling of an accelerated forest and fuel management scenario on 76 western US national forests.

Implementation of wildfire- and climate-adaptation strategies in seasonally dry forests of western North America is impeded by numerous constraints and uncertainties. After more than a century of resource and land use change, some question the need for proactive management, particularly given novel social, ecological, and climatic conditions.

1. Key to the long-term resilience of dryland ecosystems is the recovery of foundation plant species following disturbance. In ecosystems with high interannual weather variability, understanding the influence of short-term environmental conditions on establishment of foundation species is essential for identifying vulnerable landscapes and developing restoration strategies.

Landscape science relies on foundational concepts of landscape ecology and seeks to understand the physical, biological, and human components of ecosystems to support land management decision-making. Incorporating landscape science into land management decisions, however, remains challenging.

In 1994, a large-tree harvest standard known as the “21-inch rule” was appliedto land and resource management plans of national forests in eastern Oregon andWashington (hereafter, the “east side”) to halt the loss of large, old, live, and deadtrees and old forest patches.

Several recent studies have documented how fire severity affects the density and spatial patterns of tree regenerationin western North American ponderosa pine forests.