Fuels and Fuel Treatments

Mixed-conifer forests in the interior Pacific Northwest are subject to sporadic outbreaks of the western spruce budworm, the most destructive defoliator in western North America. Such outbreaks usually occur synchronously over broad regions and lead to widespread decreases in growth rates and low to moderate levels of mortality.

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.

National Forests in the dry forest provinces on the east-side of the Oregon and Washington Cascades have been managed under the guidelines of local Forest Plans and the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), both of which specify large areas of late-successional reserves (LSRs).

We used a combination of field measurements and simulation modelling to quantify the effects of salvage logging, and a combination of salvage logging and pile-and-burn fuel surface fuel treatment (treatment combination), on fuel loadings, fire behaviour, fuel consumption and pollutant emissions at three points in time: post-windstorm (before salvage logging), post-salvage logging and post-surfa

Fuel treatments have been widely used as a tool to reduce catastrophic wildland fire risks in many forests around the world. However, it is a challenging task for forest managers to prioritise where, when and how to implement fuel treatments across a large forest landscape. In this study, an optimisation model was developed for long-term fuel management decisions at a landscape scale.

White ash results from the complete combustion of surface fuels, making it a logically simple retrospective indicator of surface fuel consumption. However, the strength of this relationship has been neither tested nor adequately demonstrated with field measurements.

Increasing size and severity of wildfires have led to an interest in the effectiveness of forest fuels treatments on reducing fire severity and post-wildfire fuels. Our objective was to contrast stand structure and surface fuel loadings on treated and untreated sites within the 2002 Rodeo–Chediski Fire area.

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.

This guide describes the benefits, opportunities, and trade-offs concerning fuel treatments in the dry mixed conifer forests of northern California and the Klamath Mountains, Pacific Northwest Interior, northern and central Rocky Mountains, and Utah.