Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction

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.

Dendroecological studies of historical tree recruitment patterns suggest mixed‐severity fire effects are common in Douglas‐fir/western hemlock forests of the Pacific Northwest (PNW), USA, but empirical studies linking observed fire severity to tree regeneration response are needed to expand our understanding into the functional role of fire in this forest type.

The long-term eectiveness of dry-forest fuels treatments (restoration thinning andprescribed burning) depends, in part, on the pace at which trees regenerate and recruit into theoverstory. Knowledge of the factors that shape post-treatment regeneration and growth is limitedby the short timeframes and simple disturbance histories of past research.

Pacific Northwest USA oak woodlands and savannas are fire-resilient communities dependent on frequent, low-severity fire to maintain their structure and understory species diversity, and to prevent encroachment by fire-sensitive competitors.

Record-breaking fire seasons are becoming increasingly common worldwide, and large wildfires are having extraordinary impacts on people and property, despite years of investments to support social–ecological resilience to wildfires.

In this paper, we develop a systems dynamics model of a coupled human and natural fire-prone system to evaluate changes in wildfire response policy. A primary motivation is exploring the implications of expanding the pace and scale of using wildfires as a forest restoration tool.