“…An ecological and management paradigm in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests of western North America is that historically recurrent surface fires maintained open forest stands dominated by large, old trees (Cooper, 1960;White, 1985;Covington and Moore, 1994;Arno et al, 1995;Fulé et al, 1997Fulé et al, , 2002Brown et al, 2001;Allen et al, 2002;Friederici, 2003). Surface burns strongly affected overstory recruitment by killing most seedlings and saplings before they had a chance to reach the canopy (Brown and Wu, 2005).…”