Severity patterns of the 2021 Dixie Fire exemplify the need to increase low-severity fire treatments in California’s forests

Taylor, Alan H.; Harris, Lucas B.; Skinner, Carl N.

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ac7735

Cited by 17 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Fire behaviors in the Gila-Aldo Leopold Wilderness Complex in New Mexico and the Frank Church -River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho have been shown to be shaped by the presence or absence of prior wildfires (14). Evidence from the 2021 Dixie Fire, the largest single fire to date in California history at 3900 km 2 of burned areas, indicates strong controls on undesirable fire from past fires that had burned within its footprint (12). Additional regional studies have shown evidence for the legacy effect of disturbance processes, including the use of wildfire and prescribed fire, on enhancing fire resilience, under moderate fire weather conditions (15)(16)(17); however, these studies have been limited to specific geographic subregions and small numbers of wildfires and have not quantified the magnitude and duration of the protective effect of such fire.…”

Section: Fighting Fire With Firementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The consensus on how to address the growing societal impacts of wildfire focuses on fuel treatments with mechanical thinning, prescribed fire, and managed wildfire as principal components ( 9 , 10 ). Legal, operational, and cost constraints limit the applicability of mechanical thinning treatments to specific contexts while approaches involving the reintroduction of fire to landscapes may have wider applicability ( 12 ). However, despite the preeminent role of prescribed and low-intensity fire in current wildfire management policy and planning, their beneficial effects on limiting the likelihood of future high-intensity fires have only been demonstrated in a small number of studies with a highly localized focus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This assumption has support in the literature: For example, Taylor et al . ( 12 ) find that low-severity wildfires and prescribed fires have similar effects in reducing surface fuels, modifying the age structure of a forest, and maintaining separation of the tree canopy from fires with low flame lengths that remain close to the ground and thus create similar beneficial ecological and fuel treatment effects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Low-intensity fires mitigate the risk of high-intensity wildfires in California’s forests

Wu,

Sverdrup,

Mastrandrea

et al. 2023

Sci. Adv.

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The increasing frequency of severe wildfires demands a shift in landscape management to mitigate their consequences. The role of managed, low-intensity fire as a driver of beneficial fuel treatment in fire-adapted ecosystems has drawn interest in both scientific and policy venues. Using a synthetic control approach to analyze 20 years of satellite-based fire activity data across 124,186 square kilometers of forests in California, we provide evidence that low-intensity fires substantially reduce the risk of future high-intensity fires. In conifer forests, the risk of high-intensity fire is reduced by 64.0% [95% confidence interval (CI): 41.2 to 77.9%] in areas recently burned at low intensity relative to comparable unburned areas, and protective effects last for at least 6 years (lower bound of one-sided 95% CI: 6 years). These findings support a policy transition from fire suppression to restoration, through increased use of prescribed fire, cultural burning, and managed wildfire, of a presuppression and precolonial fire regime in California.

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Section: Fighting Fire With Firementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Low-intensity fires mitigate the risk of high-intensity wildfires in California’s forests

Wu,

Sverdrup,

Mastrandrea

et al. 2023

Sci. Adv.

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“…Severe fires can also reduce the susceptibility of forests to severe insect outbreaks for ~100 years (Kulakowski et al, 2012) and in some cases can reduce future fire severity even when fire weather conditions are extreme (Cansler et al, 2022; Stevens‐Rumann et al, 2016). Severely burned forests can reburn at high severity (Taylor et al, 2022; Thompson et al, 2007); however, burned areas that were salvage logged and planted with conifer seedlings experienced more severe reburns than burned areas that were left untreated (Thompson et al, 2007). In other words, natural forests have built‐in resilience and adaptation capacities following many disturbances.…”

Section: The Benefits Of Natural Recoverymentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of natural forest stewardship in adaptation planning in the United States

Faison¹,

Masino

Moomaw

2023

Conservat Sci and Prac

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Forests are critical to the planetary operational system and evolved without human management for millions of years in North America. Actively managing forests to help them adapt to a changing climate and disturbance regime has become a major focus in the United States. Aside from a subset of forests wherein wood production, human safety, and experimental research are primary goals, we argue that expensive management interventions are often unnecessary, have uncertain benefits, or are detrimental to many forest attributes such as resilience, carbon accumulation, structural complexity, and genetic and biological diversity. Natural forests (i.e., those protected and largely free from human management) tend to develop greater complexity, carbon storage, and tree diversity over time than forests that are actively managed; and natural forests often become less susceptible to future insect attacks and fire following these disturbances. Natural forest stewardship is therefore a critical and cost effective strategy in forest climate adaptation.

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“…In such areas, communitybased collaborations can still address wildfire-caused carbon loss by building social adaptive capacity for managed wildfire and tree planting. Managing wildfire for resource benefit under moderate weather conditions can reduce the severity of subsequent wildfires [26][27][28][110][111][112][113], which mitigates future carbon loss and supports carbon recovery. Following wildfire, planting trees at resilient densities [107] in burn areas where wildfire and climate interactions reduce natural tree regeneration also supports carbon recovery.…”

Section: What Are Potential Next Steps For Areas Not Identified As Op...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying opportunity hot spots for reducing the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss in western US conifer forests

Peeler,

McCauley,

Metlen

et al. 2023

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The escalating climate and wildfire crises have generated worldwide interest in using proactive forest management (e.g. forest thinning, prescribed fire, cultural burning) to mitigate the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss in forests. To estimate the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss in western United States (US) conifer forests, we used a generalizable framework to evaluate interactions among wildfire hazard and carbon exposure and vulnerability. By evaluating where high social adaptive capacity for proactive forest management overlaps with carbon most vulnerable to wildfire-caused carbon loss, we identified opportunity hot spots for reducing the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss. We found that relative to their total forest area, California, New Mexico, and Arizona contained the greatest proportion of carbon highly vulnerable to wildfire-caused loss. We also observed widespread opportunities in the western US for using proactive forest management to reduce the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss, with many areas containing opportunities for simultaneously mitigating the greatest risk from wildfire to carbon and human communities. Finally, we highlighted collaborative and equitable processes that provide pathways to achieving timely climate- and wildfire-mitigation goals at opportunity hot spots.

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Severity patterns of the 2021 Dixie Fire exemplify the need to increase low-severity fire treatments in California’s forests

Cited by 17 publications

References 19 publications

Low-intensity fires mitigate the risk of high-intensity wildfires in California’s forests

Low-intensity fires mitigate the risk of high-intensity wildfires in California’s forests

The importance of natural forest stewardship in adaptation planning in the United States

Identifying opportunity hot spots for reducing the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss in western US conifer forests

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