Researchers Aim to Improve Forest Resiliency to Future Wildfires

Press release from the Department of the Interior:

new green plants against a burnt landscape

A patch of bright green corn lilies glow in the sunlight amid an otherwise barren forest floor and blackened trees stretching toward a blue sky. The lilies indicate the presence of shallow groundwater in a post-fire monitoring plot in the Mendocino National Forest after a large wildfire. [Photo by Ryan P. Mikulovsky, USFS.]

Large, severe wildfires have become the norm in much of the country, including in seasonally dry forests across the interior of the western United States. Most of the tree stands are adapted only to low-intensity fires. Extreme wildfires can kill them and result in long-term changes to the ecosystem.

For example, in the last few years, nearly 88 percent of the Mendocino National Forest in the Coastal Mountain Range of northwestern California has burned. The damage was caused by the Mendocino Complex in 2018 and the August Complex in 2020. Together, these wildfires burned over 1.4 million acres.

After a fire passes, woody debris from dead and damaged trees can build up. It can exacerbate the severity of future wildfires and impede natural forest recovery. Restoration efforts can help native vegetation and tree stands return to the affected area while reducing woody debris accumulation that could fuel the next wildfire.

Current mapping tools and models for forest data, however, lack the resolution necessary to design site-specific restoration treatments following large-scale wildfires.

Morris C. Johnson with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service developed a study to help fire and forest managers restore healthy tree stands after a large wildfire. Johnson submitted the proposal to the Joint Fire Science Program, which invests in important research to help land managers with decision making. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided additional funding for the program, some of which is being invested in Johnson’s proposal.

Johnson and his team at the Forest Service’s Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory in Seattle will establish a network of long-term monitoring plots within the footprint of the Mendocino Complex and August Complex. They will use the plots to monitor post-fire tree stands, including their structural condition, accumulation of dead wood, seedling survival, and shrub regeneration.

two researchers with backpacks and gear walking in burnt forest

Forest Service researchers study post-fire monitoring plots in the Mendocino National Forest. Two researchers carrying equipment walk across a small clearing where green foliage is returning to shrubs while blackened trees rise toward a blue sky. [Photo by Morris C. Johnson, USFS.]

Through field measurements and statistical modeling, they will assess current conditions. They will also use a simulator that creates computer models to predict long-term snag and woody fuel dynamics. In close collaboration with forest managers at the Shasta Trinity and Mendocino national forests, they will develop maps of current conditions and departures from desired conditions.This project will help forest and fire managers plan post-fire interventions to steer the landscape toward desirable conditions. It will identify areas that need management intervention and inform reforestation strategies to improve the resilience of the forest to wildfires. By fostering a healthy ecosystem, this project will help establish forest conditions that can withstand or recover from disturbances caused by climate change, wildfires, pests, and other pressures.

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Trashman
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Trashman
1 year ago

Sawmills? Cogen and biomass?

THC
Guest
THC
1 year ago
Reply to  Trashman

In our local region biomass would be an excellent idea, could even subsidize landowners to clear their property and burn the resulting biomass for electricity. There would be a lot less pollutants with the smoke going through scrubbers like they use in Coal plants, compared to just being burned off in wildfires or brush piles.

Volunteer Fire Fighter
Guest
Volunteer Fire Fighter
1 year ago

Spend more on forest recovery and fire rehab now or spend twice as much on fighting fires later. Forest rehab will create jobs and help the economy also. Win win.

Canyon oak
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Canyon oak
1 year ago

What’s to research?
Just hand it over to the coyote valley casino tribe, they’ve been managing the landscape with scientific acumen since time immemorial.

Susan Nolan
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Susan Nolan
1 year ago

Both those photos show dense young fir trees. If fire came through those places more often, the young firs would be thinned out. The Douglas fir grows in fire-prone areas and is adapted to fire. It makes lots and lots of babies so enough will sruvive. Without fire, this life plan goes haywire, producing way too much fuel, and becoming a hazard instead of a useful strategy.
Nature left to its own devices, traditional cultural burning, or prescribed burns all do the same job. Fire suppression leads to bigger, hotter, more destructive fires.

Tim
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Tim
1 year ago
Reply to  Susan Nolan

That’s a rather large over-simplification of Douglas-fir’s relationship to fire. It isn’t what is usually considered a fire-adapted species compared to Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine or even ponderosa pine.
Douglas-fir tends to exist in mixed-severity fire regimes with a complex of other species. In some areas, like the Bald Hills, fire is used to exclude Douglas-fir because without fire they’ll begin to take over oak woodlands and outcompete the oaks and grasses.
In other areas, once they get large enough to develop a fairly thick bark and tall enough that the crown is above the most heat, they can survive low-moderate fires. But even some of these fires can kill larger Douglas-fir as you can see in the Long Prairie area of Humboldt Redwoods State Park, which did not have a thick undergrowth of young fir when it burned over the last decade. Partly because Douglas-fir is kind of mediocre as self-pruning its lower branches to can provide ladder fuel that allows fire to get to the crown, hence torching is a common occurrence.
So in a nutshell, it’s a bit more complicated than you make it out to be. If as you propose, the fires came through more often, you wouldn’t have Douglas-fir in there because the fires would keep killing off all the young-medium Douglas-fir. Other species would dominate instead.

THC
Guest
THC
1 year ago

So you’re trying to say that managing our Woodlands may result in fewer intense fires? who could have imagined that.. I could have swore I heard that from somebody a few years back whom got mocked and ridiculed for it… It really is a good thing we spend hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars paying people to study and think about common sense things like this.

Truth Be Told
Member
Truth Be Told
1 year ago

The single biggest problem on the MNF is the US Forest Service policy of letting fires burn themselves out. But with excessive tinder dry fuel loads and high winds they don’t burn themselves out. The FS made no serious effort to stop the fires as they raged uncontrolled across the MNF.

Once they hit state jurisdiction CalFire swung into action and was able to contain and stop the fires. The FS actions were often counterproductive, like setting backfires and then going home at 4:00pm just like a normal 9-5 job. If it wasn’t for the heroic actions of CalFire and local fire fighters the fires would have burned to the ocean. FS needs to change its “let it burn” policy.