In California's mixed-conifer forests, fuels reduction treatments can successfully reduce fire severity, bolster forest resilience, and make lasting changes in forest structure. However, current understanding of duration of treatment effectiveness and their ability to stabilize carbon is based on limited information from short study periods or reliance on modeled wildfire behavior. We leverage temporally data collected from long-term forest monitoring plots within shaded fuel breaks that captured a range of wildfire occurrence (i.e. not burned, burned once, or burned twice) following initial plot establishment and thinning and prescribed fire treatments. The study aims to understand the long-term efficacy of current treatment regimes on federal lands while providing California’s forest managers with empirical (i.e. not modeled) information about the ability of treatments to reduce fire risk, preserve forest health, and sequester carbon in a post-fire environment.

No publications at this time.

Contact Information:

Kathryn Low (PI)
kathrynelow@berkeley.edu

CAL FIRE Forest Health Research Program
FHResearch@fire.ca.gov