Treesearch

Burned areas represent a significant amount of the forest landscape that can potentially be planted following site preparation techniques that use burning of woody residue. However, managers implementing post-harvest or post-wildfire regeneration efforts face uncertainty in expected performance of seedlings planted in or around post-burn residues (i.e. ash substrates). To address this uncertainty, five species were planted following site preparation beneath a shelterwood overstory in a Sierra Nevada mixed conifer forest. We planted seedlings within, on the edge, and outside of ash substrate...

Thinning utilizing cut-to-length and whole-tree harvesting systems with subsequent underburning were assessed for their influence on stand productivity and mensurational variables in uneven-aged Jeffrey pine (Pinus jeffreyi Grev. & Balf.) on the Tahoe National Forest. Both intermediate and a combination of dominant and codominant crown class trees were selected within each treatment to evaluate stand productivity based on measurements of pre- and posttreatment ring widths from sample cores, while stand mensurational attributes, derived from trees ≥ 10.2 cm DBH, were collected from permanent...

Thinning with cut-to-length and whole-tree harvesting systems followed by underburning were evaluated for their impacts on downed and dead fuel loading by timelag category in eastern Sierra Nevada Jeffrey pine (Pinus jeffreyi Grev. & Balf.). Cut-to-length harvesting resulted in an approximate doubling of total fuel loading to 113829 kg ha-1 in comparison with the unthinned control treatment, which totaled 55865 kg ha-1. The greatest increases occurred in the 100-hr and 1000-hr categories, amounting to 466% and 354%, respectively, while 1+10-hr fuels increased by only 61%. Ground fuel...

There is little question that forest stand structure is directly related to fire behavior, and that canopy fuel structure may be altered using silvicultural methods to successfully modify forest fire behavior and reduce susceptibility to crown fire initiation and spread. Silvicultural treatments can remediate hazardous stand structures that have developed as a result of the exclusion of low-intensity surface fires: abundant case studies offer evidence of crown fires subsiding upon encountering recently-thinned stands, and modeling studies corroborate. Yet treatments applied to abate one...

Many federal forests are at risk to catastrophic wild fire owing to past management practices and policies. Mangers of these forests face the immense challenge of making their forests resilient to wild fire, and the problem is complicated by the specter of climate change that may affect wild fire frequency and intensity. Some of the Nation’s leading scientists and practitioner present approaches in tackling the problem.

Prescribed burning research on the Kisatchie National Forest, Louisiana spanned the last five decades and led to a greater understanding of fire behavior and the importance of burning in longleaf pine (Pinus palustris P. Mill.) forests. Early research found that biennial burning in May favored the growth of longleaf pine seedlings. However, burning over several decades more greatly influenced diversity and productivity of herbaceous plant communities than burning affected long-term pine yields. Thinning sustains productive herbaceous plant understories in older stands because herbage...

Natural resource land managers today face a difficult challenge of developing a cohesive fuels and vegetation management strategy that addresses the widely acknowledged wildfire threat. Treatments must also be compatible with a wide variety of other land management goals, such as managing for wildlife habitat, watersheds, and forest health. In addition, funding will always be a limiting factor for management of public lands; managers will always have to prioritize and strategize where funding provides the most benefits. Stewardship and Fireshed Assessment (SFA) is an interdisciplinary,...

Lightning caused fires occur in coast redwood forests, but large fires have been rare since the 1930s. Coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) is considered fire resistant. In 2003, the Canoe Fire, a lightning fire started in an old-growth redwood stand in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, burned 5,554 hectares (13,774 acres) before it was contained. Fuel characteristics and weather contributed to fire progression. Topography, access, fuel loading and management considerations affected fire suppression tactics and effectiveness. From the old-growth redwood stand, fire progressed into young-growth,...

Policies and strategies that guide use and management of lands in the coastal ecoregion are dependent on objective scientific information. In recent years attention to this region has increased. Correspondingly, there has been much new information collected. Efforts such as the Caspar Creek Watershed Conference and the Scientific Basis for the Prediction of Cumulative Watershed Effects illustrate both the great interest and effort that is devoted to collecting and using scientific information to support resource and land management in this region. Each year the array of decisions that...