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

Abstract

The escalating climate and wildfire crises have generated worldwide interest in reducing the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss in forests. The United States (US) is no exception, with billions of US dollars being invested into proactive forest management (e.g. forest thinning, prescribed fire, cultural burning) that mitigates wildfire hazard and promotes fire-resilient forests. In turn, proactive forest management helps forests retain carbon in living vegetation and organic soil after wildfire, which allows forests to help humans with climate-mitigation goals by keeping carbon out of the atmosphere. Although the US emphasized how proactive forest management assists climate-mitigation goals, initial investments prioritized locations where treatments would protect human communities from wildfire. Now the US needs additional science-based information to identify locations where investments could reduce the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss. To estimate the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss, we used a generalizable framework to evaluate interactions among wildfire hazard and carbon exposure and vulnerability in western US conifer forests. By evaluating where high social adaptive capacity for proactive forest management overlapped with the most vulnerable carbon, we identified opportunity hot spots for reducing the greatest risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss. We then compared findings to previously published maps on human community exposure to wildfire and identified opportunities to simultaneously mitigate 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.

Citation

Peeler, Jamie L.; McCauley, Lisa; Metlen, Kerry L.; Woolley, Travis; Davis, Kimberley T.; Robles, Marcos D.; Haugo, Ryan D.; Riley, Karin L.; Higuera, Philip E.; Fargione, Joseph E.; Addington, Robert N.; Bassett, Steven; Blankenship, Kori; Case, Michael J.; Chapman, Teresa B.; Smith, Edward; Swaty, Randy; Welch, Nathan. 2023. Identifying opportunity hot spots for reducing the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss in western US conifer forests. Environmental Research Letters. 18: 094040.