Fire and climate change: conserving seasonally dry forests is still possible

Abstract

The destructive wildfires that occurred recently in the western US starkly foreshadow the possible future of forest ecosystems and human communities in the region. With increases in the area burned by severe wildfire in seasonally dry forests expected to result from climate change, judicious, science‐based fire and restoration strategies will be essential for improving the resilience of forest ecosystems. We argue that fire use treatments (including prescribed fires and managed wildfires) as well as restoration thinning strategies, rather than conflicting with existing environmental objectives, will provide numerous co‐benefits, including enhanced biodiversity, increased water availability, greater long‐term and more sustainable carbon storage, improved forest resilience and adaptation to climate change, and reduced air pollution. Timber production, however, may have to be better aligned with fire management goals to achieve these co‐benefits. Taking immediate actions today to promote positive ecological outcomes in seasonally dry forests should be a primary focus of management, particularly in the western US.

Potential wildfire and carbon stability in frequent‐fire forests in the Sierra Nevada: trade‐offs from a long‐term study

“…Restoration of frequent mixed‐severity fire across watersheds can increase the amount of water delivered downstream (Boisramè et al 2016, 2019), and by reducing competitive stress on residual trees, fuel treatments may increase forests’ ability to resist drought‐related mortality (Young et al 2017). In many contexts, the host of ecological and social benefits of fuel treatments (Stephens et al 2020 b ) could outweigh narrow carbon accounting.…”

Commentary: Large Trees Dominate Carbon Storage in Forests East of the Cascade Crest in the United States Pacific Northwest

“…The studies cited in support of this claim (i.e., Lindenmayer et al, 2009;Zald and Dunn, 2018) are relevant to fire following clearcutting of productive mesic forests (e.g., western Oregon Douglas-fir forests). The preponderance of evidence from seasonally dry, fire-prone forests (e.g., Kalies and Kent, 2016) shows that fuel reduction thinning reduces fire risk and maintains ecosystem functions (Hessburg et al, 2019;Stephens et al, 2020).…”

“…Carbon stores in these forest communities are increasingly vulnerable to the combined effects of more than a century of fire exclusion and a warming climate (Hessburg et al, 2019). Mildrexler et al disregard the ecological benefits of thinning projects that remove young shade-tolerant trees to enhance the resistance of old shade-intolerant trees that can store carbon over longer periods in the face of a warming climate (Henson et al, 2013;Bradford and Bell, 2017;Stephens et al, 2020). The errors, oversights, and misrepresentations in Mildrexler et al summarized below and in Table 1 make this study an unsuitable basis for evaluating policy change.…”

Fire and climate change: a comment

“…Stephens et al . (2020) do an excellent job of encouraging us to sharpen our focus on the ecological consequences of forest and fire management activities, but at the same time they did not emphasize that those consequences differ substantially among forest types. Even though Stephens et al .…”

“…Although elegantly drawn, Figure 3 in Stephens et al . (2020) sends the wrong message for most western mixed‐conifer forests. The figure implies that prescribed burning and tree thinning benefit species that most depend on severely burned forest conditions, but that is untrue.…”