Restoring Forest Structure and Process Stabilizes Forest Carbon in the Wildfire‐Prone Southwestern USA

Abstract

Fire is an ecologically important disturbance process. In the dry forest types of the southwestern USA, regular surface fires help maintain forest structural heterogeneity. Fire exclusion has homogenized these ecosystems and increased the risk of stand-replacing wildfire. Since forests help regulate the climate system by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, quantifying how forest treatments that restore regular surface fire impact carbon dynamics is central to understanding the impacts of management on the provision of this ecosystem service. We quantified the effects of thinning and burning treatments in a ponderosa pine forest and found that they initially reduced the amount of carbon stored in the forest relative to the control. When we accounted for the chance of wildfire, we found that the restored forest structure and regular surface fire stored more carbon over time than the control. This was the direct result of treatments modifying fire behavior and reducing the risk of stand-replacing wildfire. These photographs illustrate the article “Restoring forest structure and process stabilizes forest carbon in wildfire-prone southwestern ponderosa pine forests” by Matthew Hurteau, Shuang Liang, Katherine Martin, Malcolm North, George Koch, and Bruce Hungate, published in Ecological Applications 26(2):382–391. http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/15-0337.1