Restoring forest structure and process stabilizes forest carbon in wildfire-prone southwestern ponderosa pine forests.

@article{Hurteau2016RestoringFS,
  title={Restoring forest structure and process stabilizes forest carbon in wildfire-prone southwestern ponderosa pine forests.},
  author={Matthew D. Hurteau and Shuang Liang and Katherine L. Martin and Malcolm P. North and George W. Koch and Bruce A. Hungate},
  journal={Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America},
  year={2016},
  volume={26 2},
  pages={
          382-91
        }
}
  • M. Hurteau, S. Liang, +3 authors B. Hungate
  • Published 2016
  • Environmental Science, Medicine
  • Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America
Changing climate and a legacy of fire-exclusion have increased the probability of high-severity wildfire, leading to an increased risk of forest carbon loss in ponderosa pine forests in the southwestern USA. Efforts to reduce high-severity fire risk through forest thinning and prescribed burning require both the removal and emission of carbon from these forests, and any potential carbon benefits from treatment may depend on the occurrence of wildfire. We sought to determine how forest… Expand
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39 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
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Background Citations
13
Methods Citations
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Results Citations
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39 Citations

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Citation Type

Quantifying the Carbon Balance of Forest Restoration and Wildfire under Projected Climate in the Fire-Prone Southwestern US
  • M. Hurteau
  • Environmental Science, Medicine
  • PloS one
  • 2017
TLDR
The results suggest that in southwestern ponderosa pine, restoring forest structure and surface fire regimes provides a reasonable hedge against the uncertainty of future climate change for maintaining the forest C sink. Expand
Aboveground forest carbon shows different responses to fire frequency in harvested and unharvested forests.
TLDR
The results suggest that AGC in historically harvested forests may be susceptible to declines in response to increases in prescribed burning frequency, and consideration of historic harvesting will be important in understanding the effect of prescribed burning programs on forest carbon budgets. Expand
Forest restoration as a strategy to mitigate climate impacts on wildfire, vegetation, and water in semiarid forests.
TLDR
The model results predict that the combination of climate change and high-severity fire will drive forest turnover, biomass declines, and compositional change in future forests, and the hydrologic model suggests that mid-elevation forests, which are the targets of restoration treatments, provide around 80% of runoff in this system and the conservation of mid- to high-elevision forests types provides the greatest benefit in terms of water conservation. Expand
Potential wildfire and carbon stability in frequent‐fire forests in the Sierra Nevada: trade‐offs from a long‐term study
Forests are the largest terrestrial carbon stock, and disturbance regimes can have large effects on the structure and function of forests. Many dry temperate forests in the western United States are… Expand
Restoring surface fire stabilizes forest carbon under extreme fire weather in the Sierra Nevada
Climate change in the western United States has increased the frequency of extreme fire weather events and is projected to increase the area burned by wildfire in the coming decades. This changing… Expand
Large‐scale forest restoration stabilizes carbon under climate change in Southwest United States
TLDR
This study uses data from a real‐world, large‐scale restoration project and indicates that restoration is likely to stabilize carbon and the benefits are greater when the pace of restoration is faster, compared to status quo and no‐harvest scenarios. Expand
Assessing fire impacts on the carbon stability of fire-tolerant forests.
TLDR
Five years after a large-scale wildfire in southeastern Australia, the impacts of low- and high-severity wildfire, with and without prescribed fire, on carbon stocks in multiple pools, and on carbon stability indicators are assessed, highlighting the need for active management of carbon assets in fire-tolerant eucalypt forests under contemporary fire regimes. Expand
The effects of management on long‐term carbon stability in a southeastern U.S. forest matrix under extreme fire weather
How fire interacts with an ecosystem is driven by forest structure, fuel bed heterogeneity, topography, and weather. The juxtaposition of two distinct vegetation types with divergent properties can… Expand
Ecological restoration guided by historical reference conditions can increase resilience to climate change of southwestern U.S. Ponderosa pine forests
Abstract Broad-scale forest restoration projects are implemented across the western United States to restore seasonally dry, frequent-fire-adapted ecosystems to improve ecological function and… Expand
Climate-driven changes in forest succession and the influence of management on forest carbon dynamics in the Puget Lowlands of Washington State, USA
Projecting the response of forests to changing climate requires understanding how biotic and abiotic controls on tree growth will change over time. As temperature and interannual precipitation… Expand
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References

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The carbon costs of mitigating high-severity wildfire in southwestern ponderosa pine: M. D. HURTEAU et al. CARBON COSTS OF MITIGATING WILDFIRE
TLDR
If current aboveground forest carbon stocks in fire-excluded southwestern ponderosa pine forest are higher than prefire exclusion carbon stocks reconstructed from 1876, quantify the carbon costs of thinning treatments to reduce high-severity wildfire risk, and compare posttreatment carbon stocks with reconstructed 1876 carbon stocks are found. Expand
Carbon Tradeoffs of Restoration and Provision of Endangered Species Habitat in a Fire-Maintained Forest
Forests are a significant part of the global carbon cycle and are increasingly viewed as tools for mitigating climate change. Natural disturbances, such as fire, can reduce carbon storage. However,… Expand
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  • S. Dore, T. Kolb, +7 authors A. Finkral
  • Environmental Science, Medicine
  • Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America
  • 2010
TLDR
The results show that thinned forests of ponderosa pine in the southwestern United States are a desirable alternative to intensively burned forests to maintain carbon stocks and primary production. Expand
Wildfire and drought dynamics destabilize carbon stores of fire-suppressed forests.
Widespread fire suppression and thinning have altered the structure and composition of many forests in the western United States, making them more susceptible to the synergy of large-scale drought… Expand
Recovery of ponderosa pine ecosystem carbon and water fluxes from thinning and stand-replacing fire.
TLDR
The results show large and persistent effects of intense fire and minor and short-lived effects of thinning on southwestern ponderosa pine ecosystem carbon and water exchanges. Expand
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Forests are viewed as a potential sink for carbon (C) that might otherwise contribute to climate change. It is unclear, however, how to manage forests with frequent fire regimes to maximize C storage… Expand
Long-term impact of a stand-replacing fire on ecosystem CO2 exchange of a ponderosa pine forest
Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests of the southwestern United States are a mosaic of stands where undisturbed forests are carbon sinks, and stands recovering from wildfires may be sources of… Expand
Influences of thinning, prescribed burning, and wildfire on soil processes and properties in southwestern ponderosa pine forests: A retrospective study
Following Euro-American settlement in the late 1800s, fire suppression and livestock grazing in ponderosa pine-bunchgrass ecosystems of the southwestern US resulted in the replacement of grass… Expand
Short- and Long-Term Effects of Fire on Carbon in US Dry Temperate Forest Systems
Forests sequester carbon from the atmosphere, and in so doing can mitigate the effects of climate change. Fire is a natural disturbance process in many forest systems that releases carbon back to the… Expand
Carbon dynamics in the future forest: the importance of long-term successional legacy and climate-fire interactions.
TLDR
A landscape-scale model of forest succession, wildfire, and C dynamics (LANDIS-II) is used to evaluate the effects of a changing climate on total forest C, tree species composition, and wildfire dynamics in the Lake Tahoe Basin, California, and Nevada and highlights the importance of modeling forest succession and stand development processes at the landscape scale for understanding the C cycle. Expand
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