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 } }
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…
51 Citations
Quantifying the Carbon Balance of Forest Restoration and Wildfire under Projected Climate in the Fire-Prone Southwestern US
- Environmental SciencePloS one
- 2017
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.
Forest restoration as a strategy to mitigate climate impacts on wildfire, vegetation, and water in semiarid forests.
- Environmental ScienceEcological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America
- 2018
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.
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- Environmental Science
- 2020
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…
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- Environmental Science
- 2017
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…
Optimizing Forest Management Stabilizes Carbon Under Projected Climate and Wildfires
- Environmental ScienceJournal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences
- 2019
Forests provide a broad set of ecosystem services, including climate regulation. Other ecosystem services can be ecosystem dependent and are in part regulated by local‐scale decision‐making. In the…
Large‐scale forest restoration stabilizes carbon under climate change in Southwest United States
- Environmental ScienceEcological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America
- 2019
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.
Assessing fire impacts on the carbon stability of fire-tolerant forests.
- Environmental ScienceEcological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America
- 2017
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.
The effects of management on long‐term carbon stability in a southeastern U.S. forest matrix under extreme fire weather
- Environmental ScienceEcosphere
- 2019
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…
Restoration Thinning in a Drought‐Prone Idaho Forest Creates a Persistent Carbon Deficit
- Environmental ScienceJournal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences
- 2021
Western US forests represent a carbon sink that contributes to meeting regional and global greenhouse gas targets. Forest thinning is being implemented as a strategy for reducing forest vulnerability…
Forest Climate-driven changes in forest succession and the influence of management on forest carbon dynamics in the Puget Lowlands of Washington State, USA
- Environmental Science
- 2015
Projecting the response of forests to changing climate requires understanding how biotic and abiotic con trols on tree growth will change over time. As temperature and interannual precipitation…
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