Cumulative Tree Mortality from Commercial Thinning and a Large Wildfire in the Sierra Nevada, California
1
Los Padres ForestWatch, P.O. Box 831, Santa Barbara, CA 93102, USA
2
Earth Island Institute, 2150 Allston Way, Suite 460, Berkeley, CA 94704, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Nir Krakauer, Timothy Cadman and Edward Morgan
Land 2022, 11(7), 995; https://doi.org/10.3390/land11070995
Received: 4 May 2022
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Revised: 10 June 2022
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Accepted: 27 June 2022
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Published: 30 June 2022
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forests in the Landscape: Threats and Opportunities)
Debate remains about the effectiveness of commercial thinning as a wildfire management strategy, with some studies reporting somewhat lower severity in thinned forests, and some reporting higher severity, during wildfires. However, while vegetation severity is a measure of basal area tree mortality, research on this question generally omits tree mortality from thinning itself. We investigated whether cumulative tree mortality, or cumulative severity, from commercial thinning and wildfire was different between thinned and unthinned forests in the Caldor Fire of 2021 in the northern Sierra Nevada mountains of California, USA. We found significantly higher cumulative severity in commercial thinning areas compared to unthinned forests. More research is needed to determine whether cumulative severity is higher in commercially thinned forests in other large western US wildfires.
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Keywords:
fire severity; wildfire; mixed conifer; forests; commercial thinning
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MDPI and ACS Style
Baker, B.C.; Hanson, C.T. Cumulative Tree Mortality from Commercial Thinning and a Large Wildfire in the Sierra Nevada, California. Land 2022, 11, 995. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11070995
AMA Style
Baker BC, Hanson CT. Cumulative Tree Mortality from Commercial Thinning and a Large Wildfire in the Sierra Nevada, California. Land. 2022; 11(7):995. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11070995
Chicago/Turabian StyleBaker, Bryant C., and Chad T. Hanson. 2022. "Cumulative Tree Mortality from Commercial Thinning and a Large Wildfire in the Sierra Nevada, California" Land 11, no. 7: 995. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11070995
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