Source: Forest Guild
Photo: nwhi.org
We are pleased to be able to share with you the latest in the Joint Fire Science Program’s series of guides to fuels treatment practices. The new report is a Comprehensive Fuels Treatment Practices Guide for Mixed Conifer Forest: California, Central and Southern Rockies, and the Southwest. The guide covers the definition of mixed conifer, past land use and management activities, fire regimes and historic conditions, and impact of altered fire regimes in mixed conifer forests. The second half of the guide discusses effectiveness and impacts of different fuels treatment techniques such as prescribed fire, silvicultural treatments, and combinations of cutting and burning in mixed conifer forests. The guide also draws on interviews with 75 managers and experts and includes a synthesis of their insights into specific impediments to effective management and ways of overcoming them. For example, smoke management and wildlife habitat protections are two common issues that can make treatments more complicated, though not impossible.
The guide was written by a team from the Forest Guild, University of California, Berkeley, and US Forest Service and combines an exhaustive review of existing scientific literature with information gathered from interviews with managers. Some of the key findings from the guide include:
- Fire is a fundamental process in mixed conifer forests that historically included patches of high severity fire in many areas;
- Increasing forest heterogeneity to approximate historic conditions is important to achieve many management objectives, from fuel reduction to wildlife habitat;
- In most mixed conifer forests, thinning that treats both the canopy and understory combined with prescribed fire is most effective at reducing wildfire hazard;
- Landscape treatments that reduce wildfire hazard and increase ability to control fires help build confidence that prescribed mixed-severity fire can be implemented safely;
- The loss of local expertise through retirement of experienced land managers is a significant issue for fuels treatments; and
- Collaboration has become a necessary part of land management, and new programs, such as Landscape Conservation Cooperatives and the Joint Fire Science Knowledge Exchange Consortia, encourage alliances that can help ensure adequate funding.
We encourage feedback and discussion of the guide and have set up an online discussion group focused on mixed conifer fuel treatments for questions, comments, and suggestions at: groups.google.com/group/mixed-conifer. We are hosting a webinar on the report May 18th (click here to register). A limited number of printed copies of the report are available upon request (please email a request zander@forestguild.org or call 505-983-8992).
