Post-Fire
Management in Southwestern Conifer Forests
Session at the August 3-6, 2020
annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA)
Increasing
incidence of large severe wildfires in conifer forests across the western
United States, and particularly in the Southwest, is altering the landscape
template for forest management. While management of unburned forests continues
to be a priority for land managers seeking to restore heterogeneous forest
structure and reduce fuels, an increasing fraction of southwestern conifer
forests is represented by burned landscapes containing large patches of stand-replacing
fire where most to all trees in a given area have been killed. These complex
landscapes present unique social and ecological challenges: severely-burned
areas represent hazards to water resources, often contain heavy fuels which can
influence future fire dynamics, and contain a multitude of challenges for
successful conifer regeneration. Conventional techniques for fuel management
and tree planting in severely-burned landscapes sometimes include salvage
logging, competing vegetation removal, and high-density planting. These are all
resource-intensive activities that are being made more difficult by the
increasing scale of severely-burned landscapes, increasing frequency of
re-burning, and a warming climate which may limit opportunities for successful
tree establishment.
This collection of
webinars, originally presented at the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Ecological
Society of America, highlights recent and ongoing research to address
management challenges in complex burn mosaics within conifer forests of the
southwest. We begin with a description of the social and ecological problems
created by severely-burned landscapes (Bradley). We then discuss how burned
landscapes are likely to respond to subsequent fire, and how re-burning may
impact both the fuel matrix and the successful regeneration of a new cohort of
adult trees (Thode; pdf presentation). Both reburn and regeneration dynamics
are likely to interact with the distribution of live and dead trees and other
fuels across the landscape, and so we consider how landscape context should
inform management decisions regarding whether to plant or otherwise direct
vegetation development in burned areas (Coop). Two subsequent talks (Chambers
and Burney) will detail the tree planting process, first regarding new
approaches to reforestation that include spatial distributions of planting and
facilitation vs competition from competing vegetation, and second regarding the
operational side of seedling production and outplanting and how various pinch
points can impede managers’ ability to meet the increasing scale required for
post-fire restoration. Finally, we synthesize the multiple facets of this
session (Stevens) with a new burned area decision making framework that
emphasizes a diverse portfolio of management options that strategically
incorporates landscape variability and natural processes to maximize the
potential for successful reforestation of at least a portion of southwestern
conifer forests.
Presentation 1: Anne Bradley
“Social and Ecological Challenges of Severely-Burned Landscapes”
abstract / recording
Presentation 2: Andrea Thode, Larissa Yocom, José M.
Iniguez and Rachel Loehman
“Managing for Subsequent Fires: Considering How Re-Burns Will Impact Forest
Regeneration”
abstract / recording
Presentation 3: Jonathan Coop, Collin Haffey, Jens
Stevens and Kyle Rodman
“Reforestation or Reorganization? How Landscape Context and Climate Can Inform
Post-Fire Decision-Making”
abstract / recording
Presentation 4: Marin Chambers, Kyle Rodman and
Teresa Chapman
“Where and How We Plant Trees: Challenges to Successful Reforestation and
Emerging Strategies on How to Achieve It”
abstract / recording
Presentation 5: Owen Burney
“Challenges in the Tree Planting Pipeline: From Seed to Nursery to Outplanting
on Post-Fire Restoration Sites”
abstract / recording
Presentation 6: Jens Stevens
“A Framework for Decision-Making In Post-Fire Management: Synthesis and New
Directions”
abstract / recording
