New research conducted by researchers at Florida Atlantic University as revealed new ways to reduce the risks of devastating wildfires while promoting healthier forests and combating climate change
In the Western United States, over a century of fire suppression, global warming, and prolonged droughts have led to increasingly destructive wildfires.
As surface fuels like dead trees, branches, and needles accumulate, the need for effective wildfire management is now particularly urgent.
Creating effective wildfire management
Forest managers typically use tools like prescribed burns, thinning, mastication, and piling and burning to reduce fuel loads in forests.
These practices help to lower fuel levels, reduce crown density, and protect fire-resistant trees, creating more resilient forests.
However, prescribed burning efforts have struggled to keep pace with the growing accumulation of surface fuels, creating a “fire deficit”. This refers to the gap between the build-up of fuels and the fire management needed to reduce it. This imbalance creates the risk of larger, more severe wildfires.
Prescribed burn’s Role in forest management
Prescribed burns come with their own challenges. These controlled fires can escape and become wildfires, contributing to poor air quality, respiratory issues, and health problems.
In the Pacific Northwest, emissions from prescribed fires have been linked to significant public health impacts, including hundreds of deaths and thousands of respiratory illnesses. The practice also contributes to carbon emissions, which adds to global warming concerns.
Human activities, such as deforestation and logging, pests and large-scale wildfires, have further weakened forests’ ability to store carbon.
Forests play an important role in absorbing and storing carbon, which helps mitigate climate change. Therefore, effective forest management is crucial for reducing wildfire risks and enhancing the carbon storage potential of forests.
The benefits of removing dead wood from forests
The study from Florida Atlantic University investigated how removing dead wood from forests might reduce wildfire risks and enhance carbon storage.
The researchers focused on the Sierra Nevada region, simulating the effects of different forest management techniques. The study explored various combinations of thinning, physical removal of surface fuel, and prescribed burning to determine which approaches would most effectively lower wildfire risks, increase carbon storage, and promote long-term forest health.
The findings revealed that combining physical harvesting with thinning, which involves removing smaller or fire-vulnerable trees, significantly reduced the risks of crown fires and tree mortality.
This approach also helped lower carbon emissions by avoiding burning wood. Instead, the dead wood could be transformed into biochar, a stable form of carbon that can improve soil quality and store carbon for long periods.
This combination of techniques offers a potential solution to the growing wildfire crisis. By physically removing dead wood and converting it into carbon-storing products like biochar, forests could become more resilient to fires. This approach also reduces harmful emissions, improving air quality and fewer health risks associated with wildfires and prescribed burns.
The study shows the need for innovative forest management strategies beyond traditional methods. As wildfires become more frequent and intense due to climate change, exploring alternative approaches that enhance forest health, reduce fire risks, and increase carbon storage is essential. Long-term research, including field experiments and simulation modelling, will be important to evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies and their potential for restoring historic wildfire regimes.
