What Works, Where, and For How Long? Empirical Insights on Fuel Treatment Effects and Effectiveness In California Forests

Land managers and practitioners need reliable, empirical evidence about which forest treatments reduce wildfire impacts—and how long those benefits persist. This seminar introduces a framework designed to meet that need. Part 1 presents findings from Yackulic et al. (2025), which use a natural-experiment design in the Central Sierra to show how thinning and prescribed fire reduce biomass loss moderate fire severity, and improve forest retention. Part 2 highlights expanded methods now applied across regions, treatment types, and ecosystem processes. By integrating extensive treatment records with remote-sensing time series and counterfactual controls, we quantify treatment effectiveness over its full lifespan—from changes in fire behavior to shifts in ecosystem water use and post-fire recovery. These results offer tangible performance metrics that can inform project design, build trust in proactive management, and support multi-benefit planning at landscape scales.