Dead tree removal after mass mortality: Effects on regeneration, fire severity, and carbon stocks

Description

Despite the vast area and large numbers of trees affected by drought- and bark beetle-induced tree mortality worldwide, relatively little is known about how post-mortality management practices affect forest recovery, particularly in forests historically adapted to frequent fire. Cutting and removing dead trees after a mass-mortality event provides an opportunity to salvage timber and lessen wildfire risk by reducing fuel loads, but the ecological impacts of this strategy extend beyond fuel reduction. A tree mortality event of locally unprecedented extent and severity occurred in the Sierra Nevada of California, USA, during and after the exceptional 2012-2016 hot drought, providing an opportunity to evaluate the ecological effects of the management practice of dead-tree removal.

The authors compared adjacent mixed conifer forest areas with and without dead-tree removal, with the aim of assessing how dead-tree removal affects: 1) the amount and composition of forest fuels; 2) tree regeneration in the form of seedling and sapling density and species composition; 3) carbon pools; and 4) fire behavior and severity and fuel loads over the following century.