Assessing giant sequoia mortality and regeneration following high-severity wildfire

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Assessing giant sequoia mortality and regeneration following high-severity wildfire

Giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) regeneration is reliant on local surface fires, where episodic pulses of heat desiccate and open their cones, releasing seed onto bare mineral soil. Historically, these fires were characterized as ‘mixed severity’, composed of a large matrix that burned at low or moderate severity interspersed with small forest gaps created by local high severity fire. While sequoia regeneration can flourish within these small, high severity gaps,recent ‘megafires’ have produced unprecedentedly large patches of high severity, where the majority of sequoias as killed. This research aims to help resource managers determine whether and where to replant giant sequoia after high severity wildfire.

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Forest restoration and fuels reduction work: Different pathways for achieving success in the Sierra Nevada

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Forest restoration and fuels reduction work: Different pathways for achieving success in the Sierra Nevada

This paper examines a 20-year forest restoration study in the northern Sierra Nevada looking at changes in forest structure and composition, fuel accumulation, modeled fire behavior, intertree competition, and economics resulting from four treatment regimes: multiple applications of prescribed fire (Fire), multiple mechanical restoration thinnings (Mech), multiple mechanical restoration thinnings followed by prescribed fire (Mech + Fire), and untreated controls

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Adaptive Strategies for Managing Bishop pine with Fire

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Adaptive Strategies for Managing Bishop pine with Fire

This study investigates Bishop pine's unique fire ecology, seed bank dynamics, and the impacts pine pitch canker infection has on stands.

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Fire and fuels management in coast redwood forests

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Fire and fuels management in coast redwood forests

This report compiles research on fuel conditions, fire history, and fire effects data from contemporary wildfires to provide context for the future management of old growth coast redwood stands and restoration of old growth attributes in second growth forests. The report also investigates fire hazards present in redwood forests and their fire management implications.

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Post-fire Mastication Effects on Shrub Regrowth

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Post-fire Mastication Effects on Shrub Regrowth

In California’s dry mixed conifer forests, increasingly large high severity wildfires threaten to convert significant areas of forested land into shrub dominated landscapes in the absence of active reforestation, including control of competing vegetation. Previous studies have found that salvage logging and other methods used to prepare a site for reforestation may reduce shrub cover after wildfire. This study investigated the effect of masticated fuel depth on shrub growth where salvage logging and mastication followed high severity wildfire.

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Prescription Burning Reduces Alien Grasses in Native Grassland Restoration

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Prescription Burning Reduces Alien Grasses in Native Grassland Restoration

In Southern California, native bunchgrass communities dominated by Stipa pulchra are widely distributed in the state but often share dominance with non-native annual grasses. Restoration of these grasslands is focused on altering the balance of native to non-native grasses to favor the native perennial grasses. This study investigated the impact of burning on vegetation recovery.

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Status of Knowledge Synthesis for Desert Habitat Restoration and Post-Fire Rehabilitation

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Status of Knowledge Synthesis for Desert Habitat Restoration and Post-Fire Rehabilitation

Supported by the Clark County (Nevada) Desert Conservation Program and the California Fire Science Consortium, we completed a status of knowledge synthesis of restoration practices aimed at enhancing recovery of damaged habitats in the Mojave and western Sonoran Desert, some of the driest locations in North America.

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Long-Term Change in Desert Annuals during Restoration, Joshua Tree National Park

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Long-Term Change in Desert Annuals during Restoration, Joshua Tree National Park

It is not well understood whether desert plantings can facilitate recruitment of other natives (or mainly just non-natives), or whether facilitation changes through time as a restoration site matures. To address these uncertainties, we partnered with the National Park Service to study plant community change below planted perennials and in interspaces (areas between perennials) during 12 years (2009-2020) in Joshua Tree National Park, California, in the southern Mojave Desert.

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Mega-disturbances & declining mature forest habitat

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Mega-disturbances & declining mature forest habitat

In this paper, the authors quantify change in the extent of mature conifer forests in the southern Sierra Nevada of California during 2011-2020, a decade and ecoregion characterized by compounding severe wildfires and drought follow prolonged fire exclusion.

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Bet-Hedging Desert Restoration Practices during Drought: Research Brief

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Bet-Hedging Desert Restoration Practices during Drought: Research Brief

This brief compares the restoration treatments of outplanting and two abiotic treatments on disturbed sites in the Sonoran Desert of southeastern California. Overall results suggest that multiple treatment types, including abiotic treatments, can be implemented as a bet-hedging approach to achieve restoration benefits even if some treatments may fail.

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Mixed-conifer forest resilience: from theory to practice: Research Synthesis

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Mixed-conifer forest resilience: from theory to practice: Research Synthesis

This synthesis summaries a set of papers the explore the relationship between landscape-level forest resilience and disturbance regimes and provides strategies for the effective forest management of Sierra Nevada mixed-conifer forests

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Fire and climate change: conserving seasonally dry forests is still possible: Research Brief

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Fire and climate change: conserving seasonally dry forests is still possible: Research Brief

A recent paper by Scott Stephens and co-authors asserts that conservation of western forests is still possible, and describes sensible, evidence-based strategies to improve forest ecosystem resilience.

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Treatments and Planting Location Affect Post-Burn Restoration: Research Brief

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Treatments and Planting Location Affect Post-Burn Restoration: Research Brief

On a burned site in the northeastern Mojave Desert that is conservation-priority habitat for federally listed desert tortoises, a field experiment was conducted to test different treatments for outplanting greenhouse-propagated seedlings of the native perennial brittlebush (Encelia virginensis).

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Reducing Fuel while Protecting Soil Biocrusts: Research Brief

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Reducing Fuel while Protecting Soil Biocrusts: Research Brief

Non-native annual grasses, such as red brome (Bromus rubens), have increased the amount and continuity of fine fuels in drylands of the southwestern U.S. Where herbicide is not allowed or may have undesirable non-target effects, one of the alternative treatments that has been proposed and used in more mesic habitats is carbon addition.

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How to Manage for Resilience During Climate Change? Research Brief

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How to Manage for Resilience During Climate Change? Research Brief

This research suggests that collaborative learning among stakeholders (aka knowledge coproduction) would be a good way to develop context specific resiliency metrics and goals, making the term more useful by operationalizing it.

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Facilitating Natural Recruitment for Desert Revegetation: Research Brief

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Facilitating Natural Recruitment for Desert Revegetation: Research Brief

Assisted natural regeneration (ANR) is an alternative aimed at encouraging site conditions favorable for natural regeneration through actions such as alleviating limitations on viable seed production, germination, and seedling survival. Two ANR approaches were tested on the Mojave Desert foundation species, the creosote bush.

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Non-Native Plants, Fuels, and Desert Revegetation: Research Brief

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Non-Native Plants, Fuels, and Desert Revegetation: Research Brief

To revegetate disturbed desert lands, practitioners often reestablish fertile islands as a first step in restoring native plants and associated fauna on disturbed desert sites. This research brief discusses the pros and cons of this approach considering native and non-native species.

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