Fuel treatments are commonly part of the toolkit for supporting forest resilience to fire however, understanding of their effectiveness is lacking across landscapes in forests characterized by…

This federal Cooperative Agreement award, funded by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management through the Joint Fire Science Program (CFDA 15.232), will leverage an existing network of field plots to test the effectiveness of silvicultural thinning treatments and past fires on spatial patterns of burn severity under varying weather conditions in the moist temperate forests of the Western Cascades. The $502,102 award to the University of Washington, with a performance period from September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2026, will also build on existing data to compare post-fire fuels and forest structure in areas with pre-fire treatments or past fires versus those without. The Joint Fire Science Program funds research and science delivery projects to support federal land management agencies and other stakeholders in managing wildland fuels, fires, and fire-impacted ecosystems.

Fuel treatments are commonly part of the toolkit for supporting forest resilience to fire however, understanding of their effectiveness is lacking across landscapes in forests characterized by infrequent and high-severity fire regimes. This study will leverage an existing network of field plots to test the effectiveness of silvicultural thinning treatments and past fires on spatial patterns of burn severity under a range of weather conditions in the moist temperate forests of the western cascades. Further, we will test build on existing data to compare post-fire fuels and forest structure in areas that had pre-fire treatments or past fires to those that did not.