Twenty-year study confirms California forests are healthier when burned — or thinned

by Kara Manke, UC Berkeley
December 12, 2023

A 20-year experiment in the Sierra Nevada confirms that different forest management techniques — prescribed burning, restoration thinning or a combination of both — are effective at reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire in California.

These treatments also improve forest health, making trees more resilient to stressors like drought and bark beetles, and they do not negatively impact plant or wildlife biodiversity within individual tree stands, the research found. The findings of the experiment, called the Fire Surrogate Study, are published online in the journal Ecological Applications.

“The research is pretty darn clear that these treatments are effective — very effective,” said study lead author Scott Stephens, a professor of fire science at the University of California, Berkeley. “I hope this lets people know that there is great hope in doing these treatments at scale, without any negative consequences.”

Keep reading: https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/12/12/twenty-year-study-confirms-california-forests-are-healthier-when-burned-or-thinned

Read the Ecological Applications paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eap.2932