Post-Fire Logging May Reduce Wildfires for up to 40 Years

Scientists may have found a way to reduce future forest fires. By harvesting fire-killed trees, loggers can actually reduce woody fuels for fires for up to four decades following a wildfire in a dry, coniferous forest.

"Large wildfires can leave behind thousands of acres of fire-killed trees that eventually become fuel for future fires," said David Peterson, the study leader, in a news release. "In the past, post-fire logging has been conducted primarily to recover economic value from those fire-killed trees."

In order to find out what effect logging fire-killed trees has on the ecosystem, the scientists looked at logged and unlogged stands.  More specifically, they sampled woody fuels on 255 coniferous forest stands that were killed by wildfires in eastern Washington and Oregon, which are the region's most fire-prone areas, between 1970 and 2007. The sample included 96 stands that were logged after wildfire and 159 that were not. The researchers accounted for pre-fire stand differences by measuring standing and fallen dead trees and stumps in each stand.

They found that in unlogged stands, surface woody fuel levels were low shortly after wildfire, peaked 10 to 20 years after wildfire and then declined gradually out to 39 years past the wildfire. In logged stands, in contrast, small- and medium-diameter fuels reached their highest levels shortly after wildfire and then declined in subsequent years, but larger-diameter fuels changed relatively little over the entire time range.

"This study provides a sound scientific basis for forest managers to consider fuels management goals along with recovery of economic value and wildlife habitat concerns when deciding when and where to propose post-fire logging," said Peterson.

The findings are published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management.

For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).