Turning Plantations into Healthy, Fire Resistant Forests: Outlook for the Granite Burn

FRAP fire and watershed specialists investigate the conditions of and prognosis for plantations created after a 17,000 acre wildfire in Tuolumne County in 1973. The U.S. Forest Service established the plantations to return the burned area to productive forest land and enhance wildlife habitat and watershed amenities. The plantations symbolize the significant investments in forest resources by forestry agencies in response to stand replacing fires,. FRAP's analysis focuses on the likelihood of achieving a return on that investment, that is, on the prospects for long-term forest health and production in Sierran mixed-conifer ecosystems increasingly subject to stand-replacing fires. The area exhibits a wide range of forest structures and fuel conditions, from open brushlands (Photo 4) to very dense conifer stands of pole sized trees (Photo 7), with all combinations of conditions in between (Photo 5).

None of these conditions bode well for long term ecosystem health and resiliency without significant additional management. While many areas currently support actively growing ponderosa pine, a combination of overstocking and fuel conditions reduce the chance that these stands will mature into harvestable saw timber or for that matter, late successional wildlife habitat. The mosaic of open, brushy areas and young stands with uniformly high levels of conifer litter and crown fuels constitute a high hazard situation that could sustain a high severity fire likely to kill all trees in the burn area. Even without such a fire, the very high tree density in some of the areas increases both competitive stress and susceptibility to beetle attack. This paper explores individual stand conditions, current fuel and forest structure problems, and offers general recommendations for decreasing risks to these stands in the future.

Read the full publication: Turning Plantations into Healthy, Fire Resistant Forests: Outlook for the Granite Burn (.pdf)