Gap-based silviculture, which we define as the creation and maintenance of multi-aged stands through the periodic harvesting of discrete canopy gaps, provides a potential mechanism for converting previously high-graded stands into more heterogeneous, multi-aged structures.
Wildfires and other disturbances play a fundamental role in regenerating lodgepole pine forests. Though severe, stand-replacing fires are typical of this ecosystem, they can have dramatic impacts on soil properties and biogeochemical processes that influence the rate and composition of vegetation recovery.
Understanding fire and large herbivore interactions in interior western forests is critical, owing to the extensive and widespread co-occurrence of these two disturbance types and multiple present and future implications for forest resilience, conservation and restoration.
Anthropogenic influences are altering fire regimes worldwide, resulting in an increase in the size and severity of wildfires. Simultaneously, throughout western North America, there is increasing recognition of the important role of Indigenous fire stewardship in shaping historical fire regimes and fire-adapted ecosystems.
Approaches to forest management have changed markedly in the Pacific Northwest in recent decades, yet legacies of past management persist on the landscape. Following clearcut logging, woody residues were typically burned to reduce future fire hazard, create planting spots, facilitate natural recruitment, and retard growth of competing vegetation.
Vegetation structure affects the vulnerability of a forest to drought events and wildfires. Management decisions, such as thinning intensity and type of understory treatment, influence competition for water resources and amount of fuel available.
Wildfire size and frequency are increasing across the western U.S., affecting large areas of young, second-growth forest originating after logging and burning. Despite their prevalence in the western Cascade landscape, we have a poor understanding of how these young stands respond to fire or how their responses differ from older, undisturbed forests, which are well studied.
Wildfire is the predominant natural disturbance in the boreal forests of western Canada. Natural disturbance-based forest management involves the use of retention harvesting to retain stand structural diversity post-harvest; however, this partial harvesting technique does not cause combustion of the forest floor as does fire.
Prescribed fire is an active management tool used to address wildfire hazard and ecological concerns associated with fire exclusion and suppression over the past century.
Management in fire-prone ecosystems relies widely upon application of prescribed fire and/or fire-surrogate (e.g., forest thinning) treatments to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem function. The literature suggests fire and mechanical treatments proved more variable in their effects on understory vegetation as compared to their effects on stand structure.