文章基本信息

标题：Cumulative Severity of Thinned and Unthinned Forests in a Large California Wildfire
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作者：Chad T. Hanson
期刊名称：Land
印刷版ISSN：2073-445X
出版年度：2022
卷号：11
期号：3
页码：373
DOI：10.3390/land11030373
语种：English
出版社：MDPI, Open Access Journal
摘要：Studies pertaining to fire severity in commercially thinned versus unthinned forests are based on a comparison of tree mortality between the two categories. Commercial thinning is widely conducted on public and private forestlands as a fire management approach designed to reduce fire severity and associated tree mortality. However, tree mortality from thinning itself, prior to the occurrence of the wildfire, is generally not taken into account, which leaves a potentially important source of tree loss, with its associated forest carbon loss and carbon emissions, unreported. This study investigated the “cumulative severity” of commercially thinned and unthinned forests in a large 2021 wildfire, the Antelope fire, occurring within mixed-conifer forests on public lands in northern California, USA. Using published data regarding the percent basal area mortality for each commercial thinning unit that burned in the Antelope fire, combined with percent basal area mortality due to the fire itself from post-fire satellite imagery, it was found that commercial thinning was associated with significantly higher overall tree mortality levels (cumulative severity). More research is needed, in other large forest fires, to determine whether the finding, that commercial thinning killed more trees than it prevented from being killed, is common elsewhere.