The areas most affected by wildfire prevention efforts and their impacts on people and the environment

The U.S. government is dedicating more than $7 billion in the coming years to address the nation's escalating wildfire crisis. The initiative includes plans to manage 60 million acres (242,811 square kilometers) over the next decade by ramping up forest thinning and conducting controlled burns.

Although it may seem like a substantial effort—60 million acres being roughly the size of Wyoming—it is far from sufficient to address the total acreage in need of treatment.

So, where can taxpayers get the most value for their money?

I’m a fire ecologist based in Montana. In a recent study, my colleagues and I pinpointed areas where forest treatments can have the greatest impact by both safeguarding communities—by preventing wildfires from escalating into full-scale disasters—and protecting the forests and climate by reducing carbon emissions and sequestering it in healthy soils and trees.

Wildfires Are Growing More Intense

Forests and fires have always been intrinsically linked in the West. In dry coniferous forests like ponderosa pine, fires used to occur frequently, clearing brush and smaller trees in the understory. This reduced fuel levels, causing fires to stay low and inflict minimal damage to the larger, older trees.

This dynamic shifted after the European colonization of North America, which introduced a legacy of fire suppression that wouldn’t be challenged until the 1960s. Without the natural occurrence of fire, dry conifer forests accumulated excessive fuel, allowing wildfires to climb into the treetops, making them far more destructive.

Climate change has made wildfire seasons hotter and drier across all forest types, contributing to more severe fires. Additionally, the growing number of people living in or near forested areas, along with the development of roads and power lines, heightens the likelihood of wildfire ignitions. It’s not surprising that more land is burning at high severity, particularly in the Western U.S.

As a result, the U.S. faces mounting pressure to protect communities from increasingly severe wildfires while simultaneously addressing the country’s environmental impact, including carbon emissions from fires.

Identifying High-risk Areas

To pinpoint the areas with the highest potential benefits from forest treatments, we began by identifying regions where forest carbon is most likely to be lost to wildfires compared to other areas.

For each area, we assessed the risk of wildfires and estimated how much forest carbon could be lost due to smoke emissions and decomposition. We also analyzed whether the conditions in burned areas would be too harsh for trees to regenerate. Forests that recover help absorb carbon dioxide from the air, storing it in their wood, thus offsetting the carbon lost in the fire.

Specifically, we discovered that forests in California, New Mexico, and Arizona are at a higher risk of losing substantial amounts of carbon in wildfires, and they face significant challenges in regenerating due to difficult conditions.

When we compared these regions with previously published maps that highlighted areas with high wildfire risks to communities, we identified several key hotspots where it’s possible to both lower wildfire threats to communities and stabilize the stored carbon.

The forests around Flagstaff, Arizona; Placerville, California; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Hamilton, Montana; Taos, New Mexico; Medford, Oregon; and Wenatchee, Washington, represent areas where there are strong opportunities for potentially achieving both goals.

Why Forest Treatments Are Beneficial for Carbon, Too

Thinning forests is like weeding a garden: it removes brush and smaller trees in dry coniferous forests, giving more space for the older, larger trees to continue to grow.

Frequent controlled burns help maintain an open landscape and reduce fuel buildup in the understory. This means that when a wildfire strikes a thinned and burned area, the flames are more likely to stay on the ground rather than reaching the canopy.

While forest thinning and controlled burns may release carbon in the short term, living trees are more likely to survive a subsequent wildfire. Over time, this proves to be beneficial for both carbon storage and the climate. Living trees continue to absorb and store carbon from the atmosphere, while also providing essential seeds and shade for seedlings to regenerate, grow, and recover the carbon lost during fires.

Forest thinning and controlled burns aren’t a catch-all solution. By following the National Fire Protection Agency’s Firewise program’s advice and using recommended materials, homeowners can make their properties less vulnerable to wildfires. Allowing wildfires to burn safely under controlled conditions can help decrease future fire intensity. Moreover, transitioning swiftly away from fossil fuels is crucial to mitigating climate change impacts that heighten the risk of wildfires escalating into community disasters.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. You can read the original article here.

Dr. Jamie Peeler is a landscape ecologist focused on tackling forest conservation challenges in an increasingly fire-prone world. She is currently completing a postdoctoral fellowship as a NatureNet Science Fellow with The Nature Conservancy and the University of Montana.