Reburn severity in managed and unmanaged vegetation in a large wildfire
- *Department of Forest Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331; and
- ‡Pacific Northwest Research Station, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Corvallis, OR 97331
-
Edited by Ruth S. DeFries, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, and approved April 26, 2007 (received for review January 10, 2007)
Abstract
Debate over the influence of postwildfire management on future fire severity is occurring in the absence of empirical studies. We used satellite data, government agency records, and aerial photography to examine a forest landscape in southwest Oregon that burned in 1987 and then was subject, in part, to salvage-logging and conifer planting before it reburned during the 2002 Biscuit Fire. Areas that burned severely in 1987 tended to reburn at high severity in 2002, after controlling for the influence of several topographical and biophysical covariates. Areas unaffected by the initial fire tended to burn at the lowest severities in 2002. Areas that were salvage-logged and planted after the initial fire burned more severely than comparable unmanaged areas, suggesting that fuel conditions in conifer plantations can increase fire severity despite removal of large woody fuels.
Footnotes
- †To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jonathan.thompson{at}oregonstate.edu
-
Author contributions: J.R.T., T.A.S., and L.M.G. designed research; J.R.T. performed research; J.R.T. and L.M.G. analyzed data; and J.R.T. and T.A.S. wrote the paper.
-
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
-
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
-
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0700229104/DC1.
- Abbreviations:
- RSNF,
- Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest;
- dNBR,
- differenced normalized burn ratio;
- TM,
- Thematic Mapper;
- PAG,
- plant association group.
- © 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA
