Pyrosilviculture Needed for Landscape Resilience of Dry Western United States Forests

Abstract

A significant increase in treatment pace and scale is needed to restore dry western US forest resilience owing to increasingly frequent and severe wildfire and drought. We propose a pyrosilviculture approach to directly increase large-scale fire use and modify current thinning treatments to optimize future fire incorporation. Recommendations include leveraging wildfire’s “treatment” in areas burned at low and moderate severity with subsequent pyrosilviculture management, identifying managed wildfire zones, and facilitating and financing prescribed fire with “anchor,” “ecosystem asset,” and “revenue” focused thinning treatments. Pyrosilviculture would also expand prescribedburn and managed-wildfire objectives to include reducing stand density, increasing forest heterogeneity, and selecting for tree species and phenotypes better adapted to changing climate and disturbance regimes. The potential benefits and limitations of this approach are discussed. Fire is inevitable in dry western US forests and pyrosilviculture focuses on proactively shifting more of that fire into managed large-scale burns needed to restore ecosystem resilience. Study Implications: A management paradigm shift in fire use is needed to restore western forest landscape resilience. We propose a “pyrosilviculture” approach with the goals of directly increasing prescribed fire and managed wildfire and modifying thinning treatments to optimize more managed fire. Changes include leveraging lowand moderate-wildfire burn areas as treatments, identifying managed wildfire zones, and three thinning treatments designed to expand and finance prescribed fire to connect dispersed treatments. We also suggest that large-scale fire be used to reduce forest density, increase structural heterogeneity, and select for tree species and phenotypes adapted to changing climate and fire conditions.