Large-Scale Forest Restoration Stabilizes Carbon Under Climate Change in the Southwest U.S.

Lisa A McCauley, Marcos D Robles, Travis Woolley, Robert M Marshall, Alec Kretchun, and David F Gori

Arizona

Climate Change, Fire, Forest Restoration Benefits

Forest

USFS

Abstract

A century of fire suppression along with a warmer climate have increased the size, frequency and severity of wildfires, which has increased risk to communities, water supplies, wildlife, forest cover and carbon stocks. The Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI), a collaboration between the U.S. Forest Service and stakeholders to accelerate forest thinning, was formed in response to the large fires. We examined the fate of forest carbon with different rates of forest thinning across 1 million acres of 4FRI in northern AZ by simulating carbon sequestration and emissions between 2010 and 2100 under four climate change scenarios and different rates of mechanical thinning followed by prescribed fire. We examined how forest thinning and prescribed fire will affect wildfire severity and forest growth under a changing climate. We found that accelerated forest thinning followed by prescribed fire resulted in a 9-16% increase in carbon, stabilizing forest carbon stocks for decades and buying considerable time to better understand the effects of climate change on forests. In the accelerated forest thinning scenarios, 70% of the gains in carbon were due to a decrease in wildfire severity and 30% were due to an increase in forest productivity. Fire-adapted forests comprise more than 40% of the total forest cover in the western U.S., the majority of those forests are at risk of catastrophic fire. This study suggests that accelerated forest thinning can sustain forest cover and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by reducing catastrophic wildfire.

Links

Explore Our Science

For publications and reports from our science team, please search here. However, to see the rest of our content, including many new science stories, please go to our new page here.

Explore Our Science

Jun 2025

Papers

Arizona

Forest

Forest Restoration Benefits

USFS

Evan Hjerpe and Anne Mottek Lucas, Conservation Economics Institute

Regional Economic Contributions of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative (4FRI) in Northern Arizona in 2023

A regional economic contribution analysis of the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) was conducted for Calendar Year 2023, illustrating regional employment and output from 4FRI in five northern Arizona counties. Forest restoration in communities with high wildfire risk is done primarily throug[…]

Dec 2024

Maps

BLM, NGO

Freshwater Assessment

Riparian-aquatic

San Pedro River

Dale Turner, Brooke Bushman, Lisa McCauley, Patrick Hellmann

San Pedro River Wet/Dry Map Animation

Every June groups of volunteers walk the entire 170 mile length of the San Pedro River and record where it is wet and where it is dry during the hottest, driest time of the year. Twenty years’ worth of data on summertime surface flows in the San Pedro River within the San Pedro Riparian National C[…]

Dec 2024

Maps

BLM, NGO

Freshwater Assessment

Riparian-aquatic

San Pedro River

Turner, D., L. McCauley, P. Hellmann

San Pedro River Wet-Dry Maps

The San Pedro River wet/dry mapping dataset is a community effort to track the river’s health by monitoring the persistence of surface water during the driest time of each year. It is created by recording the end points of every wet section of the San Pedro River during June each year. Maps depict[…]