Reduced fire severity offers near-term buffer to climate-driven declines in conifer resilience across the western United States

Kimberley T. Davis, Marcos D. Robles, Kerry B. Kemp, Philip E. Higuera, Teresa Chapman, Kerry L. Metlen, Jamie L. Peeler, Kyle C. Rodman, Travis Woolley, Robert N. Addington, Brian J. Buma, C. Alina Cansler, Michael J. Case, Brandon M. Collins, Jonathan D. Coop, Solomon Z. Dobrowski, Nathan S. Gill, Collin Haffey, Lucas B. Harris, Brian J. Harvey, Ryan D. Haugo, Matthew D. Hurteau, Dominik Kulakowski, Caitlin E. Littlefield, Lisa A. McCauley, Nicholas Povak, Kristen L. Shive, Edward Smith, Jens T. Stevens, Camille S. Stevens-Rumann, Alan H. Taylor, Alan J. Tepley, Derek J. N. Young, Robert A. Andrus, Mike A. Battaglia, Julia K. Berkey, Sebastian U. Busby, Amanda R. Carlson, Marin E. Chambers, Erich Kyle Dodson, Daniel C. Donato, William M. Downing, Paula J. Fornwalt, Joshua S. Halofsky, Ashley Hoffman, Andrés Holz, Jose M. Iniguez, Meg A. Krawchuk, Mark R. Kreider, Andrew J. Larson, Garrett W. Meigs, John Paul Roccaforte, Monica T. Rother, Hugh Safford, Michael Schaedel, Jason S. Sibold, Megan P. Singleton, Monica G. Turner, Alexandra K. Urza, Kyra D. Clark-Wolf, Larissa Yocom, Joseph B. Fontaine, and John L. Campbell

Fire, Forest Restoration Benefits, Topic

Abstract

Warmer and drier climate conditions in western U.S. forests are making it less likely that trees can regenerate after wildfires, according to this study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Specifically, it found that warmer, drier conditions over the past four decades have led to a decline in tree regeneration after wildfires and this trend is expected to accelerate in the future. The most vulnerable forests were in drier regions in the Southwest and California, while forests in the wetter and cooler regions of the northern Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest are still expected to support conifer regeneration in the near-term future. Importantly, the research also found that ecologically based forest management can partially offset climate-driven declines in tree regeneration by limiting fire-caused tree death, but only if action is taken quickly. This study provides timely information to optimize new state and federal initiatives to increase the pace of ecologically based forest management across millions of acres of Western forests. The lead authors from The Nature Conservancy, the University of Montana, and the US Forest Service assembled the most extensive data set yet collected in the region collected by more than 50 research teams over 10,000 plots to evaluate regeneration of eight major tree conifer species after 334 wildfires.

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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[…]