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Industry managed forests more likely to fuel megafires
https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/industry-managed-forests-more-likely-to-fuel-megafires/Research August 20, 2025
Industry managed forests more likely to fuel megafires
Forests managed by timber companies were more likely to exhibit the conditions that megafires love—dense stands of regularly spaced trees with continuous vegetation connecting the understory to the canopy.
Lisa Potter - research communications specialist, University of Utah Communications
The odds of high-severity wildfire were nearly one-and-a-half times higher on industrial private land than on publicly owned forests, a new study found. Forests managed by timber companies were more likely to exhibit the conditions that megafires love—dense stands of regularly spaced trees with continuous vegetation connecting the understory to the canopy.
The research, led by the University of Utah, University of California, Berkeley, and the United States Forest Service, is the first to identify how extreme weather conditions and forest management practices jointly impact fire severity. Leveraging a unique lidar dataset, the authors created three-dimensional maps of public and private forests before five wildfires burned 1.1 million acres in the northern Sierra Nevada, California.
In periods of extreme weather, stem density—the number of trees per acre—became the most important predictor of a high-severity fire. Even in the face of accelerating climate change, how we manage the land will make a difference.
“That’s a really hopeful finding because it means that we can adjust how we manage these landscapes to impact the way fires move through them,” said Jacob Levine, postdoctoral researcher at the U and lead author of the study. “Strategies that reduce density by thinning out both small and mature trees will make forests more robust and resilient to fire in the future.”
…
Levine, J. I., B. M. Collins, M. Coppoletta, and S. L. Stephens. 2025. “ Extreme Weather Magnifies the Effects of Forest Structure on Wildfire, Driving Increased Severity in Industrial Forests.” Global Change Biology 31, no. 8: e70400. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70400.Industry managed forests more likely to fuel megafires
Forests managed by timber companies were more likely to exhibit the conditions that megafires love—dense stands of regularly spaced trees with continuous vegetation connecting the understory to the canopy.
Lisa Potter - research communications specialist, University of Utah Communications
The odds of high-severity wildfire were nearly one-and-a-half times higher on industrial private land than on publicly owned forests, a new study found. Forests managed by timber companies were more likely to exhibit the conditions that megafires love—dense stands of regularly spaced trees with continuous vegetation connecting the understory to the canopy.
The research, led by the University of Utah, University of California, Berkeley, and the United States Forest Service, is the first to identify how extreme weather conditions and forest management practices jointly impact fire severity. Leveraging a unique lidar dataset, the authors created three-dimensional maps of public and private forests before five wildfires burned 1.1 million acres in the northern Sierra Nevada, California.
In periods of extreme weather, stem density—the number of trees per acre—became the most important predictor of a high-severity fire. Even in the face of accelerating climate change, how we manage the land will make a difference.
“That’s a really hopeful finding because it means that we can adjust how we manage these landscapes to impact the way fires move through them,” said Jacob Levine, postdoctoral researcher at the U and lead author of the study. “Strategies that reduce density by thinning out both small and mature trees will make forests more robust and resilient to fire in the future.”
…