Operational Resilience in Western Us Frequent-Fire Forests

Abstract

With the increasing frequency and severity of altered disturbance regimes in dry, western U.S. forests, treatments promoting resilience have become a management objective but have been difficult to define or operationalize. Many reconstruction studies of these forests when they had active fire regimes have documented very low tree densities before the onset of fire suppression. Building on ecological theory and recent studies, we suggest that this historic forest structure promoted resilience by minimizing competition which in turn supported vigorous tree growth. To assess these historic conditions for management practices, we calculated a widely-used measure of competition, relative stand density index (SDI), for two extensive historical datasets and compared those to contemporary forest conditions. Relative SDI for historical forests was 23-28% of maximum, in the ranges considered ‘free of’ (<25%) to ‘low’ competition (25-34%). In contrast, most (82-95%) contemporary stands were in the range of ‘full competition’ (35-59%) or ‘imminent mortality’ (>60%). With the contemporary increase in compounding stresses such as drought, bark beetles and high-severity wildfire, resilience in frequent-fire forests may hinge on creating stands with significantly lower densities and minimal competition. This would be a fundamental rethinking of how frequent-fire forests should be managed for resilience.

Keywords: competition, Drought, fire suppression, stand density index, tree vigor