Learning from Large-Scale Wildfire and Drought in Sierra Nevada Forests: There is Hope!

Institute

Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley

Time & Place

Mon, 24 Apr 2023 12:00:00 NZST in ER263

Abstract

Fire suppression and logging of large trees have changed California forests. Management options available to address this problem include mechanical treatments (Mech), prescribed fire (Fire), or their combination (Mech + Fire). Results from a 20-year study found all active treatments (Fire, Mech, Mech + Fire) produced conditions more resistant to wildfire than controls. The only treatment that produced low inter-tree competition was Mech + Fire, indicating it would be more resilient to enhanced forest stressors. Operational fire behavior models are not able to predict extreme fire behavior experienced in these forests because they don’t include postfrontal combustion and fire-atmosphere interactions.

 Zoom Recording

Biography

Scott Stephens is a Professor of Fire Science in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. He is also the Co-Director of Berkeley Forests (https://forests.berkeley.edu/), lead of the California Fire Science Consortium (https://www.cafiresci.org/), and serves on many state and federal committees including the US Wildfire Commission that is formulating new technologies and policy recommendations for the US federal government. Stephens is interested in the interactions of fires (bushfires) and ecosystems. This includes how prehistoric fires once interacted with ecosystems, how current fires are affecting ecosystems, and how future fires, management, and climate change will impact the ecosystems of the future. Stephens is specifically interested in the interactions of fires and the hydrology of mountain under a changing climate. Learning more about Indigenous burning by Native Americans is a recent area of learning.

Stephens has given talks to federal and state policy makers including a White House presentation on fire and climate change impacts hosted by Joe Biden, to the California Governor’s office on how to improve forest resilience, and multiple times to the US House of Representatives on what can be done to address wildfire problems. More recently Stephens has spoken 13 times to the California Legislature since the fall of 2018 on what can be done to better prepare the State regarding wildfire and climate change.