![]() “The study also indicated that current rates of treatment are not sufficient to reduce the impacts of hotter droughts and large-scale bark beetle outbreaks. “By thinning forests, we can reduce water stress and make forests more resilient to drought and climate change,” said the study’s lead author, Christina Restaino, a postdoctoral scholar at UC Davis in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy when the study was conducted. “The study, published in the journal Ecological Applications, found that thinning and prescribed fire treatments reduced the number of trees that died during the bark beetle epidemic and drought that killed more than 129 million trees across the Sierra Nevada between 2012-2016. “Thinning forests and conducting prescribed burns may help preserve trees in future droughts and bark beetle epidemics expected under climate change, suggests a study from the University of California, Davis. “Thinning Forests, Prescribed Fire Before Drought Reduced Tree Loss” They plan to write a grant proposal to fund re-installing the sensors to see if, and when, the untouched area returns to normal water levels.Ī related topic - press release from U. Since it’s now been eight years since the sensors were removed, and 15 since they were first re-installed, the researchers are hoping to start another round of monitoring in the area. “But now we know how long a fire impacts nearby water, and that those impacts can be reduced faster.” “It’s really a complex set of interactions, and each wildfire situation effects water and water usage differently,” Niemeyer said. That increases sediment going into the watershed, which can impact fish and other wildlife. Trees help hold soil in place when it rains, so erosion is higher in areas that aren’t re-seeded. If you want more water coming down a stream for increased access to water for irrigation, for example, then you wouldn’t want to salvage any of the logs or re-seed the area.īut that extra water can have other impacts on the land, he said. Increased water levels can be positive and negative, he said. “The trees in the re-seeded sections are much bigger, and water levels are back to normal.” “If you visit today, you can easily see that area has less mature vegetation compared to the re-seeded sections,” Niemeyer said. The measurement period was from 2004-11, after which Niemeyer, a hydrologist who is also a post-doctoral researcher at UC-Santa Barbara, and his colleagues spent five years analyzing the data.Īfter roughly 40 years, only one of the three areas still had water levels above the pre-fire baseline: the section that was left alone to recover. But the measurement equipment was removed after a few years, said the native Washingtonian.įast forward to 2004, when a new grant allowed for stream flow monitoring equipment to be re-installed to measure the long-term impact the fire had on water levels. The original studies in the early ’70s showed that water levels in the watershed increased significantly after the fire. The fire interrupted a planned logging experiment in the forest, so researchers at the time switched to monitoring the effects of wildfire, said Niemeyer, who grew up hunting and fishing in the Entiat watershed. Those areas were also fertilized and native seeds were dropped on the area. Three distinct areas of the forest were observed, with two of them having salvage logging done to remove what remained of the burned trees. The fire likely started from a lightning strike, Niemeyer said. Forest Service’s Entiat Experimental Forest in north-central Washington, which burned in 1970. Natural fire starts a long-term experiment Niemeyer wrote the paper with Kevin Bladon at Oregon State University and Richard Woodsmith of Woodsmith Watershed Consulting. But seeing that the effect lasts for up to 40 years is a little surprising and certainly a new finding.” Flooding is common after a wildfire, as is elevated stream flow in subsequent summers. “When you remove them, the water has to go somewhere. “Trees work like straws, pulling water up out of the ground,” said Ryan Niemeyer, an adjunct faculty member in WSU’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources (CSANR). The paper, just published in the journal Hydrological Processes, shows that water levels are still increased up to 40 years after a fire. Salvage logging and re-seeding a forest after a wildfire helps reduce flooding and returns water levels to normal faster, according to a new paper from a Washington State University researcher.
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