Prescribed fire and mastication reduced bark-beetle-caused pine mortality
/Mastication, thinning, and prescribed fire can help shift fire-prone forests to a structure more resilient to fire and other disturbances. However, the ability to evaluate treatment effectiveness requires long-term monitoring of forest responses to disturbances and assessing changes in fuel loadings and structure. Researchers from Michigan State University and the USFS Fire Behavior Assessment Team remeasured a ponderosa pine forest 13 years after a combination of treatments were implemented: no treatment/control (C), mastication (M), mastication + burn (MB), and mastication + pull back of surface fuels + burn (MPB).
Birch, Joseph D., Alicia Reiner, Matthew B. Dickinson, and Jessica R. Miesel. 2023. "Prescribed fire lessens bark beetle impacts despite varied effects on fuels 13 years after mastication and fire in a Sierra Nevada mixed-conifer forest." Forest Ecology and Management 550: 121510.
