Author: kristin

Harold Biswell began his prescribed fire research in California ponderosa pine forests in 1951 and published his first paper on this research in 1958. From the late 1950’s until he retired from UC Berkeley in 1973, he continued to work on prescribed fire and held hundreds of demonstration burns all over California. He predicted that unless prescribed fire was used to reduce hazards in California’s forests, the wildfire problem would only get worse. Beginning in the late 1960’s, scientists and managers began to realize that continued focus on fire suppression alone was not a long-term answer to California’s wildfire and ecosystem problems. Indigenous stewardship of California’s ecosystems was also a key component of their resilience that continues today in some areas.

With such recognition decades ago, why do we continue to struggle implementing prescribed fires at meaningful scales in California and the rest of the western US? Clark et al. (2024) discuss how federal regulations could be reformed to focus on the use of prescribed and Indigenous burning to steward our frequent-fire adapted ecosystems into the future. This paper is part of The Stewardship Project which is working to improve federal fire and forest policy through a partnership between Indigenous and western scientists.

Read a synthesis paper about the interactions between fire and climate change in the Sierra Nevada here.

Read a recent published article about the impacts of recent fire suppression in Jeffrey pine-mixed conifer forests in the Sierra San Pedro Martir National Park (Mexico) here. A summary of the research area can also be found here.

Read a recent article here, and a summary of 12 published articles here.

Read a recent summary of the Fire and Fire Surrogate Study in the Sierra Nevada here. A summary of over 40 publications of the study can also be found here.