Ashes to Assets: How Harvesting Dead Woods Save Forests and Fight Climate Change

Researchers found that removing wood debris instead of burning reduces wildfire risk and increases carbon storage

Dead branches and fallen logs scattered on forest floors may seem natural, but in today’s warm world they are increasingly becoming the tinder of catastrophic wildfires. Now, researchers have found that the simple behavior of collecting and removing this wood (rather than setting it in controlled burns) can change the way we manage forests as we tackle climate change.

In the Sierra Nevada in the California Mountains, devastating wildfires have become an almost annual event, and a team from Atlantic University of Florida studied whether physical harvesting dead wood surfaces can reduce wildfire severity while improving carbon storage. Their findings were published this month in the Journal of Environmental Management, suggesting that this approach offers surprising benefits that prescribed Burns alone cannot match.

In our increasingly dangerous fire weather, there are more people and structures on the wild city interface, from the health risks of exposure to smoke, the need to enhance carbon stubbornness to mitigate global warming, and scientists need to examine effective alternative management actions. ”

Unexpected consequences of a century

The story of the Western Forest is one of a good intentions. Forest managers have suppressed almost all fires for nearly a century, inadvertently allowing dangerous fuel to accumulate on forest floors. Coupled with climate change and severe drought, the policy has led to increasingly destructive large giants that have dramatically different from historical fire patterns.

Today’s standard methods to reduce the risk of wildfires include prescribed combustion – setting up a controlled fire immediately to remove accumulated brushes and debris. However, these combustions emit a lot of carbon and produce smoke, causing significant public health problems.

“Over time, repeated fuel-reduced treatments, such as prescription burns, can emit more carbon than single wildfires in untreated forests,” explains Rabindra Parajuli, the University of Georgia who conducted the study while pursuing a PhD at FAU. “However, by collecting dead wood and converting it into biochar (a stable form of carbon), emissions can be reduced. This process not only mitigates the health impact, but also increases carbon stubbornness, helps counteract the effects of climate change while promoting healthier forest ecosystems.”

Learn from Indigenous Practice

Researchers draw inspiration from forest management practices of indigenous peoples, including not only controlled burning, but also dead wood collections for firewood and other uses. In fact, historical estimates suggest that indigenous peoples in the Sierra Nevada region may collect enough dead fuel every year to cover 168% of the forested areas.

The team used computer simulations collected from 43 forest plots from California plants and Larson National Forest to study eight different forest management methods. These range from no intervention to various sparse combinations (removing smaller trees), prescribed burns and physical harvests of dead wood.

Double Benefits: Less Fire, More Carbon Storage

The results are surprising. When the researchers simulated extreme wildfire conditions (burning catastrophic fuel), they found that combining sparse with physical harvests (the “THPY” mark in the study) performed very well.

This combination reduces the likelihood of tree canopy (when the fire jumps from the ground to the forest canopy) by more than 70% compared to untreated forests. This also leads to the lowest tree mortality rate, killing of the base area of ​​less than 10 square meters per hectare in untreated forests.

Perhaps most surprisingly, this approach reduces carbon emissions from wildfires by 28%, while the more common practice of sparse addition and prescription burning is. When researchers convert harvested wood into the potential of biochar and other lasting woods, sparse and harvesting methods are the only treatments that produce more carbon stubborn than emissions.

“By combining physical harvest with sparse — gradually smaller or burnable trees — proven from this study, it shows that we can help restore healthy, resilient forests,” Markwith notes. “This approach, with the method that converts wood into storage carbon products instead of burning, can reduce wildfire severity, smoke and carbon emissions, while also producing carbon credits.”

Practical challenges still exist

While these findings are promising, implementing a wide range of physical gains will require overcoming significant logistical challenges. The study did not evaluate cost-effectiveness, although the researchers noted that mechanical sparseness, then demonstrated in other studies that the collection and conversion of forest residues into innovative products is economically feasible.

This approach can be particularly valuable in areas where prescribed combustion is risky or restricted, such as homes with wild world interfaces, valuable recreation areas or critical wildlife habitats.

As climate change continues to create increasingly extreme fire weather conditions and narrows the windows to ensure safe combustion, alternatives such as physical harvesting may become essential tools in forest management toolkits.

This study represents a potential shift in thinking about forest residues – from waste to combustion to valuable resources that can help mitigate climate change while making forests more resilient. Further research will require evaluating the performance of this approach in multiple treatment cycles and in different forest types.

For Western forests trapped in dangerous fuel accumulation and growing wildfire cycles, this new and old approach provides a glimpse of hope, a way to work with nature rather than with nature, just as indigenous peoples had been thousands of years before modern policy of restraint.