Forest management practices may actually increase wildfire severity, carbon pollution

More trees are dying and drying out in California’s forests due to a hotter temperatures and prolonged droughts, which is causing more severe wildfires and a mass alteration in how forests store carbon, said Cal Fire-backed researcher Marissa Goodwin at a research webinar this past Wednesday. Goodwin, a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, serves as project manager for the Teakettle Ecosystem Experiment, a long-standing study that tests how repeat burning and thinning affects an experimental, old-growth forest in the Sierra Nevada.

Goodwin said the recent increase in size and severity of wildfires in California partially has to do with a legacy of fire suppression in forests, which has caused both an increase in fuel density and an alteration in how much carbon a forest would naturally contain with regular burning.