Dead tree removal after mass mortality: Effects on regeneration, fire severity, and carbon stocks
/Despite the vast area and large numbers of trees affected by drought- and bark beetle-induced tree mortality worldwide, relatively little is known about how post-mortality management practices affect forest recovery, particularly in forests historically adapted to frequent fire. Cutting and removing dead trees after a mass-mortality event provides an opportunity to salvage timber and lessen wildfire risk by reducing fuel loads, but the ecological impacts of this strategy extend beyond fuel reduction. A tree mortality event of locally unprecedented extent and severity occurred in the Sierra Nevada of California, USA, during and after the exceptional 2012-2016 hot drought, providing an opportunity to evaluate the ecological effects of the management practice of dead-tree removal.
The authors compared adjacent mixed conifer forest areas with and without dead-tree removal, with the aim of assessing how dead-tree removal affects: 1) the amount and composition of forest fuels; 2) tree regeneration in the form of seedling and sapling density and species composition; 3) carbon pools; and 4) fire behavior and severity and fuel loads over the following century.
Sorenson, Quinn, Rebecca Bewley Wayman, Tara Ursell, and Hugh Safford. 2025. Removing dead trees after mass drought mortality enhances fire-adapted tree recruitment, reduces future fire severity, and has mixed effects on carbon stocks. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change 8, Article 1691015. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2025.1691015
