Drivers of fire severity in three short-interval successive fires in the Sierra Nevada, California
/In the mixed conifer forests of the Sierra Nevada, long-term fire exclusion has increased fuel loads and stem densities while fundamentally altering species compositions and other stand metrics relative to historical estimates. These stand conditions, along with hotter, drier, and longer fire seasons, have created increasingly large and severe wildfires across the western United States, with many areas experiencing successive reburns. Given the growing number of challenges faced by managers to increase forest resilience to future wildfires, it is crucial to understand the implications of reintroducing repeated fire into fire-excluded landscapes, and to assess the capacity of successive low-to-moderate severity fires to restore forests to resilient structural parameters.
Researchers at UC Berkeley and the US Forest Service sought to evaluate the influence of forest structure and composition, topography, and weather on fire severity in a third successive fire. They investigated the structural conditions emerging after successive burns, whether these conditions contributed to fire severity, and how these conditions compared to historical estimates. Their study utilized a network of Forest Service field plots in the Plumas and Lassen National Forests that had been initially burned in the Storrie and Rich Fires in 2000 and 2008, reburned in the Chips Fire in 2012, and were then subject to a second reburn in the 2021 Dixie Fire. Plots were sampled in 2017 and 2018 following the Chips Fire and in 2023 following the Dixie Fire..
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Jasperse, Lindsey and Brandon M. Collins et al. 2025. Drivers of fire severity in repeat fires: implications for mixed-conifer forests in the Sierra Nevada, California. Fire Ecology 21, 46. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42408-025-00378-z
