Comparison of thinning and prescribed fire restoration treatments to Sierran mixed-conifer historic conditions

Thinning and prescribed fire are widely used to restore fire-suppressed forests, yet there are few studies of their effectiveness in Sierran mixed-conifer forest. We compared stand conditions in replicated plots before and after a combination of thinning and burning treatments against a reconstruction of the same forest in 1865. The historical forest had 67 stems/ha (trees ≥5 cm DBH), equal percentages of shade-tolerant and -intolerant tree species, stems randomly distributed at the stand scale, and a flat diameter distribution across size classes. The pretreatment forest averaged 469 stems/ha, which comprised 84% shade-tolerant and 14% shade-intolerant species, were highly clustered, and had a reverse-J-shaped diameter distribution. Thinning treatments failed to approximate historical composition, spatial pattern, or diameter distribution. Treatments left too many small trees, removed too many intermediate-sized trees (50–75 cm DBH), and retained a reverse-J-shaped diameter distribution. Current old grow...

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