“Intensive forest management increased fire severity relative to the less intensive public land management.”
- Dr. Christopher Dunn, Oregon State University
Chris Dunn’s research has shown that private lands that are clear cut, then uniformly populated with young trees, can burn more severely than forests that are left to grow to maturity.
Dr. Dunn’s work tests the long-held belief that managing forests through intensive clear cutting makes communities safer. On privately managed lands, in which young trees are planted close together, at uniform heights, and with their crowns touching, it is much easier for those crowns to ignite and carry flames than it is on public lands in forests with more diverse crown structures.
Following the Holiday Farm Fire in 2020, Chris notes that the industrial forest management regime, like the one he studied in the Douglas Complex fire in 2013, did not offer any greater protection to the neighboring communities than publicly managed forests. To begin to build the foundation for a more adaptive management approach, Chris is combining satellite images of multijurisdictional (federal, state, and private) sites throughout the Pacific Northwest with the experiential knowledge of existing forest management services to identify the forests with the greatest risk of explosive wildfires, and those with the greatest need for controlled burns.