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Slash from the Past: Rehabilitating Pile Burn Scars

View the RMRS Science You Can Use Bulletin here!

Burn slash piles can create openings in the forest that remain treeless for over 50 years, and can also have the short-term impacts of increasing nutrient availability and creating opportunities for weed establishment. Working with managers, researchers from the Rocky Mountain Research Station evaluated the available treatments for short-term rehabilitation of both smaller, hand-built and larger, machine-built burn piles. For the smaller piles, they found that both soil nitrogen and plant cover recovered to a level similar to that of the surrounding forest within two years, indicating that these scars may not need rehabilitation unless in a sensitive area. For the larger piles, mechanical treatment either alone or with seeding did not increase plant cover.


Posted by:
Gloria Edwards
Published on:
October 23, 2015

Categories: Research Brief/SynthesisTags: all regions, Fire Ecology & Effects, Forest Management, Forest Restoration, forests, fuels, Fuels & Fuel Treatments, fuels management, fuels management and effectiveness, fuels thinning treatments, invasive species, landscape restoration and resilience, Mastication, non-native species, noxious weeds, USFS, wildfire, wildfire risk mitigation, wildfire risk reduction

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This regional Fire Exchange is one of 15 regional fire science exchanges sponsored by the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP).
View resources from multiple exchanges.