Post-fire Mastication Effects on Shrub Regrowth

In California’s dry mixed conifer forests, increasingly large high severity wildfires threaten to convert significant areas of forested land into shrub dominated landscapes in the absence of active reforestation, including control of competing vegetation. Previous studies have found that salvage logging and other methods used to prepare a site for reforestation may reduce shrub cover after wildfire. This study investigated the effect of masticated fuel depth on shrub growth where salvage logging and mastication followed high severity wildfire.

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Kocher, Susan D. and Daylin Wade. 2022. Effects of Post-Fire Timber Harvest and Mastication on Shrub Regrowth in the Sierra Nevada Mountains: A Lake Tahoe Case Study. Northwest Science 95(3-4): 260-275. https://doi.org/10.3955/046.095.0303