Issues for Future Work

There are a couple of issues that need to be explored further before large-scale fuel treatments based on the presented concept can be implemented.

First, fire resilience is only one goal of an integrated forest management policy. It remains to be determined if there are stand structures that allow to address multiple goals at once. For the Sierra Nevada, a well-known dispute is about habitat conservation for the California Spotted Owl. There are indications that this species prefers stands that are not (in the case of nesting habitat) or only borderline (foraging habitat) fire-resilient according to the 40% canopy closure guideline. However, the species lived in the same forests prior to euroamerican settlement, and the stands in this era are believed to have been more park-like, with low canopy closure - i.e. not the preferred habitat for Spotted Owl. This contradictory example shows that the effect of changing the stand structures as a result of fuel treatments therefore requires thorough consideration.

Second, natural regeneration is one of the key elements in modeling the fuel loads and fire resilience of a stand. The very crude regeneration assumptions made in the present simulation are at most an approach to what should happen under a certain silvicultural regime, but not to what could happen. In the few cases where actual regeneration data is available for a stand, this should be used to improve the model framework before it is implemented.

Third, the methodology needs to be validated and calibrated for actual setting, i.e. it should be used to develop fuel treatment concepts for real forests and then compared to other tools for the same and other purposes (e.g. habitat modeling). If it is possible to explain resulting differences on a scientific basis, the selection of a tool or concept is the product of a decision-making process. If differences are not attributable to scientific reasons, then a unbiased comparison is not possible and the selection is arbitrary.

Finally, the operational consequences of fuel treatments according to this methodology must be evaluated. Uneven-aged management requires more silvicultural skills than clearcutting regimes, other logging systems and possibly also different processing industries. If these prerequisites cannot be provided, then fuel treatments cannot be implemented.