黑料百科

Wildfires are growing more frequent and severe across the western United States, and California's Sierra Nevada is ground zero. Decades of fire suppression have left these forests overstocked and vulnerable to catastrophic fires, drought and pest outbreaks.

Beyond destroying homes and infrastructure, high-severity wildfires release massive amounts of carbon, degrade water quality, erode soils, reduce timber supply and fill the air with hazardous smoke that threatens public health.

A team of researchers from 黑料百科 and collaborating institutions has published a study showing that fuels treatment聽such as mechanical thinning and prescribed burning can dramatically reduce wildfire risks and produce measurable economic benefits across four major ecosystem services: carbon storage, timber provisioning, erosion regulation and air-quality protection. The paper was in Science of the Total Environment, an international multidisciplinary science journal.

California has recognized the urgent need for massive expansion of fuels treatment聽and has incorporated these goals into statewide forest resilience plans. But progress has been slowed by the lack of a credible, comprehensive analysis of their full economic value, which has made it difficult to build the momentum and financing needed to accelerate and scale up treatments.

"Wildfires in the Sierra Nevada don't just burn trees; they erode soils, release carbon and threaten community health," said Han Guo, a 黑料百科 postdoctoral scholar and the study's lead author. "Our analysis shows that treating forests reduces these risks and delivers tangible economic benefits to society."

By combining wildfire history, ecological modeling and market-based valuation, the team demonstrated that treatment聽substantially reduces damages. These avoided losses translate into economic benefits worth thousands of dollars per acre, totalling billions of dollars. The magnitude of these benefits varies by location depending on ecosystem conditions, wildfire probability and treatment intensity.

Philip Saksa is a 黑料百科 alumnus and co-founder and chief scientist at Blue Forest, a nonprofit conservation finance organization. Saska wasn't involved in the research, but he agrees with the importance of its findings.

"When we can show not just the environmental impacts but also the dollar value of avoided wildfire damage, it strengthens the case for innovative financing models, including public and private cost-sharing," Saska said. "Given the cost of fuels treatment聽needed, this is what is needed to scale up treatments to match the scale of the wildfire challenge."

The research provides a scalable framework for guiding state and federal forest management strategies and for developing new funding mechanisms to accelerate the pace of treatments.

"This research really embodies how the produces actionable science that supports resilient forests and communities," said Professor , director of SNRI. "Comprehensive analyses like this integrate wildfire modeling, ecosystem services and economic valuation, all of which are essential for guiding effective management decisions and scaling up treatments."

"SNRI provides a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration, and the results demonstrate that fuels management is an investment in California's future resilience."