{"id":76809,"date":"2026-01-16T13:55:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T20:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=76809"},"modified":"2026-01-23T14:22:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T21:22:28","slug":"fire-restoration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/fire-restoration\/","title":{"rendered":"Study: Managed fires in wilderness areas restore forests and reduce wildfire risks"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the remote wilderness of the American West, where chainsaws and heavy machinery\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0go, fire\u00a0may become\u00a0the tool of choice.\u00a0<\/span>New research from\u00a0NAU\u2019s\u00a0Ecological Restoration Institute<\/span><\/a>\u00a0published in Restoration Ecology\u00a0shows that managed wildfires in these areas can help restore forest health and lower the risk of future severe fires.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As large,\u00a0unnaturally\u00a0severe wildfires become more common in the western United States\u2014fueled by warming\u00a0temperatures, increased drought\u00a0conditions\u00a0and decades of fire suppression\u2014land managers\u00a0have been\u00a0exploring new strategies to restore forest\u00a0resiliency\u00a0and reduce risk.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Land managers\u00a0are increasingly using\u00a0naturally\u00a0ignited fires, known also as resource\u00a0objective\u00a0fires, to achieve\u00a0ecological goals. These fires offer\u00a0a cost-effective,\u00a0flexible\u00a0approach,\u00a0particularly\u00a0in areas where mechanical treatments are restricted or impractical, such as designated wilderness.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe know our current forest conditions are overly dense with too many trees, and that\u2019s a problem,\u201d said ERI researcher John Paul Roccaforte,\u00a0the study\u2019s lead author.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The top sketch of Mt. Trumbull by H. H. Nichols, created during John Wesley Powell\u2019s 1870 expedition, depicts open forests with abundant vegetation. In the bottom photograph taken from the same location in 1995, tree density greatly increased and herbaceous cover decreased over the intervening ~125 years. Photo: ERI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2012 and 2019, two lightning-ignited wildfires burned in\u00a0the Mount\u00a0Trumbull Wilderness,\u00a0impacting\u00a0a long-term study site\u00a0monitored\u00a0by ERI researchers.\u00a0Managed by the Bureau of Land Management as resource objective wildfires, these fires were allowed to burn under supervision to restore forest structure and reduce hazardous fuels, rather than being immediately suppressed.\u00a0This\u00a0provided\u00a0a rare opportunity to\u00a0observe\u00a0forest recovery under natural processes without mechanical thinning or other interventions.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThis is an incredibly remote wilderness area, and although fire is a natural part of the ecosystem, it hadn\u2019t had a large fire in a long time,\u201d Roccaforte said. \u201cThe fires were serendipitous for us because we could evaluate how they changed the landscape since we had long-term datasets and already knew historical fire patterns.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Roccaforte\u2019s research found that\u00a0managed wildfires help\u00a0reduce tree density,\u00a0move forests closer\u00a0to historical conditions<\/span>,<\/span>\u00a0and\u00a0likely\u00a0lower\u00a0the risk of future severe fires.\u00a0Across the study plots, total tree density\u00a0dropped by\u00a0about\u00a0half,\u00a0canopy cover declined<\/span>,<\/span>\u00a0and the average size of surviving trees increased. Historically, forests had\u00a0roughly 25\u00a0trees per acre, but before the fires, these plots were crowded with\u00a0nearly 500\u00a0trees per acre. After the two fires, density was cut in half to about 250 trees per acre.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet despite these improvements, tree density remained high\u2014about\u00a0six times\u00a0greater\u00a0than historical\u00a0levels. To further restore the ecosystem and lower fire risk, Roccaforte recommends that land managers consider allowing more of these naturally ignited wildfires to burn in the future.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe recommend managers allow lightning-caused fires to burn under the right conditions,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cRestoration is an ongoing process that will require continued fire use to achieve ecological objectives.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nearly three decades ago, a team of ERI researchers, including Roccaforte, launched a long-term study<\/a> at Mount Trumbull to understand how restoration treatments work at a landscape scale. Working with dozens of collaborators, the team evaluated forest structure, tree regeneration, old-tree mortality, and tree growth on the 5,244-acre ponderosa pine\u2013Gambel oak forest. Today, this project stands as the longest-running landscape-scale restoration experiment in the Southwest.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>
John Paul Roccaforte cores an old tree to better understand historical conditions, including past fires and drought years. Photo: Ecological Restoration Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

ERI began\u00a0this\u00a0long-term study of\u00a0the\u00a0Mount\u00a0Trumbull Wilderness after noticing dramatic changes in forest conditions compared to historical landscapes. About 125 years after John Wesley Powell\u2019s second expedition to the Grand Canyon, ERI photographed the same view Powell once saw. While the terrain looked familiar,\u00a0widespread livestock grazing, early timber harvesting and decades\u00a0of\u00a0fire suppression\u00a0had transformed open, large-tree forests into dense thickets of small trees with heavy surface fuels.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mount Trumbull\u2019s layered history explains these changes. For thousands of years, Native Americans\u00a0maintained\u00a0open forests through frequent, low-intensity fires ignited by lightning and cultural practices. After Euro-American settlement began around 1870, fire was\u00a0largely excluded, and overcrowded forests developed. By 1999, the study area was dominated by closed-canopy stands of small-diameter ponderosa pines\u2014vastly different from the open forests of the 19th century.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0resource\u00a0objective\u00a0wildfires at Mount Trumbull\u00a0demonstrate\u00a0the power of fire returning to the landscape.\u00a0Remote sensing\u00a0showed that areas burned in 2012 experienced reduced severity in the 2019 fire, illustrating how fire can be a self-limiting process.\u00a0By reducing dense, overgrown forests and restoring historical conditions, these fires help limit the risk of high-intensity crown fires while supporting the ecological integrity of a federally designated wilderness area.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThese fires are showing us what restoration can look like in a wilderness setting,\u201d Roccaforte said. \u201cThey\u2019re\u00a0reducing fuels, improving forest\u00a0structure\u00a0and setting the stage for more resilient ecosystems\u2014but\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0a long-term process. Continued monitoring is key to understanding how these changes unfold over time.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/span><\/p>\n


\nWendy Howell | ERI
\n(928) 523-2044 | Wendy.Howell@nau.edu<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the remote wilderness of the American West, where chainsaws and heavy machinery\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0go, fire\u00a0may become\u00a0the tool of choice.\u00a0New research from\u00a0NAU\u2019s\u00a0Ecological Restoration Institute\u00a0published in Restoration Ecology\u00a0shows that managed wildfires in these areas can help restore forest health and lower the risk of future severe fires.\u00a0 As large,\u00a0unnaturally\u00a0severe wildfires become more common in the western United States\u2014fueled…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":76810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}