2023/09/01 by Jamie L. Peeler, Lisa A. McCauley, Kerry L. Metlen +15 · 2 voices · 10 citations
Environmental Science · #Agroforestry #Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics #Carbon dioxide #Carbon fibers #Carbon sequestration #Climate change #Ecology #Environmental protection #Environmental resource management #Environmental science #Fire effects on ecosystems #Forest Management and Policy #Forestry #Geography #Hazard #Thinning #Vulnerability (computing)
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/acf05a
published in Environmental Research Letters 18(9), 094040 (IOP Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2023/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Abstract The escalating climate and wildfire crises have generated worldwide interest in using proactive forest management (e.g. forest thinning, prescribed fire, cultural burning) to mitigate the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss in forests. To estimate the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss in western United States (US) conifer forests, we used a generalizable framework to evaluate interactions among wildfire hazard and carbon exposure and vulnerability. By evaluating where high social adaptive capacity for proactive forest management overlaps with carbon most vulnerable to wildfire-caused carbon loss, we identified opportunity hot spots for reducing the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss. We found that relative to their total forest area, California, New Mexico, and Arizona contained the greatest proportion of carbon highly vulnerable to wildfire-caused loss. We also observed widespread opportunities in the western US for using proactive forest management to reduce the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss, with many areas containing opportunities for simultaneously mitigating the greatest risk from wildfire to carbon and human communities. Finally, we highlighted collaborative and equitable processes that provide pathways to achieving timely climate- and wildfire-mitigation goals at opportunity hot spots.