> Fire return intervals range from as long as 500 years on wetter, northern sites to 5–25 years on drier, southern sites. Point Reyes NS falls closer to the shorter end of the fire return interval spectrum. Researchers report a fire return interval of 7.7 years for redwood stands at Point Reyes. A study of redwood stands on Bolinas Ridge and Mount Tamalpais found point estimates of fire return interval ranging from 21.7 to 27.3 years.
Regardless of what the natural fire frequency was in the past, isn’t this an empirical question about unburnt fuel levels and other environmental factors listed in the article? If we have a large surplus of fuel building up in these forests, and more controlled burns would manage it, that seems like a management problem even if frequent burns were not part of the historical norm.
Do you have any sources you can share for further reading on this?
I did a little bit of digging and found https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/management/firemanagement_fir..., but couldn’t come up with anything for Big Basin specifically.
The closest I found was:
> Fire return intervals range from as long as 500 years on wetter, northern sites to 5–25 years on drier, southern sites. Point Reyes NS falls closer to the shorter end of the fire return interval spectrum. Researchers report a fire return interval of 7.7 years for redwood stands at Point Reyes. A study of redwood stands on Bolinas Ridge and Mount Tamalpais found point estimates of fire return interval ranging from 21.7 to 27.3 years.
Regardless of what the natural fire frequency was in the past, isn’t this an empirical question about unburnt fuel levels and other environmental factors listed in the article? If we have a large surplus of fuel building up in these forests, and more controlled burns would manage it, that seems like a management problem even if frequent burns were not part of the historical norm.