New Study Shows Areas with Prior Forest Treatments Burned Less Severely than Untreated Areas in Colorado’s 2020 Wildfires
Colorado Forest Restoration Institute (CFRI), a key partner of the NoCo Fireshed, recently released a study showing that areas with prior forest treatments, like thinning, prescribed fire, or previous wildfire, burned less severely than in untreated areas during the wildfires in 2020.
During extreme fire weather days, with high winds and dry conditions, treated forests still burned less severely than untreated forests burned even during milder weather. That’s a powerful testament to proactive management, especially in lower-elevation ponderosa pine forests common along Colorado’s Front Range.
In Colorado, four large fires, the Cameron Peak, East Troublesome, Mullen, and Calwood, collectively burned over 588,000 acres, incurred more than $191 million in damages, and degraded air quality for millions of residents. Within these fire perimeters, approximately nearly 25,000 acres had previously been treated through thinning, prescribed fire, or had previously burned in wildfires.
Key Findings:
- Fuel treatments, including mechanical thinning and prescribed fire, along with prior wildfires, were associated with reductions in burn severity across all forest types
- Prescribed fire had the greatest reduction in burn severity
- Treatments in ponderosa pine showed the largest reductions in burn severity
- Mixed conifer and lodgepole pine forests, which are less fire-resistant and naturally prone to high-severity fires, experienced smaller but still meaningful reductions in burn severity
Over 40 Northern Colorado Fireshed Partners work together to plan treatments in strategic places to make our forests more resilient, our communities safer, and keep our water supplies reliable. The nearly 25,000 acres of treatments highlighted in this study only cover a small fraction of the landscape, ranging from 3 to 13 percent of these 2020 fires, emphasizing the need to increase the pace and scale of forest treatments.
Dive Deeper:
Map credit CFRI