This webinar is the third of a four-part series for managers and scientists to discuss up-to-date information regarding the benefits, challenges, opportunities, and trade-offs among the different strategies and tools related to fuel treatment applications within dry mixed conifer forests of the western United States.

Presenters-Jeremy Fried – USFS Pacific Northwest Research Station, and Terrie Jain - USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station

Description-Given that generic silvicultural prescriptions for mechanically thinning forest fuels can be designed to accomplish a variety of hazard-reduction objectives, it’s helpful to think of the best treatment for any acre as the one that accomplishes the most objectives while compromising the fewest. Following this logic, we describe the concept of a composite hazard index and a data-rich approach to evaluating a forested landscape for potential to achieve effective mechanical fuel treatment, computing both the on-site and associated product transportation costs of that treatment, and characterizing the range of stand level benefits and flows of merchantable and energy wood that could be derived. For several combinations of broad forest type groups and subregions in the dry mixed conifer forests of ID, MT, UT, WA, OR and CA, we highlight differences in the characteristics of stands where effective treatment is possible, compared to those of all stands. 

Participants will be guided through a statistically representative, graphical library of costs, revenues and product flows that would be associated with fuel treatments applied at broad scale. We also describe the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) BioSum framework that we used to assess the effectiveness, costs, and potential returns from generic, multi-purpose mechanical fuel treatment approaches commonly implemented in this region, and provide suggestions for how this framework, or model components within it, can be used for targeted analysis with customized assumptions for areas where fuel treatment is contemplated.