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When two major wildfires burned through the Sierra Nevada in 2020 and 2021, they took thousands of giant sequoia trees with them. Without prescribed burns, thousands more would have died, according to a new study from the University of California, Davis.
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that giant sequoias treated with prescribed fire in the previous decade were nearly four times more likely to survive 2020’s Castle Fire and 2021’s KNP Complex Fire than untreated trees within the same groves.
“Prescribed burns are effective at reducing giant sequoia mortality, even for today’s extreme wildfires,” said lead author Dan Dixon, who was a UC Davis postdoctoral researcher in Professor Yufang Jin’s lab when the study was conducted. “If the goal is protecting giant sequoias, prescribed fire is an essential tool available to managers.”
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