Through The Fire

Sometimes out of adversity comes wisdom. That was a lesson Pacific Southwest Research Station Ecologist, Eric Knapp, learned after the 2021 Antelope Fire tore through long-term research plots in northeastern California.
“It was pretty upsetting to think about those 20 years of research going up in flames,” Knapp stated. Knapp’s colleague, Forester Martin Ritchie, and other scientists initiated studies at this landscape, known as the Goosenest Adaptive Management Area in the late 1990s. At that time, white fir and incense cedar filled the site, crowding out pine trees. One of the researchers’ goals was to restore a more open pine-dominated forest, which originally graced this area a century ago.
When Knapp and fellow researchers took stock of the fire damage, they realized that the fire, unexpectedly, presented a rare opportunity to see how fuel treatments fared in real-world conditions