We’re Stumped: The impact of salvage logging on post-fire forest recovery in CA conifer forests

Salvage logging is a land management practice that involves harvesting fire-killed trees to recoup economic value from timber, reduce fire risk, and mitigate insect outbreaks. In recent years, wildfires in CA mixed conifer forests have increased in size, frequency, and severity and forests struggle to recover post-fire. Salvage logging can alter the post-fire recovery landscape, with different logging equipment used in salvage operations causing varying degrees of ecological impact. Despite known ecological impact, our understanding of its effects on post-fire vegetation dynamics is limited. To understand the effect of salvage logging on forest recovery after stand-replacing wildfire in CA forests, we used satellite-based spectral indices to track vegetation recovery on salvaged and non-salvaged high severity burned areas. We see a significant difference in percent recovery between salvage logged and not salvage logged sites burned at high severity, and across equipment types.