4B: Tracking Utah's Unique Wildfire Patterns: Managing Forests for Recovery

Fire is an integral part of Utah’s landscapes, but it also poses great risks to people, structures, forests, rangelands, and agriculture. Unchecked wildfires decrease air quality, water quality, and the effectiveness of reservoirs as they fill with fire-produced erosion.

Researchers have learned over the last century that we can’t keep fires from starting or burning, but we can create the best conditions possible to assist forests for post-fire recovery. Research is emerging to show that best practice includes managing forests in a way to increase chances that a fire will burn but leave some trees alive, especially large trees. Large, living trees provide the structure of the future forest, contribute seeds for regrowth, help reduce erosion, and keep winter
snow on the ground longer. Forests that are less dense (because of previous fire or mechanical thinning) can also be more resistant to drought and insect attack.

There is increasing focus on large fires in Utah because of the damage that they cause and the resources needed to control them. Smaller fires (between 100–1,000 acres) do much less damage, and can consume surface fuels and decrease tree density without killing all trees.
Although fire behavior is complex, in some forest types (such as aspen and Douglas-fir), smaller fires burn less severely while large fires are more intense (Figure 4.B.1).

Researchers from Utah State University mapped and analyzed all fires larger than 100 acres in Utah from 1984–2022 and indexed them by vegetation type, year, and size class to serve as a baseline for examining future changes. This baseline data will be a valuable tool to
understand wildfire trends and consequences as we continue to manage wildfire and aid forests in recovery.