Fall River Resource Conservation District

The USFS and RCD have identified multiple restoration opportunities on public and private lands to increase forest resilience, accelerate reforestation of severely burned forests, and reduce the risk of future catastrophic fire impacts to both communities and natural resources. Forest thinning through the diameter class and other fuel treatments (e.g. mastication, prescribed fire) would be used to reduce forest biomass and surface fuels in order to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire. This reduction would help to protect tree-based carbon stocks, improve growth rates and carbon uptake of residual trees, and minimize  greenhouse gas released in the instance of wildfire.

Reducing forest density and surface fuels are a key step towards building a resilient landscape. Thinning prescriptions were designed to restore forest structure and facilitate the widespread use of prescribed fire by removing biomass, reducing stand densities, and shifting species composition towards more drought- and fire-tolerant species. Thinning treatments would reduce inter-tree competition from limited water and nutrients, thereby reducing the risk of insect and disease-caused mortality and GHG emissions from dead and decaying trees. 

Prescribed under burning would be used to maintain the benefits of widespread thinning and to begin restoring fire as a process in forests throughout the project area. Prescribed burning would reduce surface and maintain the reduction in ladder fuels by reducing understory shrubs, small trees, and raising the live crown heights of residual larger diameter trees. As a result, fuel ignitability, ignition of tree crowns, rate of fire spread, and fire duration and intensity would be reduced. Creating favorable stand conditions across the landscape at scale would reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and associated adverse effects to air and water quality. If fires occur on the landscape, fire size and severity could be reduced, resulting in less GHG emissions when compared to fires that occur if forests are not treated. 

There are three local biomass facilities near the project area. Chips generated from the proposed projects would be utilized by local biomass facilities to generate energy and offset fossil fuel consumption. Controlled combustion results in demonstrated reduction not only of CO2 but of other GHGs (CH4, and CO) produced by incomplete combustion during in-woods burning. In addition, implementation of this project will enhance and create employment opportunities for local facilities, their employees, and the local businesses they utilize on a regular basis.

Several large fires recently occurred throughout the project leaving uncharacteristically large patches deforested. Planting treatments would be used to accelerate forested conditions across the landscape. Planting would favor fire tolerant species at wider spacing conducive to individual tree growth and reduced future fire risk as the plantation develops.  As trees grow, carbon would be sequestered, resulting in increased tree-based carbon storage through time, particularly when compared with carbon sequestered of shrub fields or partial natural regeneration.