The implementation of US federal forest restoration programs on national forests is a complex process that requires balancing diverse socioecological goals with project economics. Despite both the large geographic scope and substantial investments in restoration projects, a quantitative decision support framework to locate optimal project areas and examine tradeoffs among alternative restoration strategies is lacking. We developed and demonstrated a new prioritization approach for restoration projects using optimization and the framework of production possibility frontiers. The study area was a 914,657 ha national forest in eastern Oregon, US that was identified as a national priority for restoration with the goal of increasing fire resiliency and sustaining ecosystem services. The results illustrated sharp tradeoffs among the various restoration goals due to weak spatial correlation of forest stressors and provisional ecosystem services. The sharpest tradeoffs were found in simulated projects that addressed either wildfire risk to the urban interface or wildfire hazard, highlighting the challenges associated with meeting both economic and fire protection goals. Understanding the nature of tradeoffs between restoration objectives and communicating them to forest stakeholders will allow forest managers to more effectively design and implement economically feasible restoration projects.

Ager, A. A., A. M. G. Barros, H. K. Preisler, M. A. Day, T. A. Spies, J. D. Bailey, and J. P. Bolte. 2017. Effects of accelerated wildfire on future fire regimes and implications for the United States federal fire policy. Ecology and Society 22(4):12. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09680-220412

Barros, A. M. G., A. A. Ager, M. A. Day, H. K. Preisler, T. A. Spies, E. White, R. Pabst, K. A. Olsen, E. Platt, J. D. Bailey, and J. P. Bolte. 2017. Spatiotemporal dynamics of simulated wildfire, forest management, and forest succession in central Oregon, USA. Ecology and Society 22(1):24. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08917-220124

Fire exclusion has dramatically altered historically fire adapted forests across western North America. In response, forest managers reduce forest fuels with mechanical thinning and/or prescribed burning to alter fire behavior, with additional objectives of restoring forest composition, structure, and ecosystem processes. There has been extensive research on the effects of fuel reduction and restoration treatments on trees, fuels, regeneration, and fire behavior; but less is known about how these treatments influence understory vegetation, which contains the majority of vascular plant diversity in many dry conifer forests. Of particular interest is how understory vegetation may respond to the season and interval of prescribed burning. The season and interval of prescribed burning is often determined by operational constraints rather than historical fire regimes, potentially resulting in fire conditions and burn intervals to which native plants are poorly adapted. In this study, we examined how understory vegetation has responded to season and interval of prescribed burning in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests in the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon, USA. Using over a decade (2002–2015) of understory vegetation data collected in stands with different intervals (5 versus 15 year) and seasons (spring versus fall) of prescribed burning, we quantified how season and interval of prescribed burning has influenced understory vegetation compositional trajectories and indicator species over time. Season of prescribed burning resulted in different understory communities and distinct trajectories of understory composition over time, but interval of burning did not. Indicator species analysis suggests fall burning is facilitating early seral species, with native annual forbs displaying ephemeral responses to frequent burning, while invasive cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) increased in abundance and frequency across all treatments over time. These findings indicate that understory vegetation in these ecosystems are sensitive to seasonality of burning, but the responses are subtle. Our findings suggest season and interval of prescribed burning used in this study do not result in large changes in understory vegetation community composition, a key consideration as land managers increase the pace and scale of prescribed fire in these forests.