Variation in tree mortality and regeneration affect forest carbon recovery following fuel treatments and wildfire in the Lake Tahoe Basin, California, USA

We found that fuel reduction treatments were successful at ameliorating fire severity at our study site by removing an estimated 36% of aboveground biomass. Treated and untreated stands stored similar amounts of carbon three years after wildfire, but differences in fire severity were such that untreated stands maintained only 7% of aboveground carbon as live trees, versus 51% in treated stands. Over the long-term, our simulations suggest that treated stands in our study area will recover baseline carbon storage 10–35？years more quickly than untreated stands. Our sensitivity analysis found that rates of fire-related tree mortality strongly influence estimates of post-fire carbon recovery. Rates of regeneration were less influential on recovery timing, except when fire severity was high.Our ability to predict the response of forest carbon resources to anthropogenic and natural disturbances requires models that incorporate uncertainty in processes important to long-term forest carbon dynamics. To the extent that fuel treatments are able to ameliorate tree mortality rates or prevent deforestation resulting from wildfire, our results suggest that treatments may be a viable strategy to stabilize existing forest carbon stocks.As society attempts to manage forests as sinks to offset anthropogenic increases in atmospheric carbon, there has been an effort to understand how human and natural disturbances impact forest carbon stocks at spatial and time scales important to carbon sequestration. Some disturbances are completely outside or completely within the control of humans (i.e., drought or land use change), but wildfires are both: they are responsive to management decisions such as fire suppression or fuels manipulation, but many of the factors that influence fire regimes (ignitions, climate or weather) and the corresponding impacts on forest carbon resources remain beyond our control or prediction. It has been postulated that forest fuel reduction treatments (which typical