Soils are the foundation of forest ecosystems. As author Dan Binkley says in the latest ERI working paper, “Forests and soils interact so strongly that any major change in one of them leads to a reshaping of the other.”
This strong connection between forests and soils is why ecologists and land managers work to understand the impacts of fires and restoration treatments on soils. Research has shown that the impacts depend strongly on site-specific details like soil type, moisture conditions at the time of the fire, and spatial variation across landscapes.
The working paper “Fires and Soils in Frequent-Fire Landscapes of the Southwest” explains why there is no one-size-fits-all prescription for sustaining soils as part of restoration treatments or fire operations. But, managers can improve localized prescriptions over time if each operational unit includes a learning opportunity, with a pocket-science approach of varying treatment intensities in small areas to find out what happens when a treatment is omitted (a control) or intensified (with extra fuel or burning under more extreme weather conditions).
