These two photos document landscape-scale changes over a century of fire exclusion. The historical photo on the left shows Hart Prairie, outside of Flagstaff, Arizona in 1885. Note the openness with pine and aspen in mixed stands. The photo on the right is the same photo point more [...]

In the “before” photo of a restoration project near Williams, Arizona, large trees were marked as “leave trees” using pink plastic ties and orange paint at the base. This was to alert thinning crews that those trees were to be left on the landscape. Smaller, younger trees not [...]

The use of repeat photography allows us to see the changes in forest structure over time. This stand of ponderosa pine had 23 trees per acre in 1876, but there were 1,254 trees per acre—or 28.3 tons of biomass per acre—when the “before” photograph was taken in [...]

The goals of forest restoration treatments are to restore degraded forest health and to help solve the problem of unnaturally severe wildfire. Sometimes restoration can be achieved by fire only. However, where tree density and structure prohibit safe use of fire, mechanical thinning followed by prescribed fire is [...]