Old-growth Redwood Fuel Dynamics

Old-growth redwood forests are ecosystem superlatives- tallest trees, most biomass, and greatest coarse woody debris, or fuel loads of any ecosystem on Earth. This research focuses on fuel loading in six old-growth coast redwood stands in Humboldt and Del Norte counties and a managed forest owned by the City of Arcata consisting of stands at different periods since harvesting. We extended this work to forest floor and duff smoldering modeling, in collaboration with the HSU Environmental Systems- Math Modeling Research Group headed by Chris Dugaw.

This research has been funded by the USDA CSREES McIntire-Stennis Program (PI: Varner) and a collaborative USDA/DI Joint Fire Science Program -grant among the USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest/ Southern Research Stations (PI: Steve Norman), the HSU Fire Lab, Redwood National Park (Leonel Arguello), and California State Parks (Steven Underwood). The project’s primary web portal is .

Fire Lab products to date (others are in submission):

• San Diego Congress
• Graham
• Swenson
• Holt (winner)