Ecological Restoration Institute

Although the densely forested landscapes of the western United States can look impressive to the untrained eye, ecosystem managers are more likely to see them as tinderboxes waiting to go up in flames. And the catastrophic forest fires of the last few years demonstrate how easily these conflagrations can happen.

Yet researchers at NAU’s Ecological Restoration Institute believe wildfires a century ago weren’t as destructive as those we experience today. From tree-ring and other data, they have determined that pine forests then were more open and park like, allowing fires to burn through them quickly and with less heat and intensity. So the key to forest health, they believe, is to actively restore ecosystems to conditions similar to those of earlier times. Which is what ERI is actively working to do.

Wally Covington, institute director and Regents’ Professor, says the institute seeks to bring research and management practices together in landscape-scale experiments to reverse the damage caused by decades of overgrazing, logging, and fire suppression.

Reducing forest density leads not just to a greater diversity of plants and healthier old-growth trees—but to a reduced risk of the devastating crown fires that are the bane of firefighters throughout the West.

www.eri.nau.edu