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Prescribed Fire Effects on Soils and Carbon in Olympic National Park
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Prescribed fires are a common feature of management plans in public forests of the western U.S. While prescribed fires can be essential for restoring ecological processes to fire-suppressed forests, they may also have impacts on soils and forest carbon budgets that are less well understood. This project evaluates the effects of prescribed fire on soils and carbon in dry-side, Douglas-fir forests of Olympic National Park. Using pre-fire data collected as part of a climate change study, USGS scientists are analyzing changes in soil carbon and nutrient cycling for one year following fire. To date, no studies have evaluated prescribed fire effects on forest soils of the Olympic Peninsula. This work is an essential contribution to regional fire effects knowledge.
Perakis, Steven S. - Supervisory Research Ecologist
Phone: 541-758-8786
Email: sperakis@usgs.gov
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