Nick Smith has a link in today’s HFHC email to a new paper, “Deforestation and reforestation in a world hotspot of fire-driven forest loss: trends in California conifer forests 1991–2023,” Hugh D. Safford and Joseph A. E. Stewart, Front. For. Glob. Change, 09 April 2026. No surprise here, to those of us who have watched forests in the west burn. FWIW, Harold Weaver foresaw this 83+ years ago. See “Fire As An Ecological and Silvicultural Factor in the Ponderosa Pine Region of the Pacific Slope,” Journal of Forestry, 1943, available free from the Society of American Foresters.
Weaver: “It is the writer’s opinion that … unless the stagnating stands of reproduction can be thinned and the terrific destruction by pine beetles can be checked the success of sustained-yield forest management in the ponderosa-pine region is seriously threatened.”
I took a look at this and there was quite a bit of modeling of regeneration and lack thereof. I wonder what combo of field and remote sensing observations would tell us about tree presence or not. Seems like the FS should be collecting some kind of data in a consistent format? Maybe they do.