Prescribed burning helps store forest carbon in big, fire-resistant trees

by Kara Manke, UC Berkeley
November 17, 2025

After more than a century of fire suppression in California’s forests, mounting evidence shows that frequent fire — through practices like prescribed fire or Indigenous cultural burning — can improve forest health, increase biodiversity and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire. 

But controlled fires can have downsides. In addition to being labor intensive and producing smoke that may harm neighboring communities, burning trees and vegetation releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.

A new long-term study shows that, while prescribed burning may release carbon dioxide in the short term, the repeated use of controlled fire may boost a forest’s productivity, or carbon sequestration capacity, in the long term. 

“Over time, we found that the productivity of unmanaged tree stands decreased, likely due to increased competition and climate stress. Meanwhile, prescribed burning helped maintain large, fire-resistant trees, eventually increasing the productivity of these stands,” said study lead author Yihong Zhu, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. “We wouldn’t be able to detect such a benefit had we not been able to monitor these stands over 20 years and three entries with controlled fire.”

Keep reading: https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/11/17/prescribed-burning-helps-store-forest-carbon-in-big-fire-resistant-trees/

Read the Ecological Applications paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eap.70111