Fact sheet: Carbon costs of mitigating high-severity wildfires

The increasing frequency of large, severe wildfires in western United States forests presents a challenge in terms of maintaining forest health, especially in the face of climate change. In addition to losses of forest cover, species diversity and increased soil erosion, severe wildfires release carbon stored in forest trees and soils, and reduce the number of trees that can remove carbon from the atmosphere. Altering the forest structure by thinning smaller trees and reducing surface fuels through prescribed burning has proven effective in reducing fire severity. However, thinning and prescribed burning comes with its own costs because these activities remove trees and downed wood that store carbon