January 2024 issue

Volume 69, Issue 1

Forests in the western U.S. are facing more frequent and more intense wildfires because of rising global temperatures; increasing frequency, length, and intensity of drought; and in many places, decades of fire suppression policy. A recently published article in the Soil Science Society of America Journal described the results of an unusual opportunity to quantify the effects of a high-severity wildfire on soil carbon (C) and nitrogen using preand post-fire intensive soil sampling of a managed Douglas-fir tree farm in the western Cascades of Oregon. This study has important implications for global C management and efforts to sequester C in forests to fight climate change. Photo shows soil sampling at the study site in the winter after the fire. Photo courtesy of K. McCool.