Results of Mechanical Thinning

This photo shows (click on the image for larger view) an area on private property owned by the author's family where the author has practiced mechanical thinning (not supplemented with prescribed fire) for over thirty years.  This area has been kept mechanically thinned since 1990.  (Thinned biomass was piled and burned.)  Before the author started this thinning project, incense cedars (Libocedrus decurrens) and small ponderosa pines (Pinus ponderosa) up to twenty feet tall were so thick, it was impossible to walk through this area (a condition unfortunately still predominating thoughout hundreds of square miles in the surrounding forest).  The small cedars visible in the foreground are about 5 years old.  If allowed to grow unchecked for ten years, with the addition of new seedlings which literally carpet the ground every spring,  these trees would choke the area, competing for sunlight, nutrients, and water.  Periodic application of prescribed fire used by Native Americans in the old days (before about 1850)  killed most of the young growth and kept the area more or less as it appears in the photo (see photo below).

The below National Forest Service photo (click for a larger view) shows a view in the Tahoe National Forest in 1911.  It is not a local photo, but it reminds the author of his grandmother's descriptions of the local forest with which she was familiar in her youth (1905-1915).  She described that forest as easy to walk or ride a horse through.

Mechanical Thinning and Prescribed Fire

This photo was taken April 9, 2012. It Shows an area at the 3800 foot level in eastern Fresno County treated several times with a combination of mechanical thinning and prescribed fire. The most recent prescribed fire treatment occurred during the winter of 2012.

This photo was taken on April 21, 2007. It shows young ponderosa pines growing in an apple orchard planted in 1957 at the 3500 foot level in eastern Fresno County.

Overstocked Forest in Eastern Fresno County

This photo was taken April 8, 2012 at approximately the 3800 foot elevation on Peterson Road near Blue Canyon in eastern Fresno County.

This area is typical of the forest for tens of square miles around the site of this photo. Some areas are even thicker. The location has been twice treated with prescribed fire in the last 20 years and was much thicker previously.

One of the problems with this kind of growth, which has seen no wildfire since 1931, is that all the trees are very thin and spindly because of competition for sunlight.