Economic and ecological effects of thinning and thin/burn treatments on Vermejo Park Ranch, NM

outhwestern ponderosa pine forests have undergone drastic shifts in structure since Euro-American land use practices, including fire exclusion, logging, and livestock grazing, were implemented in the late 19th century. Treatments consisting of a combination of overstory density reductions and/or prescribed burning have been implemented with increasing frequency in order to counteract the effects of these changes. The objectives of this study were to investigate the effectiveness of these treatments on Vermejo Park Ranch, located in northern NM, from economic and ecological perspectives. More specifically, this study examines 1) the ability for stand-level treatments to shift stand structures to an economically and ecologically sustainable state, and 2) the potential for maintenance of desired conditions under various uneven-aged management scenarios modeled into the future using the Forest Vegetation Simulator. Treated stands, which possess a greater resistance to stand-replacing wildfire, currently have fewer trees of a larger average size that have a significantly higher rate of basal area increment compared to untreated stands. Treated stands also have a more productive herbaceous understory that is being utilized more by deer and elk, and a significantly greater amount of established ponderosa pine regeneration. FVS simulation results show that an uneven-aged management regime that implements individual tree selection harvests and prescribed fire every 20 years meets desired structural and fire hazard conditions through time while creating enough merchantable wood products to offset treatment costs (net present value =...