TITLE:
Does Private Forest Land Management Result in Higher Burn Severity from Wildfires in Timberlands of the Pacific States?
AUTHORS:
Christopher Potter, Sarah Owusu
KEYWORDS:
Forest Management, Wildfire, Landsat, Thinning, Logging
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Forestry,
Vol.16 No.3,
May
29,
2026
ABSTRACT: There are many pressing scientific questions surrounding the topic of whether forest management has resulted in higher burn severity from recent wildfires in timberlands of the Pacific states. Using burn severity maps from Landsat satellite imagery, zonal statistics in QGIS were used to summarize and compare the attributes (mean, median, variance, range) of burn severity classes within two zones for each fire: the privately managed forest area and a surrounding control (largely unmanaged forested area). We analyzed 100 individual managed forest areas across the Pacific states with a total of 800 privately owned management units. Comparison of the burned severity class by individual managed forest area showed that 42% of these timberlands burned at significantly lower severity (p