Scientists: Warming climate ‘loads the dice’ for wildfire in west Cascades

For millennia, wildfires have burned forests on the west side. Tree ring records in the North Cascades show evidence of “enormous” fire events from 300 to 500 years ago, Donato said, where hundreds of thousands of acres burned at once. Fire resets forest growth, making room for more diverse organisms to flourish.

“Right now, a lot of our west-side forests are fairly homogeneous,” Donato said, “due to a legacy of how we’ve managed many forests in the past and how we continue managing forests.”

The rarest habitat condition found in forests in the Cascades is called “preforest,” the condition immediately following a fire where there is an abundance of snags, downed wood, ferns and grasses. Preforest is also one of the most biodiverse habitats found in the region.