Watershed restoration increasingly seen as important tool for wildland firefighters
It may sound simple, but water doesn’t burn. That’s the opening line of a recent federal report on the promise of process-based restoration — or PBR — for wildland firefighters, who are increasingly turning to the practice to aid their suppression and prescribed fire efforts. There are a number of PBR techniques used to restore rivers and streams, but their common effects are raising water tables and increasing soil moisture. Those changes come with a number of ecological benefits, like improving habitats for fish and elk. But they can also aid firefighters when trying to suppress blazes, as well as making ecosystems more resilient to wildfires when they come and better able to recover in their wake.
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