Response to Comment on 'Prescribed Fire As a Means of Reducing Forest Caibon Emissions in the Western United States'

摘要

We appreciate Mr. Meigs' and Dr. Campbell's interest in our recent paper (1). As stated in our paper and noted by Meigs and Campbell, managing surface fuels with prescribed fire requires repeated application. Previous research has shown that these cumulative prescribed fire emissions can be greater than a one-time wildfire (2). Meigs and Campbell conclude that this potential, coupled with our use of satellite detections of wildfire over the 2001-2008 time period as a basis for comparing prescribed fire and wildfire emissions on a one-to-one basis makes our upper-bound estimate of emissions reduction from prescribed burning misleading. It appears their assessment ofour research stems from a misunderstanding of our use of the term "fire severity" and a faulty assessment of the assumptions made in our modeling.