A USGS crew evaluating forest thinning one year after a late-season burn.

The current policy of wildfire management by supressing small fires is causing less carbon to be stored in trees, according to a new study from the University of California.

The research team, led by Michael Goulden found that during the period from the 1930's to the 1990's mid-altitude conifer forests increased in area by 34%, but contrary to the conventional wisdom that more trees mean additional carbon storage- they found that the amount of stored carbon actually diminished by 26% during the same period, according to the Scientific American article.

Current wildfire policy is to stop more ground blazes, which is preserving more and more small-sized trees which hold much less carbon compared to bigger, more mature trees.

Potential Solution?

Preserving the heftier trees is the easy solution to augmenting carbon storage and allowing them to play their ecological roles, says Nathan Stephenson, an ecologist from the U.S. Geological Survey.

As the climate changes and puts stress on plant life, Stephenson says, it is probably better for the forest to get back to the way it used to look: thinner and less crowded. In fact, the national parks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with which he closely works, already use prescribed fire to thin forests. Burning or cutting down trees will release some carbon into the atmosphere. But at least, Stephenson notes, “you reduce the chance that you’re going to lose all [the carbon] in a catastrophic wildfire.”

Note: The previous two paragraphs are exerpts from the Scientific American article.