This article looks at the ecological impacts and effectiveness of using fire as a restoration tool at a landscape scale. The study area was two watersheds in Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings National Parks where lightning-ignited fires have been allowed to burn since the 1970's. As far as temporal and spatial scale go, this is as good as it gets for studies of fire as a restoration tool. Surprisingly, the authors found that fires since the 70's were very similar in both frequency and extent to those that burned in pre-fire suppression days. However, in a nice example of hysteresis, which is my new favorite word, forest structure is still very different from pre-suppression. Brings up some good questions about process versus structure and is also a good illustration of restoration at a landscape scale.
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