California's August Complex Fire tore through more than 1,600 square miles of forest last summer, burning nearly every tree in its path. It was the largest wildfire in the state's recorded history, breaking the record previously set in 2018. After the fire, land managers must determine where to most efficiently plant new trees.
A predictive mapping model called the Postfire Spatial Conifer Restoration Planning Tool recently described in Ecological Applications could inform these decisions, saving time and expense. The tool can “show where young trees are needed most, where the forest isn't going to come back on its own, where we need to intervene （干预）if we want to maintain forests," says lead author Joseph Stewart, an ecologist at the University of California, Davis.
To develop the model, Stewart and his colleagues classified data collected from more than 1,200 study plots in 19 areas that burned between 2004 and 2012. They combined these data with information on rainfall, geography, climate, forest composition and bum severity. They also included how many seeds sample conifer trees （针叶树）produced in 216 locations over 18 years, assessing whether the trees release different numbers of seeds after a fire.
The tool's potential benefits are significant, says Kimberley Davis, a conservation scientist at the University of Montana, who was not involved in the study. Those managers will still have to make hard decisions, such as which species to plant in areas that may experience warmer and drier conditions resulting from climate change, but the model provides some research-based guidance to help the forests recover.
【小题1】What challenge do land managers face after the wildfire?| A．Lack of wood supplies. | B．Where to plant new trees best. |
| C．How to save the burned trees. | D．Loss of trees and wild animals. |
| A．The function of the tool. |
| B．The disadvantages of the tool. |
| C．The improvement of the tool. |
| D．The development of the tool. |
| A．The study plots. | B．The data. |
| C．Stewart and his colleagues. | D．The seeds. |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Ambiguous. |
| C．Tolerant. | D．Optimistic. |
