Fostering resilience to high-severity fire through fuel treatments

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From this review of fuel treatments and their impact on wildfire behavior, a few key points emerge that help answer the question: how much forest needs to be treated to restore resilience to dry conifer ecosystems?
A. When fuel treatments that combine thinning and prescribed fire cover from 10 to 40% of the landscape, fire behavior is significantly reduced. Research continues to support the ‘rule of thumb’ that an appropriate landscape goal is 20% in fuel treatments.
B. There is a positive and non-linear relationship (with diminishing returns beyond 30-40% of a total landscape) between fuel treatment effectiveness and the area treated, the size of individual treatments, and the spatial scale examined.
C. Treatment longevity varies but lasts about 10-20 years in southwestern dry conifer forests.
D. Landscape factors like vegetation and disturbance history strongly limit fire spread and should be incorporated in the treatment optimization.