Effects of postfire climate and seed availability on postfire conifer regeneration

Large, severe fires are becoming more frequent in many forest types across the western United States and have resulted in tree mortality across tens of thousands of hectares. Conifer regeneration in these areas is limited because seeds must travel long distances to reach the interior of large burned patches and establishment is jeopardized by increasingly hot and dry conditions. To better inform postfire management in low elevation forests of California, USA, we collected 5‐yr postfire recovery data from 1,234 study plots in 19 wildfires that burned from 2004–2012 and 18 yrs of seed production data from 216 seed fall traps (1999–2017). We used these data in conjunction with spatially extensive climate, topography, forest composition, [...]