Jeremy S. Fried

My research addresses problems and opportunities relating to the management of U.S. forests, informed by inventory science and data. For example, I've  evaluated, at landscape scale, the trajectories of stand-level forest fire hazard with and without management using the BioSum modeling framework we've developed. This framework also returns insights on the potential supply of merchantable wood and submerchantable wood suitable for biomass based bioenergy, transportation fuels or biochar in connection with landscape fuel treatments, and the greenhouse gas mitigation implications of treatment alternatives.or example, I've also assessed variation in forest carbon dynamics by broad owner group, evaluated the technical challenges to obtaining reliable estimates for different forest carbon pools, and demonstrated the policy relevance of forest carbon stock and flux information.  I am currently excited to be investigating the relationship between forest fire effects and pre-fire forest stand structure using information from inventory plots that burned in wildfires. This will be useful guidance on the efficacy of alternative fuel treatment strategies. Finally, we are beginning to analyze post-fire trajectories on inventory plots that burned in the early 2000s that had pre-fire measurements, and a series of post-fire measurements. We expect this to inform about the kinds of post-fire conditions for which management intervention may be warranted to steer the ecosystem towards a more desired trajectory.

Jain, Theresa B.; Fried, Jeremy S.; Loreno, Sara M. 2020. Simulating the effectiveness of improvement cuts and commercial thinning to enhance fire resistance in West Coast dry mixed conifer forests. Forest Science. 66(2): 157-177.

Barker, Jason S.; Fried, Jeremy S.; Gray, Andrew N. 2019. Evaluating model predictions of fire induced tree mortality using wildfire-affected forest inventory measurements. Forests. 10(11): 958-. https://doi.org/10.3390/f10110958.

Petitmermet, Joshua H; Fried, Jeremy S; Sessions, John. 2019. Estimating biomass availability and cost when implementing forest restoration with tethered harvest systems. Journal of Forestry. 117(4): 323-339. https://doi.org/10.1093/jofore/fvz033.

Fried, Jeremy S.; Potts, Larry D.; Loreno, Sara M.; Christensen, Glenn A.; Barbour, R. Jamie. 2017. Inventory-based landscape-scale simulation of management effectiveness and economic feasibility with BioSum. Journal of Forestry. 115(4): 249-257. https://doi.org/10.5849/jof.15-087.

Eskelson, Bianca N.I.; Monleon, Vicente J.; Fried, Jeremy S. 2016. A 6 year longitudinal study of post-fire woody carbon dynamics in California's forests. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 46(5): 610-620.

My past research includes two lines of research stretching back a couple of decades: simulating and optimizing initial attack success for efficient redeployment of firefighting resources, and application of geoinformatic analysis frameworks to natural resource problems such as monitoring wildland urban interface, assessing riparian forest, and terrain analysis. 

Earlier work addressed the nonmarket valuation of fire risk reduction, effects of climate change on wildfire severity, effects of elevated CO2 on tree growth, optimal siting of riparian buffer strips, public acceptance of fuel treatments, modeling of fuel characteristics, and ecology of bigleaf maple in Douglas-fir forests. 

• Fire, fuels and fuel treatments
• Forest carbon dynamics
• Wildland resource economics and management
• Inventory based estimation of past and future forest resource change

Our forests offer a unique opportunity to mitigate against a buildup of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and the climate change that follows, IF they are sustainably managed and all implications of forest dynamics, including mortality and harvest, are properly accounted. To prevent a further build-up of GHG’s, we must better understand how wood utilization and eventual disposal; disturbances, such as fire, that cause trees to die; and the effects of climate change, such as drought-induced mortality events, act as drivers and the extent to which different choices can better meet GHG goals while still providing the goods and services that flow from forests and upon which people depend. In the West, where fire suppression challenges can seem increasingly insurmountable, we seek to better understand the natural role of fire and how management could realistically, in light of economic and social context, transition forests to a state of greater long-term resiliency and sustainability, both reducing the considerable expenditure on fire suppression and producing forests more in alignment with current and anticipated environmental and social drivers.