Janet Franklin, Professor of Biology at San Diego State University, is leading a monitoring and research effort for the California State Parks and Recreation Department, on the recovery of forests in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park after the 2003 Cedar Fire.  Fire is an important disturbance agent in the Southern California landscape and plays a large role in the function and structure of its mixed conifer forests.  Since the early 1900’s humans have changed the natural fire regime in forested lands across the western United States by excluding fire, including Cuyamaca Rancho State Park.  Fire exclusion has changed the forest structure by allowing the persistence of shade tolerant, fire sensitive species, and increasing the tree density of the mixed conifer forests in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park.  A previous SDSU study carried out on West Mesa by Doug Krofta in 1995 (supervised by Paul Zedler) is used as a baseline; and 40 one-hectare stands, stratified across four stand ages, are being resampled in 2004 and 2005.  The Cedar Fire was a uniformly high severity fire that erased potential stand-age effects.  Conifer mortality was high everywhere, while oaks resprouting was high everywhere.  There are few pine seedlings.  Chaparral shrubs are resprouting in pre-fire locations and many shrub seedlings.  After the first growing season, there were 111 native species and only 9 exotic species recorded in all the plots.  These exotics make up a small percentage of the total cover and density (count) of the understory (5.7% count, and 8.1% cover).

Read 2006 journal article, “Impact of a high-intensity fire on mixed evergreen and mixed conifer forests in the Peninsular Ranges of southern California, USA”