\n Researchers across the US are seeing a similar trend \u2014 forests that are historically adapted to fire<\/a> are now often being obliterated by the fast-moving, high temperature wildfires that are becoming increasingly more common with climate change<\/a>. These researchers are grappling with what it will mean for our world if the trees that are the centerpiece of these landscapes we love don\u2019t recover like they once did.\n <\/p>\n \n The fire itself is not inherently the problem. Every scientist CNN spoke with emphasized the need for fire on the landscapes they researched. But the lack of prescribed burning, a practice long used<\/a> by indigenous people to clear out dead plants and to keep landscapes healthy, has left these trees vulnerable. It means their futures \u2014 when they encounter hotter, more vicious fires \u2014 are uncertain.\n <\/p>\n \n As these ecologies start to shift, it\u2019s unclear if or when these different areas around the US will hit a tipping point where the trees won\u2019t come back. Instead, researchers say it\u2019s more likely there will be a gradual conversion over time, with once towering forests becoming robust scrublands or large fields of grassland.\n <\/p>\n \n Here\u2019s how some places around the country are changing, and how one state is succeeding in preserving its native wildlife.\n <\/p>\n \n As Turner stood on the dirt field, the air was hot \u2014 much hotter than during her previous 2013 visit. Cool summers and rain had been the norm for Yellowstone during her years of research. The heat was so intense this time that a field assistant was hospitalized for dehydration during the trip, said Turner, who works at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as the Eugene P. Odum Professor of Ecology and a Vilas Research Professor.\n <\/p>\n \n The ash coating the former forest floor reminded her of the ash she walked through during the 1988 fires \u2014 ash that covered her face and caked her socks. For a long time, Turner thought the wildfires from that summer 38 years ago represented how forests could and would recover. Despite miles of charred trees, the research in her field showed the forest would come back, and with a high density of trees, she said. But Turner said she didn\u2019t appreciate \u201chow much things could change in a relatively short time.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe could see what we call ghost logs, which is where there had been large logs on the ground, and they were completely combusted,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then you can see their shadows where the white ash is left behind from the hot temperatures.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Only about 5 percent of the tree seedlings have grown back so far from the 2016 fire, compared to what burned. In place of the trees, grasses blow in the exposed meadow, now dotted with wildflowers that commonly sprout after a wildfire. Turner said she is seeing \u201ca slow but detectable shift\u201d to plants that are \u201cmore tolerant of warmer, drier conditions\u201d and can grow back more easily if more wildfires come.\n <\/p>\n \n Slowly but surely, these changes could impact visitors to the park, Turner said. People like trees, for both how they look and the practical element of shade during hikes, she said, and the changes the forest is undergoing could impact how and when people visit the park.\n <\/p>\n \n The repercussions are seen in more unexpected ways as well \u2014 at one point, the park had a temporary ban on fishing,<\/a> including catch and release, because the fish were already too stressed out from low water levels and the high water temperatures that were partially due to the lack of shade, she said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWhat will be the consequences for lots of other values that people care about in that region?\u201d Turner said. \u201cThat could be wildlife habitat. It could be water availability. It could be shade if you\u2019re hiking.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But ultimately, it\u2019s not yet clear what the future Yellowstone will look like.\n <\/p>\n \n About 100 miles northeast of California\u2019s state capital, Derek Young stood in the middle of a clearing in Plumas National Forest. The carcasses of burnt trees that surrounded him felt like a graveyard, the remains left in the wake of the 2021 Dixie Fire.\n <\/p>\n \n An occasional bird would chirp in the distance, but the forest emanated an eerie stillness, said Young, a research ecologist at the University of California, Davis. Fifteen years ago, Young started studying these landscapes as a PhD student. Many of them are now unrecognizable compared to the thriving forests they once were.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s really actually crazy to how much change has happened,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n Many of the areas Young studies are changing from dazzling emerald trees to fields of shrubs \u2014 even years after the wildfires.\n <\/p>\n \n The shrubs, ranging from deer brush to white thorn shrub, are incredibly good at resprouting, Young said. While fire might lop off the shrub tops, their roots remain, helping the plants return quickly, he said. It\u2019s stiff competition for trees to endure, which need specific conditions to grow back compared to the hardy, drought-tolerant shrubs, he said.\n <\/p>\n \n In just a few years, the shrubs can grow to be as tall as a person, covering the entirety of an area, Young said. \u201cIt can really feel like you\u2019re swimming in a sea of shrubs. You can\u2019t see more than a few feet ahead of you.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n There are a couple of factors required for trees to successfully reemerge. Some species of trees can grow in the shade, but those species are also more likely to be destroyed during a high temperature fire, he said. Others need the heat of a fire to release their seeds, while many others don\u2019t, Young said. Those seeds then need to land in an area where they can grow and survive, which can be impacted by wind and wildlife, he added. A lot needs to happen in a short window of time in order for them to regrow.\n <\/p>\n \n As he sees these landscapes shift, it\u2019s hard to weigh if this is inherently a bad change \u2014 although he noted the important services forests currently provide humans, namely capturing and holding carbon dioxide through carbon sequestration.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAs forests burn up, they release carbon, contribute to climate change, which makes it more likely for more fires to burn and convert more forests,\u201d he said. \u201cYou could say, if you care about humanity\u2019s well-being, that that\u2019s actually a reason to favor maintenance and restoration of forests in place of post-fire shrub fields.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI do sometimes try to think from the perspective of like, what if there were no humans, and there is no society to decide what our values are,\u201d he said. \u201cIn that scenario, I think the sort of definitive answer is the most valuable ecosystem is the one that is adapted to the site in the absence of all the human intervention.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But he notes this change to shrubs is not happening in that theoretical vacuum without humans.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s not that the system naturally wanted to be shrubs. We created that condition by suppressing fires for 100 years,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n On the border where the Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountains, the flat-top mesas of Sugarite Canyon State Park frame the indigo blue lake nestled at the bottom of the canyon.\n <\/p>\n \n But the Track Fire had interrupted this picturesque scene, charring the thick tree trunks that peppered the canyon wall in New Mexico. \u201cYou look up on the hill slopes, and it\u2019s just these charred stems of old Douglas fir trees,\u201d said Chris Guiterman, a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.\n <\/p>\n \n Guiterman went to the park to research how forests recover from wildfires, inspired by the 2011 Las Conchas Fire, which burned over 156,000 acres in what was at the time the largest wildfire in New Mexico\u2019s history, according to the National Park Service<\/a>. As the areas impacted by the fire started to recover, new life sprouted where the trees had previously been \u2013 the thorny New Mexico locust, bright green thickets of Gambel oak, clusters of dandelions and other types of herbs and shrubs, Guiterman said.\n <\/p>\n \n Like California, many areas of the southwest are also seeing forests slowly transform into shrubland \u2014 specifically, many pine-dominated forests changing to drought-resistant oak shrubs, Guiterman said.\n <\/p>\n \n Those shrubs, in some circumstances, can act like kindling during wildfires, adding more fuel to an area that is already in extreme drought<\/a>. This contributes to the high intensity of fire, in turn killing more trees that had previously survived, he said.\n <\/p>\n \n Many of the areas Guiterman studies have a long history with fire. In 2011, the Wallow Fire burned over half a million acres of forest in New Mexico and Arizona, the biggest wildfire in modern Arizona history<\/a>. But Guiterman\u2019s research<\/a> shows large-scale fires happened in this area about every 20 years going back millennia. But what has changed recently is the growing intensity of these fires.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe fires in the path that we recorded, the trees survived those fires to record the scar and kept going,\u201d he said. \u201cBut now those forests, like the trees that we sampled, were dead.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n These intense wildfires are fundamentally changing the landscape, but in a way that he says isn\u2019t inherently good or bad, but just different.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIn Sugarite, you feel that sense of loss,\u201d Guiterman said when talking about losing 400-year-old trees. \u201cAt the same time, there\u2019s beauty to it because you have all these vibrant colors and everything (from other plants). But instead of wanting to wander aimlessly through this (forest) and have a picnic, it\u2019s this thicket of shrubs, and you can\u2019t leave the trail.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n While for many the charred remains of trees and dirt feels like the end of life, to Rae Crandall, it is just a beginning.\n <\/p>\n![\"Kim](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/gettyimages-515955078.jpg\")
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