Abstract: Climate warming has increased the frequency of catastrophic forest fires, threatening forest resources and human being’s lives and properties. How to reduce the risk of forest fire has been a hot topic in forest management. In this study, we used the spatially explicit forest landscape model LANDIS to simulate the effects of fuel treatment strategies on forest fire regimes in the Great Xing’an Mountains. Four simulation scenarios were designed based on with or without fuel treatments under two fire control policies (current fire suppression and no fire suppression). The fuel treatment scenario contained nine fuel treatment options based on combinations of different treatment methods (coarse woody debris removal, prescribed burning, coarse woody debris removal plus prescribed burning), treatment frequency (low, medium and high) and treatment area (large, medium and small). Using burned area and the area burned by different fire intensities as evaluation criteria, a suitable forest fuel management plan was determined for Great Xing’an Mountains. The results showed that long-term fire suppression has increased fuel accumulation and the occurrence probability of high intensity forest fires. Under both fire control policies, forest fuel treatments could reduce area burned by high intensity fires and lower forest fire risk. Under natural fire scenarios, frequent forest fires result in a lower accumulation of fine fuels. A coarse woody debris removal of 10% of the area every 20 years is sufficient to lower forest fire risk. However, such treatment scenario is less effective under current fire suppression scenarios due to accumulation of forest fuels. Our study showed that coarse woody debris removal + prescribed burning on 10% of the area every 20 years would be a suitable fuel treatment option in Great Xing’an Mountains under current fire suppression policy. This study provides a scientific basis for forest fire management in the Great Xing’an Mountains.

Key words: fire suppression, fuel treatment, LANDIS model, the Great Xing’an Mountains, fire regime