Soils formed from peridotite or serpentinite typically support sugar pine stands of inferior growth and quality. Best development of sugar pine is on mesic soils with sandy to clayey loam textures. Much of the terrain occupied by sugar pine is steep and rugged. Sugar pines are equally distributed on all aspects at lower elevations but grow best on warm exposures as elevation increases. Elevational limits increase with decreasing latitude.
Sugar pine is primarily an early-seral to seral species.
It is rarely found in pure stands. When sugar pine is found to be the dominant species in old-growth stands, it most often was dominant to begin with or released by natural causes. White fir would usually be the climax species in mixed conifer forest in the absence of any natural disturbances. It has adapted a thick, fire-resistant bark and open canopy that retards aerial fire spread. Mature trees can survive most fires, suffering only bole scorch.