DellaSala & Hanson & 248 More Scientists Concerned About Salvage Logging

This came in on Halloween from our noted environmental scientists (and environmental activists), Dominick DellaSala and Chad Hanson and a number (248) of interesting cosigners. Apparently this is Part 3 in a Developing Series: https://forestpolicypub.com/2013/09/27/osu-forestry-saving-our-planet-by-letting-us-forests-burn-and-rot/

Press Release

250 Scientists Concerned about Proposed Post-fire Logging Legislation

MEDIA ADVISORY – October 31, 2013

Contact: Dominick DellaSala, Chief Scientist, Geos Institute  541/482-4459 x305 or 541/621-7223

In an open letter to the U.S. Congress, 250 scientists request that Congress show restraint in speeding up logging in the wake of this year’s wildfires, most notably the Rim fire in the Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park.

The scientists raised concerns that currently proposed legislation (HR1526, which passed in the House in September, and HR3188, now before the House) would seriously undermine the ecological integrity of forest ecosystems, setting back their ability to regenerate after wildfires.

The letter also pointed to the numerous ecosystem benefits from wildfires and how post-fire landscapes are as rich in plants and wildlife as old-growth ecosystems.

Click here to see the full text of the scientists’ letter to Congress.

Click here for a Nov. 2, 2013 Associated Press article about the scientists’ letter.

Here’s how the Associated Press handled this, (with author unidentified, but likely based in southwest Oregon):

Scientists oppose two logging bills in Congress

Yosemite wildfire rages on, threatening water supply
Two firefighters watch trees burn while battling the Rim Fire near Yosemite National Park, Calif., in August. (The Associated Press)

The Associated Press By The Associated Press
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on November 02, 2013 at 1:31 PM, updated November 02, 2013 at 1:51 PM

More than 200 biologists, ecologists and other scientists are urging Congress to defeat legislation they say would destroy critical wildlife habitat by setting aside U.S. environmental laws to speed logging of burned trees at Yosemite National Park and other national forests and wilderness areas across the West.

The experts say two measures pushed by pro-logging interests ignore a growing scientific consensus that the burned landscape plays a critical role in forest regeneration and is home to many birds, bats and other species found nowhere else.

“We urge you to consider what the science is telling us: that post-fire habitat created by fire, including patches of severe fire, are ecological treasures rather than ecological catastrophes, and that post-fire logging does far more harm than good to the nation’s public lands,” they wrote in a letter mailed to members of Congress Friday.

One bill, authored by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., would make logging a requirement on some public forestland, speed timber sales and discourage legal challenges.

The House approved the legislation 244-173 in September and sent it to the Senate, where it awaits consideration by the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The White House has threatened a veto, saying it would jeopardize endangered species, increase lawsuits and block creation of national monuments.

Hastings, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said wildfires burned 9.3 million acres in the U.S. last year, while the Forest Service only harvested timber from about 200,000 acres.

Hastings’ bill includes an amendment by Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., which he also introduced as separate legislation specific to lands burned by this year’s Rim Fire at Yosemite National Park, neighboring wilderness and national forests in the Sierra Nevada.

“We have no time to waste in the aftermath of the Yosemite Rim Fire,” McClintock said at a subcommittee hearing in October. “By the time the formal environmental review of salvage operations has been completed in a year, what was once forestland will have already begun converting to brushland, and by the following year, reforestation will become infinitely more difficult and expensive.”

The Rim Fire started in August and grew to become one of the largest wildfires in California history. It burned 400 square miles and destroyed 11 residences, three commercial properties and 98 outbuildings. It cost $127 million to fight.

Members of the House Natural Resources Committee remain optimistic the Senate will take up Hastings’ bill before the end of the year, said Mallory Micetich, the committee’s deputy press secretary.

“We have a lot of hazardous fuel buildup, and it will help alleviate some of the threat of catastrophic wildfires,” she said.

The scientists see it differently.

“Just about the worst thing you can do to these forests after a fire is salvage-log them,” said Dominick DellaSala, the lead author of the letter. “It’s worse than the fire itself because it sets back the recovery that begins the minute the fire is out.”

DellaSala, chief scientist at the conservation group Geos Institute in Ashland, Ore., was on a team of scientists that produced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s final recovery plan for the spotted owl in 2008.

Many who signed the opposition letter have done research in the field and several played roles with the U.S. Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service in developing logging policies for the threatened northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest.

“Though it may seem at first glance that a post-fire landscape is a catastrophe ecologically,” they wrote, “numerous scientific studies tell us that even in patches where forest fires burned most intensely, the resulting post-fire community is one of the most ecologically important and biodiverse habitat types in western conifer forests.

“Moreover, it is the least protected of all forest types and is often as rare, or rarer, than old-growth forest due to damaging forest practices encouraged by post-fire logging policies.”

28 thoughts on “DellaSala & Hanson & 248 More Scientists Concerned About Salvage Logging”

  1. Certainly, regarding the Rim Fire, we will have 400 square miles of burned landscapes to play around with. What good will it do to mandate that ALL 400 square miles MUST be left to “recover on its own”. Blackbacked woodpeckers, surely, cannot use ALL of that land. I drove through the Rim Fire, just yesterday, and saw where there was plenty of “snag thinning” we could do. Since wildfires, both man-caused and lightning-caused, happen all the time, re-burn is almost assured, and we do have nearby examples of what happens when we don’t salvage timber. And then there is the whole debate on whether it would be worthwhile to replant. In unsalvaged areas, I would say that it isn’t worth it to plant trees, if the fuels are still there. On a similar issue, many areas will require ample amounts of herbicide application, to fight the bear clover, which is currently already growing back. We can assure perpetual brushfields, if that is what Hanson and Della Sala wants. And it will be cost-effective, as all we need to do, is to do nothing! *smirk*

    Or, we can be sensible and do what is needed, to get trees growing back, to fill the giant hole in owl and goshawk habitats. I rather doubt that the Forest Service is making plans to salvage “every stick”, as the “snag-huggers” would like you to think.

    Reply
    • Larry’s conclusions appear to be based on unsubstantiated assumptions (“wildfires, … happen all the time, re-burn is almost assured, and we do have nearby examples of what happens when we don’t salvage timber.”)

      Modeling done by the University of Washington scientists shows that post-fire landscapes are by far the least hazardous fuel profiles not just in the short-term but for several decades after wildfire. If the agency is following the National Fore Plan they will prioritize fuel reduction in areas that are suffering from fire suppression, not areas that have just burned. See C. Larry Mason, Kevin Ceder, Heather Rogers, Thomas Bloxton, Jeffrey Comnick, Bruce Lippke, James McCarter, Kevin Zobrist, Investigation of Alternative Strategies for Design, Layout and Administration of Fuel Removal Projects; Rural Technology Initiative; July 2003; http://www.ruraltech.org/pubs/reports/fuel_removal/. See especially Appendix B, pages 13 and 14.

      Larry’s unspoken suggestion that not salvaging leads to some undesired outcomes. We can only guess but his focus on fuels leads one to presume that he is talking about fuel hazard. A study of the portions of the Biscuit fire that were previously burned by wildfire reveals that salvage logging did not reduce the severity of subsequent fires, and in fact salvage logging appeared to increase the severity of subsequent wildfires. See Jonathan R. Thompson, Thomas A. Spies, and Lisa M. Ganio. 2007. Reburn severity in managed and unmanaged vegetation in a large wildfire. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. PNAS published online Jun 11, 2007. http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/journals/pnw_2007_thompson001.pdf (“In places that burned with high severity in the Silver Fire, areas that were salvage-logged and planted burned with even higher severity than comparable unmanaged areas.”) http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/research/PNAS_Biscuit_Author_Comments_PNW.doc. (“Some, including forest scientists, would have expected fire severity to be lower in the logged and planted sites, where large wood was removed, broadcast burning done to reduce fine surface fuels, and some vegetation management conducted possibly reducing the cover of flammable shrubs. That our findings were the opposite of this expectation indicates that the large diameter wood is not a major factor in flammability …”).

      Reply
      • I am not convinced that many, if any, of these folks have actually been to the Rim Fire area, before or after. If they haven’t, then their opinions should be taken with a tiny grain of salt. Yes, I have been to the area MANY times, and actually have been on the ground. Yes, I have also been into nearby fires, and have seen the results of “whatever happens”. Apparently, none of those other scientists have seen the death and destruction that I have seen. So, how much is their opinions worth, about land they have never seen??!? Site-specific science is pretty important, in determining what needs to be done. Preserving 400 square miles of burned lands, just for 6 years worth of blackbacked woodpecker habitat (and 80 years worth of brush and bark beetle habitat), does not seem like a good trade-off, to me.

        Reply
        • have to agree with you on that larry, I assume few of the people who signed on to that letter have seen recent salvage. I took some out to biscuit and asked what it was “exactly” that they did not like on the main units and I could hardly get more than a generic response.

          And as for the lower level of seedlings on the salvage units as documented very accurately and honestly by Donato et all, I assume that now there will be little or no differences seen,

          One does wonder about differences in fuels levels which would be easy to measure, much easier than seedlings. I imagine tom sensinig, the ecologist with the Roque-Siskiyou will have opinions on that so why not shoot him an email and ask, I doubt he will talk to me. He never has before although I was viewed as a valiant champion for truth by some in the FS back then. Tom would have done well to make friends with such as me.

          The point is, what can be learned from Biscuit salvage which was about as good as it gets. And how about the Davis and B n B fires on the Deschutes? More facts, less opinions-just the facts.

          Plenty of salvage to evaluate for enviro impacts.

          But let me tell you, I will be surprised to hear it works out economically in most places, and fuels treatments do cost a lot.

          Reply
          • Indeed, helicopter salvage doesn’t generate much cash, and is almost seen to be more like a service contract. It is much better to tractor log, on suitable ground, economically. There are people out there who do not know the economic differences, and would rather see all salvage harvested by helicopter. They also don’t know of the ecological impacts of helicopter logging. You need many HUGE landings, and sometimes, it isn’t easy to find suitable sites, already built.

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            • Not to mention HUGE amounts of fuel. People that are afraid of Global Warming and yet have strong opinions in regards to using helicopters vs. ground equipment are pretty much revealing their ignorance. Why we continue to use helicopters anyway in order to appease these people is the big mystery.

              Reply
              • Currently waiting for the helicopter to show up for some roadside salvage 5,500 ft up in the Cascades. (schedule got delayed with the shutdown) Maybe we will get the logs out, maybe we won’t.
                But having to use a helicopter is totally ridicules. It has no justification on environmental grounds, it is just to appease the enviros. When we are done you won’t be able to tell the difference between where we cable logged and where we used a helicopter.
                But there are some huge economic differences. Sometimes it seems as if the FS is just trying to eliminate the small operator, and makes things as difficult as possible. (which they pretty much have)
                If you are in planning for the FS, using a helicopter for roadside salvage makes no sense.
                It’s a roadside salvage because the tree might reach the road. You don’t need a helicopter to get them there.

                Reply
                • Hello Stump: Could you please tell me the name of this timber sale and the name of the National Forest and district? Thank you.

                  Reply
                  • why the heck did it take 2 years to get out a roadside hazard sale? It usually happens within one year. I imagine the impacts are innocuous so why not get in early.?

                    They do nice logging on the Middle Fork district, almost all thinning of regenerated old clearcuts, I never had any problem with any of it. Kudos to them.

                    Reply
                    • They should of gotten it out sooner, but the forest sup wanted to make sure the enviros were on board, or at least that the sale was under their radar.
                      We lost 90% of the whitewood and all the small diameter timber.
                      But then they ended up selling less then 1% of what was killed so maybe in the scope of things who cares that we wasted half billion board feet of the finest timber in the world.

    • Steve: It keeps them in the news and publicity seems to be a good thing for their line of work. Or at least that’s how it appears to me. Maybe I’m being unfair, but a lot of the stuff that comes from these guys seems to be more self-serving than useful; and much of it — from my perspective — has seemed far more costly economically AND ecologically than beneficial to most rural residents in the western US and to most US taxpayers in general. Same thing for most wildlife populations: more costs than benefits by a wide margin — and particularly by those species most valued by most people. In my opinion.

      Reply
        • Thanks, Tree: I didn’t realize my opinions were so “dramatic,” but it’s good to know. I will say, however, that there is bookoo evidence that my assertions are rational and capable of being documented. Also, however, they were stated as opinions for a reason — mostly so I wouldn’t have to go on a mindless literature review to support my statements. Let the letter speak for itself.

          Reply
  2. . . . And here I thought the mandate was to do everything possible to combat climate change . . .

    When a forest burns, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are huge. When you have a full-intensity burn of the type we see so often today, in minutes you release as much GHG when the fire burns an acre as 45 cars do in an entire year. When you fail to salvage what’s left, and allow the remains to decompose, you release still more GHG, some of that far more potent than the CO2 and other gasses you released in the fire itself.

    (Personally, I wonder why we have never pushed the EPA to regulate USFS emissions from the national forests . . . )

    On the other hand, when you turn trees into wood products, you sequester as much as 98% of their CO2 in those wood products for a hundred years or more . . . which is time enough for the new energy production technologies to evolve to affordability. After that period, the continued use of wood products in building and other products will reduce our need for other natural resources to be converted from their current condition to serve human needs.

    This year’s fires offer us an opportunity we are offered every year.

    Design and implement research projects where we can compare apples to apples. In any given burn area, fully salvage one-half of the burn, and use the other half to head off in the “ecologically approved” status advocated in the article. Plan it so that you are halving similar slopes and exposures. Include some areas as control parcels.

    We can argue back and forth until we’re blue in our faces, but if we aren’t conducting a well-founded wide-scale hundred-year research project across all of our national forests to resolve the question, arguing is all we are going to be doing.

    Reply
    • Norm:

      The ideal research project — comparing salvaged with unsalvaged wildfire snags — already exists in Douglas and Josephine Counties: https://forestpolicypub.com/2013/09/25/calculating-the-true-costs-of-wildfire-the-douglas-complex/

      I am currently working with others on a proposal to establish a comprehensive and detailed biological and economical study of the Douglas Complex paired with the Rim Fire in California. The checkerboard arrangement of land ownerships in the Douglas Complex and the variety of agencies and ownerships between the two fires creates a very nice opportunity for detailed research that could be completed — and transparently shared via Internet — at very little relative cost to the actual damages created by these events.

      Our proposal is only for five years, not a hundred, but the information and methods established during that time would certainly contain baseline data of great research and educational value that could be readily used and easily updated for the next 100 years or more. More importantly, the design is intended to become incorporated in future BAER projects involving large-scale wildfires as a standard operating procedure for systematically capturing baseline information on both biological and economical bases.

      Hard to say if we can get it funded by the right organizations or agencies, or not, but it’s a fairly perfect opportunity to initiate the very type of research you suggest.

      Reply
    • Myth: Forest fires release carbon stored in forests so forests are not good places to store carbon. Managing forests for carbon storage requires that we continue to practice aggressive fire suppression.

      Fact: Forest fires do release CO2 to the atmosphere, but taking a long-term view, forest fires represent a temporary localized dip in the landscape carbon pool that should eventually return to high levels with proper management. When evaluating the carbon consequences of fire we must also account for the decades and sometimes centuries between fires when photosynthesis and carbon uptake dominate the system. Also, when fires burn, only a small fraction of the total forest biomass is converted to greenhouse gases and lost to the atmosphere. Due to the incomplete combustion of large wood, 70-80 percent of the carbon in tree stems may remain after forest fires, and globally, 23 times more carbon is captured by photosynthesis than is emitted by fires. Guido van der Werf. 2006. Quantifying Global Biomass Burning Emissions Using Satellite Data and Biogeochemical Modeling. PhD Thesis, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. http://www.geo.vu.nl/users/gwerf/pubs/VanderWerf2006Thesis.pdf Even after a forest fire, most of the carbon remains in the forest and contributes to carbon sequestration. So called “salvage logging” would tend to exacerbate the carbon released by the fire because it would (a) disturb soils and release soil carbon, (b) convert the largest, longest-lasting logs into short-lived wood products, and (c) reduce the piece-size of the remaining material resulting in higher rates of decomposition. Aggressive fire suppression is not wise because it will only make future fires more severe and exacerbate future emissions of GHGs. The goal should be to reestablish natural and resilient disturbance regimes. In many areas this will mean large trees with thick bark and high canopies that store lots of carbon while remaining resistant to fire.

      Myth: Wood products store carbon. Some argue that logging is helpful because carbon is sequestered in wood products.

      Fact: It turns out that well-conserved forests, on average, store carbon more securely than our throw-away culture does. First, only a small fraction of the carbon removed from logged forests end up as durable goods and buildings – most ends up as slash, sawdust, waste/trim, hog fuel, and non-durable goods like paper. Of the 1,692 Tg of carbon harvested in Oregon and Washington from 1900 to 1992, only 23% is contained in forest products (including landfills), the other 77% has been released to the atmosphere, so, for every ton of carbon in our houses and landfills, there is another 3 tons in the atmosphere. Also, the carbon store in landfills is growing faster than that stored in buildings. Harmon, Harmon, Ferrell and Brooks. Modeling Carbon Stores in Oregon and Washington Forest Products 1900-1992. Climate Change 33:521-550 (1996). http://www.springerlink.com/content/u51867621j8307m7/ Second, wood products have short “life spans” compared to forests that are well-protected from logging. Most wood products are essentially disposable. Wood products which can reasonably be considered durable (e.g. buildings) may in fact be less durable than the wood retained safely inside an old-growth tree that could live to be hundreds of years old.

      Reply
      • Tree — You said, “Myth: Forest fires release carbon stored in forests so forests are not good places to store carbon. Managing forests for carbon storage requires that we continue to practice aggressive fire suppression.”

        I did not say that forests are not a good place to store carbon. I said that today’s intense burns release huge amounts of GHG almost instantly. I did not mention the massive amounts of particulate they also release, but I suppose I could have included that.

        On your second point, I was saying that wood products are a place to continue storing carbon temporarily while we wait for energy production technologies to mature to a point where they are economically feasible on a large enough scale that we can taper our use of fossil and other carbon-based fuels.

        We are, after all, talking about already-dead trees that have already released a lot of GHG and are going to release more through decomposition. The use of salvaged wood fiber is a different deal than the harvesting of living trees.

        Well-managed forests are a good place to store carbon. Such storage becomes increasingly inefficient as trees become aged, so young, healthy, vigorous forests are best for carbon sequestration.

        Well conserved forests may store carbon “more securely” than wood products. There is no mandate that we remain what you term a “throw-away” culture . . . that’s a place where we can make a societal change over time.

        The problem is that our national forest system can no longer be considered “well-conserved”. Fuel loads alone guarantee unacceptable wild-card GHG releases on a fairly predictable annual basis.

        As I mentioned, and a key that you did not turn, we can argue until we are blue in the face, or we can design and implement research based on our annual opportunity. We can design that research so that it is commercially productive at the same time. I recognize there are some who are uncomfortable with that aspect. There are others who are not.

        A bird needs two complete and healthy wings to fly.

        When someone argues with me using the “myth-fact” pattern, I often find that if I look a little further, the facts are not always quite as pertinent as they may appear at first blush. This is particularly true when the “myth-fact” couplet does not directly respond to what was actually said in the first instance.

        In this case, you missed the target with both.

        Reply
  3. If a fire gets hot enough it will burn anything. Because the Biscuit burned in the area where the Silver complex burned, and in the small parts that were salvage, does not mean that salvage logging causes fires to burn hotter. As we know you can use the “facts” many different ways to make a “truth”.
    I have heard, from a FS worker, that in the Rim fire, even areas where aggressive fuel reductions projects had been completed, still burned. Sometimes it is just too hot and dry and the wind is blowing and,,, everything burns.
    That why I think it is so important to put out wildfires as fast as possible. If you want to play with matches do it in the late fall or early spring, sometime when rain is forecast.
    I believe this whole fire is good for the forest is one of the great myths of our current “environmental science”. I have been involved in fire salvage for the last 15 years. I have never seen a forests that looks better after a fire then before. I have never seen a wildfire that wasn’t catastrophic and killed thousands of green trees, large older growth trees too. I have never seen a fire that thinned the forest out. I have never seen a forest that didn’t grow back more brushy and crowed then it was before the fire. I have never been able to identify any benefit from fire for the trees, it kills them, or forest habitat, unless you want grasslands. I look and I look and all I can ever find is that wildfire is highly destructive to the forest. It kills the trees and burn everything underneath them, often down to the rocks. Sure the forest seem to be able to recover, in places, but why destroy it in the first place? I though we wanted to protect our forests, especially our old growth forests. I have never seen, and I have always gone back to sites that have been salvage, that salvage logging has had any negative effect on the forest. I would say actually it has a positive effect, because I think with the removal of some of that dead material you will have a forest that is healthier. (not to mention a healthier community) That is what I have seen.
    We have a small sawmill and produce lumber products and have been for the last 30 years. Most of the lumber products we have produced I could go see today. Many of the project we have supplied material for are made to last hundreds of years. I think that is good way to sequester carbon from dead trees and create economy. Though I would prefer that the trees hadn’t burned in the first place, then instead of having a few years to harvest maybe 1% of what was killed in the fire we could of instead salvaged the dead and down from other events forever .
    Forests fires kill the forest, I have seen nothing good about them. Those scientists should be ashamed of themselves for perpetuating that “myth” upon the public.

    Reply
  4. about 6000 acres in silver fire were salvaged and work by USFS scientists did show a hotter reburn in Biscuit for reasons unclear to me. Over such a large area in varied terrain it is possible to accomplish a fair survey, which I think they did.

    Thanks for posting the lit info Tree, I would like to focus on such as that and I appreciate your even tone, so i will drop back into the blog. ( what else do I have to do here?)

    As I understand it, there was little or no post salvage fuels treatments, many units were accessible with copters so hard to do it. But a friend who ran the later planting said that there was rather little fuels left anyway, or the FS would have treated it somehow.

    I am not at all clear about the hotter reburns, my assumption is that over time, fuels in non salvage areas also increased with blowdown of upper stems, etc. So why the hotter reburn?. Is this just an anomaly or indicative of something else. I walked over some of those silver salvage units and could not see much obvious difference.. BTW, the Thompson and Spies study which tree mentioned was done using remote sensing with no field checks or attempts to offer clear explanations but Spies is a cautious scientist so I trust his conclusions.

    The donato study focused on higher fuel levels in salvage areas, not a surprise since they did little fuels work but not that much anyway or they would have done the work since regs require it.

    My guess is that small diameter fuels levels now on salvage and no salvage areas are similar (?)

    Reply
    • Certainly, salvage that occurred in the 80’s is a far cry from how salvage is done today. Some eco’s want to limit the size of dead trees salvaged, to match the green tree standards. I don’t think that is a great idea, although there does seem to be a need for leaving SOME large snags. On the Biscuit, since it took so long to get everything in order on the Silver Fire, much of the small diameter trees were not harvested, and surely added to the re-burn’s intensity. It is much the same way with most salvage projects. Litigation and plans making assures that the smallest merchantable trees will not be useful, left to fuel the next fire. The eco’s know this, and actively seek to delay projects, even if they cannot stop them. On my last fire salvage project, we were logging just 6 months after the fire went out. This is important stuff, that does have more than just an economic slant. Here in California, salvage is just as much a fuels issue as it is an economic one. Additionally, small diameter trees have much less wildlife benefits, “going bad” sooner than larger diameter trees.

      Reply
      • I was trying to pull people together to propose a Biscuit eco salvage plan that would focus more on small diameter stems where possible. But suggesting that any salvage was OK was considered sacrilege by too many and I made enemies by suggesting it.

        And bob is right about copter fuel costs, insanely expensive, in the Biscuit EIS they stated that about 75% of the economic benefits were from purchase of copter fuel. What???

        So, where can tractors be used well? On snow I suppose if they have enough of it. Much of the early lit slamming salvage was on tractor units logged poorly but i saw pretty good tractor logging on Davis an B n B salvage, I could see little problem is done correctly.

        Reply
  5. If you have never seen a fire that has a cool underburn and beneficial, perhaps you have not seen enough of them. I agree that too often fires kill way too much and are hardly the eco benefit some urban enviros like to imagine. Most of biscuit was in moderate or low severity, although the middle section went off like a bomb. The northern portion such as the area around hobson horn did have what I call an eco burn with a cooler ground fire across much of it. But it burned in better weather conditions.

    ( I need to offer that much of that northern Biscuit burn was actually burnout areas set by the FS so calling it wildfire is inaccurate. Who knows, if it had been wildfire it might have burned hotter although overall, the burnout areas in Biscuit came in at 45% high severity, same as wildfire.)

    I have seen the same low mortality in parts of E Oregon in P pine ( such as east side B n B fire) although with some thinning mortality of old trees would have been lower.

    I am “Ok” with 15% high mortality in patches, any more than that makes me ill. Needless to say, Biscuit was off the charts at 45% high mortality.

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  6. As for release of carbon in fires….it is much less than many people think, I got into an exchange about this with Della Salla at a conference and was surprised at how low it actually was.

    But i think the greater concern is small particulate matter from burning which is now seen as a pressing issue across the world.

    I can have my differences with him but when it comes down to it, we can talk about the actual data
    and keep it on an even tone. (Thanks Tree for that from you too. ) I appreciate that since we do have our spats. You might note several pubs and articles we co authored together, although i am saddened that I am not with him now to wield the sharp blade of accuracy for him as I once did. He always did listen and did his reading. A trait to emulate.

    Reply

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