No, California’s Forests Aren’t Failing to Regrow After Big Wildfires

The following article, written by George Wuerthner, was originally published at Earth Island Journal. – mk

New study about low conifer regeneration lacks context
By George Wuerthner

Recently researchers at UC Davis and the US Forest Service presented a new scientific study that suggested a dire future for forests in California. The study on conifer establishment after wildfires in California found that 43 percent of their study plots did not have conifer regeneration that met Forest Service Stocking Standards, implying that without additional management we may face a future without forests.

The findings were viewed with alarm by some, with some news reports suggesting that California’s forests were not regenerating after high severity wildfires.

To be fair, the study was not intended to review all the benefits of high-severity blazes, but what it lacked was context. First, even the authors admitted that the paradigm used to determine conifer regeneration is biased towards timber production. Besides, there are many nuances in interpretation that were only mentioned in the body of the study that few bothered to review. As a result, the report has generated undue concern and panic among the public that the state’s forests may be disappearing.

With regards to context, the authors, for one, choose to focus on the increase of wildfires in the past three decades, arguing that blazes during this period were more severe and extensive than wildfires in the past. They attributed this to fire suppression, past logging, and other forest management practices which they alleged have led to this significant increase in large wildfires. While these factors likely contributed to the observed greater tree density and fuel loads in forests to some degree, the report ignores the influence of past, wetter climatic conditions on limiting wildfire, and the ongoing drought that is likely contributing to greater fire occurrence.

Furthermore, the study made statements like “the frequency, size, and severity of wildfires across much of the western United States are increasing” without providing a time factor. Inreasing, compared to what? That’s important because there is ample paleo and even historic evidence of large high-severity blazes that have occurred in the past. For instance, during the Medieval Warm Spell between 800 to 1200 AD there is evidence for extremely large and continuous wildfires across the western US, including in California.

Even more recently there was significant climate variation that influenced wildfire behavior and spread. Between the 1940s and 1980s, for instance, the overall climate around the West was cooler and moister than in the decades past. These moist and cool conditions naturally reduced fire ignitions and fire spread. They also facilitated greater seedling survival and hence led to an increase in tree density.

So was fire suppression as important as commonly assumed or did climatic conditions contribute to the increase in tree densities and a reduction in fires? Likely both are responsible, but almost universally fire suppression is given more credit than is reasonable.

This context is important because most current management, including so-called forest restoration, is justified on the belief that human inference with natural processes has created current forest conditions, and thus requires human intervention, usually in the form of logging.

And while California has experienced some large wildfires with extensive high-severity patches, one shouldn’t ignore the fact that the state has experienced one of the longest and most extreme droughts in the past 1,000 years. Given such historic drought conditions, one would expect there to be significant wildfires.

And when considering the climate change context, it would help to look at wildfires (as well as other natural processes like bark beetles) as helping to thin forests to help them adjust to new climatic parameters. The lack of conifer regeneration may be viewed as a good thing that is balancing the vegetation’s hydrological needs with available soil moisture.

The Forest Service, however, requires a certain amount of conifer regeneration within five years after logging. If there is insufficient natural regeneration, the Forest Service requires timber companies to plant conifers on the site, often creating even-aged, single species plantations that are biological deserts.

But is this silvicultural standard an appropriate way to measure the ecological effects of wildfire? I would argue it is not.

Having ample, rapid, and dense conifer regeneration is only important if your goal is logging for wood products. The focus on conifers skews the report because it gives the impression there was little vegetation on many of the plots. However, on most sites there was vegetation growing including regeneration of many native hardwoods like bigleaf maple, Pacific madrone, and black oak — all of which sprout from root crowns after a fire.

In addition, on many plots, shrubs like those from the ceanothus genus (California lilac, soap bush etc.) colonized burn sites, particularly high severity burn ones. These shrub species control erosion, and are important nitrogen fixers that help restore soil health. Other shrubs common on burn sites, like chokeberry and bitter cherry, are important food sources for wildlife.

In fact, in many instances, it is standard Forest Service practice in the Sierra Nevada and elsewhere to use herbicides on these nitrogen-fixing shrubs to hasten the establishment of conifers, therefore short-circuiting the natural ecological succession, and reducing the replacement of important nutrients in the soils.

In addition to shrubs, the report shows that there was a documented increase in “forbs” or flowering plants. These plants play an important role in forest ecosystems. Oaks, for instance, are an important source of mast (acorns) that many wildlife species from acorn woodpeckers to black bears feast upon. Many bird species utilize the shrub habitat for nesting and feed upon shrub, berries, and fruits. Shrubs are also consumed by deer and other browsing wildlife. And flowers are both consumed by wildlife and provide sources of pollen and honey for insects like bees and wasps.

But none of these ecological values were mentioned in the study.

Using the silvicultural standards for conifer regeneration that requires a certain number of confer seedlings established within five years also ignores the role that climate plays in conifer establishment. (Again, California has been experiencing one of the most severe droughts in history.)

Many conifers only have good seed production every five to ten years. Even in a good cone crop year, seeds require very a precise combination of moisture, temperature, and soil for successful germination and then another set of factors for seedling survival. The likelihood that all these factors would be met in five years is not high. So, expecting plots to have conifer regeneration after such a short period ignores the reality of climatic and tree biology factors required for regeneration.

Furthermore, the researchers own data showed there was less conifer regeneration on drier sites — exactly what one would expect during a severe drought that only exacerbates seedling failures.

Another important value of high-severity blazes that was not mentioned in the report is that they introduce snags and dead wood into forest ecosystems. The post-fire snag forest is some of the rarest and shortest lived habitat in our forest ecosystems. Studies have demonstrated that such snag forests — which include patches of native fire-following shrubs, downed logs, colorful wildflowers, and dense pockets of natural conifer and oak regeneration — are among one of the most biodiverse forest ecosystems. These short-lived forests exist only for a few years until the regeneration process is complete and new trees start taking over the space.

There were other methodological issues with the study. For instance, each study plot was only 1/70 of an acre. Given the natural heterogeneity of wildfires that result in mosaic patch of high, medium, low severity and unburned, small plots are unlikely to capture the diversity of regeneration that might characterize a larger plot. The study authors even acknowledged that much of the variation in conifer regeneration was due to non-fire attributes like slope, aspect (north slopes are moister) elevation, and other abiotic conditions that influenced conifer regeneration.

In addition, they acknowledge later in their paper that perhaps the Forest Service standard for conifer regeneration is too high, especially since most areas that meet such standard require thinning at a later date to reduce forest density. A lower stocking rate requirement would mean more of their plots would meet the Forest Service standards.

What all of this demonstrates is that much of the “problem” is an artifact of the unrealistic Forest Service silvicultural standards both for the number of conifer seedlings expected on a patch of land within five years and the bias towards timber production that ignores the many ecological benefits of high-severity fires. Many studies show it takes 30 to 60 years after a high-severity blaze for forest regeneration to occur under natural conditions. So what’s the rush?

Rather than alarming, lack of conifer regeneration allows other vegetation its “moment in the sun” so to speak, and provides for a much more diverse forest ecosystem. It also may be an important factor that is creating less dense forests that will be better adapted to future and predicted climate warming.

George Wuerthner is an ecologist who has been studying predators for four decades. He serves on the Science Advisory Board of Project Coyote and is the author of 38 books including Welfare Ranching, Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy, Energy: The Delusion of Endless Growth and Overdevelopment, Thrillcraft, and Keeping the Wild.

11 thoughts on “No, California’s Forests Aren’t Failing to Regrow After Big Wildfires”

  1. Despite major parts of the Rim Fire being re-burns, again we see them not being mentioned. Similarly, the lack of seed sources in re-burns are also a major issue. Competition from brush and bearclover, as well as their intense flammability, are impacts that should not be discounted. I’ve provided examples of the results of “Whatever Happens”. There is no lack of “snag habitat”. That idea is merely a legacy of pre-Man landscapes, and not suitable for today’s realities.

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    • The Rim Fire area was 257,314 acres. So, if it’s true that “major parts of the Rim Fire being re-burns,” how many acres would that be? Saying that it was “major parts” seems to indicate that it must have been about 130,000 acres of re-burns, right? Do you have an actual acre figure for how much of the human-caused Rim Fire was ‘reburn.’ Also, in what time frame does it count as ‘re-burn’ since most things on earth have burned at one time or another.

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      • I think Larry is right- my quick and dirty estimate is the Rim Fire included about 145,000 acres that burned since 1970. That’s all pretty recent, and part of the reason the salvage was limited- a lot of those brushy areas and plantations were not salvageable as timber.

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        • Thanks, Roy. My ‘roadside survey’ also includes some pretty big areas that were mostly scrubby oak and brush, from the last set of fires. Some of those areas do appear to possibly be those “perpetual brushfields” some foresters like to point at. Certainly, some of those areas have always been like that, due to other ‘natural’ considerations. South-facing granitic slopes just cannot build and keep layers of organic matter, as they get burned off when the thick brush burned, every 10-20 years, historically.

          Additional acres were never replanted, due to the extreme terrain in the Tuolumne River canyon. There were areas, even back into the mid-70’s, where certain portions were “left to recover on their own”. Those extremely brushy areas, with hidden downed logs in them, burned at moderate to high intensities, affecting the adjacent thinned plantations in a negative way. However, many of the recently-thinned plantations came through it surprisingly well.

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  2. “If there is insufficient natural regeneration, the Forest Service requires timber companies to plant conifers on the site, often creating even-aged, single species plantations that are biological deserts.”

    This one example shows how misinformed Wuerthner is. It makes no sense regarding Forest Service lands in the Sierra Nevada.

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    • I’m not sure I understand your point, Larry. Is there no such requirement to plant conifers in the Sierras? (I’d be interested in the actual source document that contains this requirement.)

      My point would probably be that any requirement to regenerate anything is probably related to the fact that the Forest Service has designated these lands as suitable for timber production, and to produce timber you have to start growing it. One way to get more of Wuerthner wants would be to designate fewer suitable acres. The Forest Service should at least recognize that fires and regeneration problems will occur in these areas and appropriately reflect the reduced timber yields in its revised forest plan projections.

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      • Not in wildfire areas! The key is that “timber companies” have no responsibility to replant logged areas on Forest Service lands. Actually, most post-fire reforestation projects take years to be put together. Many of them are ‘herbicide dependent’, with many hoops to jump through. Here in California, it makes little sense to replant an unsalvaged area, due to the short fire return interval. Such policies will result in a massive land-use change, converting forests into scrublands (like we have seen in Yosemite’s Foresta area). Even the brush is having trouble growing in soils that have no organic matter and reduced water-holding capacity. Using the Rim Fire as an example, there will be around 180,000 acres of unmanaged fire zone, including reforestation.

        If you are talking about the requirement to replant clearcuts, like in other parts of the Forest Service system, clearcuts have been banned, in the Sierra Nevada, since 1993. So, obviously, such a requirement no longer has a use.

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  3. I don’t know much about the fires in California, but here in Montana, ponderosa pine is having a very tough time regenerating on some of the burned areas. For example, the Darby fires in the early 2000’s. The reason for the lack of tree regeneration were a bit complex, suffice to say it was mostly man caused via poor forest practices. We placed thousands of daubinmire sampling plots and found only two seedlings. Basically the fire burned up the propagule source, combined with a bit of bad luck. Disturbance ecology is an interesting topic, with a lot of variables that influence post-disturbance plant communities. It seems the more we learn, the more disturbance response acts in ways that are not as predictable as we ecologists and foresters previously thought.

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  4. “Having ample, rapid, and dense conifer regeneration is only important if your goal is logging for wood products.”…. Or, if you want to re-grow rare and dwindling owl and goshawk habitats. The ‘wildfires are great’ people never address the losses of nesting habitats, either.

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  5. A lot of what George Wuerthner says is very true and is included in the tool bag of sustainable forest management. The primary area where he goes wrong is in giving the impression that these tools are one size fits all solutions and the idea that each acre of the forest can be evaluated on a standalone basis without considering the interaction of one component of the forest landscape on another. Other items worth commenting on include:

    1) “there is ample paleo and even historic evidence of large high-severity blazes that have occurred in the past. For instance, during the Medieval Warm Spell between 800 to 1200 AD there is evidence for extremely large and continuous wildfires across the western US, including in California.”
    –> So why do enviros believe that the “hands off forestry” and “let it burn” experiences of Medieval and earlier times are appropriate in these days when population and infrastructure are significantly more at risk from catastrophic loss as compared to the risk in Medieval and earlier times?

    2) “California has experienced some large wildfires with extensive high-severity patches, one shouldn’t ignore the fact that the state has experienced one of the longest and most extreme droughts in the past 1,000 years. Given such historic drought conditions, one would expect there to be significant wildfires.”
    –> Wrong: “a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.”

    3) “Between the 1940s and 1980s, for instance, the overall climate around the West was cooler and moister than in the decades past”
    –> Not true for California – I can’t speak to the rest of the “West” See list and duration of droughts since 1929

    4) “Many conifers only have good seed production every five to ten years. Even in a good cone crop year, seeds require very a precise combination of moisture, temperature, and soil for successful germination and then another set of factors for seedling survival. The likelihood that all these factors would be met in five years is not high. So, expecting plots to have conifer regeneration after such a short period ignores the reality of climatic and tree biology factors required for regeneration.”
    –> I would expand on Larry’s comments above to say that Wuerthner neglects to point out that these large catastrophic contiguous fires remove the seed source to an extreme distance thereby making it impossible to expect shade intolerant species to have any decent chance of success for many decades beyond the 30 yrs of this study or the 60 years that he mentions elsewhere. That is fine if your agreed upon integrated landscape level plan doesn’t call for these forests to be returned to shade intolerant conifers in order to meet a specific habitat or other agreed upon landscape level goal.
    — >However, irregular clearcuts of <120 acres or so in the appropriate situations or control burns that got outside of the target area would provide more opportunities (than catastrophic wildfire, insect and disease outbreaks) for successful artificial/natural regeneration in a more timely manner with less devastating impacts on soils, hydrology, and the forest dependent species that Larry mentions. In addition, having a forest consisting of smaller adjacent stands with significantly differing tree heights provides breaks that can make controlling any outbreak a whole lot easier and less costly than "hands off forestry" as well as provide more proximate areas for dispersal of dependent species when the disturbance occurs.
    --> If large areas of catastrophic loss are acceptable then why aren’t small clearcuts acceptable where appropriate in order to provide a more environmentally friendly solution to overly dense stands at high risk of catastrophic loss to the forest, its dependent species, human lives, water supplies and other infrastructure and do so at a lower cost to the taxpayer. Why can’t we have more healthy forest acreage as a result of the revenues generated from merchandising the fruit of the effort to restore our federal forests back to health?

    5) “Rather than alarming, lack of conifer regeneration allows other vegetation its “moment in the sun” so to speak, and provides for a much more diverse forest ecosystem. It also may be an important factor that is creating less dense forests that will be better adapted to future and predicted climate warming.”
    –> See the 1st paragraph at the top of this comment.
    –> The remaining forests will be just as dense as they were before the catastrophic loss and even more likely to ignite or be attacked by bugs or disease for every day that everyone says: ‘George says we don’t need to sweat it anymore – the fire that destroyed habitat, soil, caused erosion and other problems was good.’ The only positive would be that the area of catastrophic loss would serve as an extremely excessive natural break for control of an outbreak. Taking George’s point to the extreme one could say:
    a) let the forest burn and then we won’t have to worry about ignition or insect or disease outbreaks. A much more sustainable choice integrated with the agreed upon landscape level plan would be that expressed in item #4 above.
    b) George needs to remember that you can drown in water over your head in a stream that only averages one inch deep.

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  6. “So, expecting plots to have conifer regeneration after such a short period ignores the reality of climatic and tree biology factors required for regeneration.”

    Soooooo, we’ve seen minimal conifer reforestation in those parcels of land (burned in the Granite Fire, in the early 70’s) that were left “to recover on their own”. Is 40 years still “such a short period” of time for conifers to regenerate?

    Of course, again, there is no requirement to have conifer reproduction in place within 5 years of a wildfire. Wuerthner is just so confused, apparently.

    Reply

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