Marc Heller has an article about the Keystone Agreements here. I’ll talk about that tomorrow. He didn’t cover many of the questions that Dave Mertz, I and other retirees had. Also interesting (and annoying) that Marc could get answers from the FS and Dave and I (and others who have been asking) could not, after weeks of reaching out to different offices and levels. We had to FOIA to get copies of the agreements themselves, which I’ll attach, also tomorrow.
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Maybe some of you, like me, are old enough to remember the old TV show “Sledgehammer.” His catchphrase was “Trust me, I know what I’m doing.” The problem was, oftentimes, he did
not know what he was doing. I wonder if, with these Keystone Agreements, the Forest Service is asking us to trust them because they know what they are doing. We do know that they are
committing a whole lot of federal dollars through these agreements, and there doesn’t seem to be much transparency.
To be fair, the Forest Service was provided a lot of money through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and they had to figure out how to utilize that
funding in a short period of time. Were all of these Keystone Agreements a logical way to bank that money and put it to good use later? Maybe so. Or was it a convenient way for the Forest
Service to claim accomplishments and take some of the load off of them? Maybe it was both?
In the interest of finding out more about these agreements, I sent an email with several questions to the Forest Service’s National Partnerships Office. To date, I have not had a response. I would
imagine that a response will need to be cleared by higher-ups, so it may take a while. Here are the questions I asked:
(1) We have obtained copies of the Master Agreements with the various NGOs through FOIAs. We are interested in the details contained in the associated Special Project Agreements (SPA), particularly the financial information. Shouldn’t this information beavailable to the public? We believe it is important to know how the Forest Service is spending federal dollars through these agreements. Do we need to file FOIAs to obtain this information or could it just be available online? If not, why not? We realize there would be some proprietary information that would need to be redacted.
(2) How are accomplishments being tracked through these agreements? Who is providing oversight, Grants and Agreements? The Partnerships Office?
(3) What is the process of awarding the NGOs funding? Do they receive the dollars and then projects are developed? What are the overhead rates of the various NGOs?
(4) Are the Keystone Agreements being used to avoid Federal Acquisition Regulations and federal hiring difficulties?
(5) We are hearing that Forests are having budget difficulties this fiscal year and that it will impact their ability to hire employees. In hindsight, was it wise to put so much funding into the Keystone Agreements rather than into NFS? Could a lot of this funding have been put into IDIQ contracts instead?
(6) Are Keystone Agreement accomplishments being claimed when the funding is awarded rather than when the work is actually accomplished?
I have other questions that I did not bring up. How much funding has already been provided through the various Special Project Agreements? It appears that through these agreements, the
Forest Service still has a number of obligations. These projects are not turnkey. If that is the case, are they really saving the Forest Service that much work? Are they a good bang for the
buck? Do these organizations have the expertise to accomplish this work up to Forest Service standards? Who is ensuring compliance with the associated NEPA documents? Are these
organizations doing some inherently governmental tasks? I could go on.
I would be interested in getting other’s thoughts on all of this. Can you help answer some of these questions? It would be good to hear from you!
This is a case in which maybe our lawyer friends can chime in..or maybe folks from Region 1 know more?
When does the FS simply determine a fine, and when do they litigate (as I think they did with Sierra Pacific in California) for starting wildfires? For example, Sierra Pacific was sued for damages and fees in excess of $1 billion for allegedly causing the fire. Does it depend on the nature of the organization (profit/not for profit?)? The certainty of who started it (as per legitimacy of investigation)? The amount of damage? I guess the questions are “who decides how to proceed and what to charge?” “based on what factors”?
Why did the Chief seem to say (maybe I misunderstood) that it was up to DOJ and he has little control over the decision?
Below is the press release from Tester’s office on the hearing today. Here’s a link to the exchange with Chief Moore. Thanks to Senator Tester’s office for providing this material!
U.S. Senator Jon Tester today pressed U.S. Forest Service (USFS) Chief Randy Moore during a Senate Appropriations hearing, questioning him on the USFS’s decision to stick Vigilante Rural Cooperative, a Montana electric cooperative, with a more than $5 million bill.
Following the Deep Creek Canyon Fire, which occurred in the Helena National Forest in 2021, USFS is seeking to fine Vigilante Rural Cooperative for fire suppression costs. This decision is based on a questionable determination of fault and fails to recognize the potential for this bill to jack up costs for Montana ratepayers. Senator Tester recently called on Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to reverse the fine.
Tester began by outlining the magnitude of the fine on the operating revenue of the cooperative: “The Forest Service fined a small electric cooperative in Montana a little over $5 million for a fire in 2021. To put this in perspective, the annual operating revenue for this small cooperative is $15 million. If this isn’t crazy enough, I recently learned that there is not a process in place for the cooperative to appeal this case directly to the U.S. Forest Service.”
Tester continued to specifically note the questionable determination of fault: “While I appreciate the importance of holding folks accountable and I believe in it strongly, I can tell you the jury is still out on whether the cooperative was negligent at all. Put that together, this process seems extremely broken.”
Tester went on to outline the consequences of this fine not just on the cooperative, but on Montana ratepayers: “Chief Moore, you know very well…that fining a cooperative with a $15 million budget, one third of its revenue – a cooperative that’s been around, by the way, for 87 years – would have two outcomes. The cooperative either goes out of business, and folks lose electricity, which is pretty darn critical in the 21st century, or the cooperative has to jack up energy costs on its entire members – because cooperatives are owned by the customer – to cover the bill.”
“Given that the blame for the 2021 fire is disputable,” Tester concluded. “My question to you, Chief Moore, is how the hell did we end up here?”
Tester’s recent letter to Secretary Vilsack can be read HERE.
Pretty sure this isn’t about wildfire risk based on this map.
The Hotshot Wakeup is best at covering this stuff, but we have folks in the media saying that wildfires will get worse, due to climate change.
Meanwhile, we also have the military-industrial complex developing early sensing and unpersonned firefighting helicopters, which conceivably can reduce spread.
We have fire retardant litigation, the EPA working on permits, one fire retardant contract that is under protest and can’t be awarded, and one for more “environmentally friendly” retardant that eats away at the metal in aircraft such that some will not be available for the 2024 fire season.
I’m not sure how scientists can model the climate fingerprint of all that.
We have power companies shutting off power (so conceivably we will have fewer ignitions) although their approaches raise questions (in Colorado the PUC will be investigating), and maybe also have unequal impacts based on socioeconomic conditions.
More than 150,000 Xcel customers lost power because of the intentional shut offs or damaged equipment during the winds that included gusts of nearly 100 mph Saturday into Sunday. As of 10 a.m. Wednesday, the company reported 75 outages affecting 929 customers.
Residents and at least one food bank were forced to toss unrefrigerated food, and several metro Denver schools were closed through Tuesday. Employees at a Boulder wastewater treatment plant had to scramble to make sure raw sewage didn’t flow into Boulder Creek when power was cut to the plant’s two electric substations.
Then there’s this fascinating story from the San Fran Chronicle on for which zip codes State Farm will be non-renewing policies. We can check out the map and see .. whatever it’s about, it’s not about wildfire.
According to the article:
State Farm wrote in state filings that it would not renew policies “that present the most substantial wildfire or fire following earthquake hazards, or that are in areas of significant concentration.”
And probably not about earthquakes. If you go to that link it says:
Last October, Marc Snyder’s insurance company informed him it wouldn’t be renewing his homeowners insurance this year for a reason he had never heard before: density.
The letter from Liberty Mutual said Snyder’s home was “located in a region where the dwellings are considered to be too densely concentrated for us to continue to provide coverage.”
But increasing density is supposed to be good for climate change, and climate change is supposed to be bad for wildfires. That’s what I mean by the circle of life.. California’s policies are to increase density. Anyway, sounds like there will be much work for PUCs and insurance commissions to investigate in terms of maps, and I hope they dig deeply. Perhaps California, as well funded as it is, can figure the insurance/power company conundrum out and let the rest of us know what they find.
Senate Committee Hearing on Budget on now with Chief Randy Moore. If you have questions that you would like to know more about, please put in our comments and we will try to dig deeper. Here’s a link to the Chief’s written testimony.
Increased understanding of how mechanical thinning, prescribed burning, and wildfire affect subsequent wildfire severity is urgently needed as people and forests face a growing wildfire crisis. In response, we reviewed scientific literature for the US West and completed a meta-analysis that answered three questions: (1) How much do treatments reduce wildfire severity within treated areas? (2) How do the effects vary with treatment type, treatment age, and forest type? (3) How does fire weather moderate the effects of treatments? We found overwhelming evidence that mechanical thinning with prescribed burning, mechanical thinning with pile burning, and prescribed burning only are effective at reducing subsequent wildfire severity, resulting in reductions in severity between 62% and 72% relative to untreated areas. In comparison, thinning only was less effective – underscoring the importance of treating surface fuels when mitigating wildfire severity is the management goal. The efficacy of these treatments did not vary among forest types assessed in this study and was high across a range of fire weather conditions. Prior wildfire had more complex impacts on subsequent wildfire severity, which varied with forest type and initial wildfire severity. Across treatment types, we found that effectiveness of treatments declined over time, with the mean reduction in wildfire severity decreasing more than twofold when wildfire occurred greater than 10 years after initial treatment. Our meta-analysis provides up-to-date information on the extent to which active forest management reduces wildfire severity and facilitates better outcomes for people and forests during future wildfire events.
Sorry this image is so fuzzy, pulled from news video.
This may be of interest to other folks…. dried grass and high winds are nothing new to the Front Range of Colorado. However, after the Marshall Fire, a concern over liability on the part of Xcel Energy may well be new, hence.. preventative as well as accidental outages.
The news follows the utilities company’s Sunday prediction that it could take through Monday or longer to restore power to more than 87,000 Xcel customers statewide who were still experiencing outages by 5:45 p.m. on Sunday.
As of Monday morning at 10:25 a.m., over 750 outages were reported by just over 29,000 customers in the Denver area, whereas the Boulder area still saw close to 225 outages affecting roughly 12,000 customers, according to the Xcel electric outage map.
A total of more than 150,000 were impacted by the loss of power — severe weather caused outages for around 100,000 customers, while another 55,000 in six counties had their power shut off by Xcel in an effort to prevent wildfires.
“For the first time in Colorado, Xcel Energy conducted a public safety power shutoff,” said spokesperson Tyler Bryant in a Sunday statement. “While many customers will have service restored later today, with the significant number outages from this weather event, this restoration process will extend into Monday, April 8 and possibly longer for some customers.”
With more than 400 crew members working on restoring power to more than 600 miles of affected lines, the company had addressed the needs of about 63,000 customers by Sunday evening.
Because Xcel changed its system settings during the extreme winds to restrict automatic power restoration, “this safety measure means power outages are likely to last longer than they typically would,” Bryant said.
Since we have both high wind and dried grass in the winter, perhaps electrifying everything is not a very resilient approach? Just a thought. Also, on the app Nextdoor, there was a certain (large) amount of unhappiness with the way this rolled out (although Xcel had its defenders, and lots of appreciation for employees working to get power restored). A critique From one neighbor:
1. Confusing messages sent out before cutting off our power.
2. No map provided in advance that would have helped know if any businesses, friends, neighbors still had power.
3. Outage map provided after power cut off that is just as useless.
4. Automated emails sent after power cut off assuring us that they are working diligently to get the power back on. Which we know they are not.
5. Another automated email sent out asking what we think of the new electricity rate structure.
6. They have now said that people preemptively shut off have lower priority than those who lost power due to the storm 🤦 Hard to think how they could have done this any worse.
Another thought.. a human being might want to review automated emails prior to sending to see if they fit the current situation.
Pacific Gas & Electric cut power to more than 700,000 customers in 34 counties early Wednesday because of high winds. Some households were without electricity for 72 hours, a spokesman said. Southern California Edison shut off electricity to more than 24,000 customers, also starting Wednesday.
The biggest failure, experts and customers alike said, was communication. Residents complained they did not receive adequate notice of the shutdown or no notice at all and could not get on the utilities’ websites.
Lessons learned from the shutdowns are critical because more will take place, experts said.
“I suspect for the next few years these are going to occur,” said Severin Borenstein, faculty director of UC Berkeley’s Energy Institute. “No one involved in this thing thinks it was a one-time event.”
The California Public Utilities Commission on Monday ordered PG&E to take immediate corrective actions, and Gov. Gavin Newsom called on the utility to give residential customers who lost power $100 rebates.
Commission President Marybel Batjer told PG&E it must try to restore power within 12 hours in the future, reduce the size of outages, develop systems to ensure call centers and the website are accessible and develop a “communication structure” with counties and tribal governments so they can respond to emergencies.
“Failures in execution, combined with the magnitude of this … event, created an unacceptable situation that should never be repeated,” Batjer said.
He said the state should create some sort of committee that includes public safety officials, elected officials, utilities and the Public Utilities Commission to make power shut-off calls in the future.
Utilities have sparked fires for decades, but they are now more destructive because of droughts produced by climate change and the movement of people into more remote, highly vegetated regions, experts said.
Southern California Edison’s customers complained the utility failed to give them adequate warning.
They hit the utility with questions about the timing, criticism over lack of immediate notice and outrage over spoiled food, stress-related health effects and fears that trapped cars beneath electric garage doors would leave people stranded in the event of a fire.
“We strive to keep the customer informed always, but we may not be able to depending on circumstances,” said Edison spokesman Robert Villegas.
Anyway, the article has interesting lessons learned and ideas for improvement (that could have helped Xcel) .. but given the warning timeframes, maybe it’s best to be ready for a shutoff, even if you live far from the WUI.
Here’s the PSA from Xcel:
Put together an outage kit
Include things like flashlights, batteries, portable chargers, a phone that does not require electricity, a non-electric clock, bottled water, non-perishable food, a manual can opener and a first aid kit
Make sure your computer is protected from surges
Keep devices charged
“Customers who use medical equipment that relies on electrical service should take steps to prepare for extended outages,” Xcel said.
Other things to consider include lighting options for when the power goes out, using a cooler to avoid opening the fridge and using a generator.
“For customers with power outages, you may want to unplug appliances containing electronic components, such as televisions, microwaves, and computers to prevent damage as power is being restored,” Xcel said.
Last year, Sammy Roth wrote a piece on the problem of reliability with regard to tolerating more blackouts during the transition time to solar and wind energy storage technologies.
Of the hundreds of people who responded to my question, most rejected the idea that more power outages are even remotely acceptable — for reasons beyond mere convenience. A former member of the L.A. Department of Water and Power’s board of commissioners wrote that “someone dies every time we have a power outage.” An environment reporter in Phoenix — where temperatures have exceeded 110 degrees for a record 20 straight days — said simply, “Yikes.”
Moura expanded on his skepticism by noting that modern life is more reliant on electricity than ever before.
Those of us lucky enough to have air conditioning depend on it to stay safe during heat waves — which can already kill thousands of people and are only getting more dangerous as fossil fuels warm the planet. Elderly people and individuals with certain health conditions are more vulnerable to heat illness and sometimes need electricity to power their medical equipment, such as ventilators, dialysis machines and motorized wheelchairs. Our refrigerators, cellphones and internet service all depend on reliable electricity.
“It’s not really about keeping the lights on. It’s about keeping people alive,” Moura said.
Two years ago this month, California narrowly avoided rolling outages after wildfire smoke knocked out electric lines that carry large amounts of power from the Pacific Northwest. The state again toed the precipice during a hot spell last September, fending off blackouts only after officials sent out an emergency alert to millions of mobile phones begging people to use less power.
Again and again, I’ve found myself asking: Would it be easier and less expensive to limit climate change — and its deadly combination of worsening heat, fire and drought and flood — if we were willing to live with the occasional blackout?
I received this as an email and copied it, so the links don’t work here. Here’s a link with lots of information. They also have recordings of their recent ScienceX program on genetics. No doubt these will also be recorded.
We’re not done with our discussion of the 21 inch rule.. but it reminded me of the Ochoco and this piece I wrote for the journal The Scientist in 1987. No WordPress then, no TwitX, no Substack so to get one’s views expressed, one had to go through journal gatekeepers. The rich 21 inch rule discussion is an example of why we are all better off. I think y’all will get a hoot out of how prescient I was (or not), and where it didn’t turn out exactly the way I thought. Still, this happens today, and it’s wonderful.
Here’s a link to the article, I reprinted in full below.
Scientific Discussion Should Go Online
Sharon Friedman
Nov 1, 1987
Innovation is the key to success in today’s world, with changes in technology, natural and human- caused changes in the environment and sociopolitical change taking place at an accelerating pace. To innovate successfully, we must take advantage of the natural resource sciences. Millions of dollars can be lost while research is waiting to be published researchers end up doing things that are not effective, or wasting opportunities to do things that are. I suggest that we utilize the new communications technology in order to communicate results in a timely manner, conduct training and reduce instances in which scientists reinvent the wheel.
The Silvanet System
To use silviculture as an example, I suggest development of a statewide or nationwide computer network (call it Silvanet) on which researchers at all levels could exchange information. The network would have four sections: reports, ongoing work, ideas and notes on meetings.
Reports, the equivalent of today’s scientific papers, would include unpublished thesis as, negative results and repetitive studies ones in which a technique is tried on a different species or in a different environment). These three kinds of information are difficult or impossible to obtain under the current system. People who submit reports would be encouraged to add two sections in addition to those included in standard scientific papers: one describing the problems they encountered and their solutions, and a “right brain” section for their feelings about their work for which they have no statistical validation. These sections would be invaluable to others working on the same problems.
The ongoing work section would be the equivalent of a project proposal, and would alert people to the existence of others working on the same problem. Currently, researchers engaged in a study often don’t know that others are working on the same problem except through chance meetings or conversations. The use of a network would take some of the randomness out of such communications.
People would put their ideas on the system the day they generate them. For example, new hypotheses could be entered on the system, providing an opportunity for people who have data that might bear on the hypothesis to respond. Researchers attending meetings—especially international ones that relatively few can afford to attend— would be encouraged to take notes and put them on the system for other users.
The priority of an idea or a report would be determined by the time of its appearance on Silvanet. From the day it appeared, there would be no barrier to the use of an idea or report. Individuals would be able to comment on each other’s reports, proposals and ideas in a public file. By reading these scientific discussions, criticisms and rebuttals, natural resource workers could develop their critical faculties.
The Advantages
Electronic discussion has several advantages over the traditional varieties. First, one has more time to think before replying and to develop more coherent arguments than in personal conversations. Then, too, personality is less important than when the discussion is face to face. Similarly, the sex, race, socioeconomic class and professional status of the participants may not be known, so that people could respond to ideas rather than stereotypes. Foreign languages are easier to understand in writing than when spoken, allowing discourse between two or more people who possibly could not communicate at all through spoken language. In contrast to phone calls, written electronic discussions can include equations, tables, diagrams and possibly, in the not-too-distant future, photographs.
Since natural resource workers with similar interests are often in widely separate locations, meetings are expensive and often only a small proportion of the total number are able to attend. Meetings become regionalized by geography, resulting in reduced interaction between regions.
Journals can be very useful, but many publish only a small subset of original research and can be slow to transfer vital information. Often, readers would benefit from criticisms of these papers. Electronic communication is not a substitute for meetings or published papers, but could be a powerful addition to them.
How to Do It
The question becomes how to implement such a system. Each natural resource (or other) organization could develop its own network, but information transfer generally is already fairly good within a given organization. This is especially true if the organization has its own electronic mail system, such as the one the USDA Forest Service has successfully implemented throughout the United States. The true value of a network would be to link people who do not get a chance to meet. Therefore, the most logical place would be through a state government or a state university—institutions that often Scientific Discussion Should Go Online already have responsibility for technology transfer for all natural resource organizations within the state. At some point the states could connect their networks into a national, and ultimately international, system.
To illustrate how this would work, let’s take a real-life example. A co-worker of mine employed by a small timber company found some work in physiology that he thought might apply to the problem of selecting trees for a genetics program. He contacted a researcher at the local university, who was not interested in the problem. However, from the standpoint of the economics of his company, it was an important problem. If a statewide Silvanet had existed, he could have put his idea on the system and obtained feedhack from a variety of people, including many with different kinds of experience and interests. He might have decided to pursue the problem further, and requested suggestions and data he could use to test his hypothesis from people on the network. He then would have contacted the state biometrician for help with experimental design and begun to write a proposal to be put on the network. He might have gotten more discussion on the proposal, and located potential collaborators using Silvanet. Finally, the results of the study—whether or not the new technique worked to improve tree selection—would have gone onto the network as a report.
Ultimately it would be best for the network to expand worldwide, perhaps with the industrial countries paying the connection costs for the developing nations. Information on technical issues usually is difficult to obtain in a timely manner in these countries. Scientists in these countries would have the expertise of their colleagues worldwide available at the touch of a keyboard. Scientists in developed countries could assist the developing nations on a timely (same-day) basis, and scientists who are unable to travel for periods of time could also participate. This would expand the talent pool available substantially. Through the establishment of such a system—which would have to include training in the scientific method—we could truly “teach people to fish” instead of “giving them a fish”—in this case, a piece of technical information.
Friedman is a plant geneticist at the Ochoco National Forest, P0. Box 490, Prineville, OR 97754.
The above photo is from 2007, by R6 State and Private Forestry of western spruce budworm defoliation. It wasn’t identified to location as far as I could see.
This one is on the Deschutes. For those interested, there is an extensive historical record of photos about various spruce budworm projects here. If you worked on any of those projects you might find a photo of yourself!
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I think we’re having a great discussion about the East-Side screens and the 21- inch diameter rule. Here I’d like to throw in an Old Person observation from my time on the Ochoco during the 80’s. It’s an Old Person observation about what seems to have changed and what has not changed in 40 years. I worked for four forests (the Fremont, Winema, Ochoco and Deschutes), but I’ll focus on the Ochoco.
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Historical aside: The Ochoco Supervisor’s Office at the time was a large open, cubicle puzzle space. I sat in the silviculture zone, next to the irrepressible Duane Ecker, the forest silviculturist, Don Wood and our boss, the Timber Staff, Chuck Downen. But thanks to the wonders of the cubicle environment, I often heard conversations of the Law Enforcement Officer (finding that particularly interesting things were said when he lowered his voice.. “the perpetrator…”). We all had Data Generals (DG’s). Unfortunately, but sometimes entertainingly, our Public Affairs Officer, Joe Meade (who was visually impaired), had a DG that read his email out loud .. in a tinny.. monotonous.. slow… voice. Apparently headphones were too technically or financially difficult to procure.
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At the time, people were running Forplan, and somehow we were involved in the tree-growing part. It could have been John Cissel, our Forplan soothsayer or Bill Anthony, his Deschutes counterpart , who told us “Forplan tells us to cut the ponderosa pine and grow grand fir, because they grow faster and ultimately produce more volume.” Or something like that. I know there are folks here who know more about what Forplan was supposed to be doing than I do.
So we silviculture folks explained why we thought that that was not a good idea. White fir/grand fir/ hybrid (WGH) firs aren’t fire resistant. They have a tendency to get spruce budworm, Doug-fir tussock moth, fir engraver, and a variety of root and other diseases.
So flash forward to today.. now “growing faster” is good idea-wise due to carbon.In this story about a study that Anonymous referred to:
“This is why specifically letting large trees grow larger is so important for climate change because it maintains the carbon stores in the trees and accumulates more carbon out of the atmosphere at a very low cost.”
The study highlights the importance of protecting existing large trees and strengthening the 21-inch rule so that additional carbon is accumulated as 21-30″ diameter trees are allowed to continue to grow to their ecological potential.
As a former silviculture worker, this feels pretty much the same as the Forplan idea of 40 years ago. Assume- no fires, bugs, diseases, drought (conceivably made worse by climate change) and the firs will do fine by themselves! No openings for establishment of PP or WL necessary.
But silviculturists, forest pathologists and entomologists, and fuels practitioners are dealing with the same biophysical realities- that trees don’t grow- whether to be cut as in Forplan, or to sequester carbon- if they’re dead and /or burned. It’s interesting to see that the body of resource professionals’ knowledge haven’t changed much over time (the interaction of trees, bugs, diseases and fire), while ideas about what practitioners should be doing from Forplan to carbon..seem to come from, and have the imprimatur of, people (however well-meaning) generally from elsewhere; places, apparently where fire, bugs, diseases and drought are not a big thing.
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If you want to see how much people already knew in 1994, there’s an excellent round-up, at least as far as the Blue Mountains go, by by the Malheur Forest Silviculturist, David C. Powell, in 1994- 30 years ago now. Same old..
White fir, the favorite food of spruce budworm, has flourished in the fir stands that have encroached on ponderosa pine sites over the last 80 years. By controlling natural underburns, land managers were inadvertently swapping ponderosa pines and western larches for white firs and Douglas-firs. (p. 5)
Ponderosa pine depends on fire to clear away accumulations of needles and twigs so its seeds can find moist mineral soil, and to kill encroaching firs that prevent seedlings from getting
the unobstructed sunlight they need.
By controlling natural underburns, land managers allowed fire-resistant pines and larches to be replaced with shade-tolerant, late-successional species. Many of the replacement species are susceptible to the effects of western spruce budworm, Douglas-fir tussock moth, Indian paint fungus, Armillaria root disease, and other insects and pathogens. (p. 19)
And there’s an interesting section on Native American burning practices:
Although some of the underburns were started by lightning storms in mid or late summer (Plummer 1912), many others were ignited by native Americans (Cooper 1961, Johnston 1970, Robbins and Wolf 1994). When analyzing early journals from the western U.S., Gruell (1985) found that over 40 percent of the fires were described as being started by native Americans.
Two major factors led to conversion of pine stands with underburning to laddered stands with shade-tolerant species. One was fire suppression:
Many land managers would agree that wildfire suppression was a policy with good intentions, but it was a policy that failed to consider the ecological implications of a major shift in species composition. White firs and Douglas-firs can get established under ponderosa pines in the absence of underburning, but they may not have enough resiliency to make it over the long run, let alone survive the next drought. This means that many of the mixed-conifer stands that have replaced ponderosa pine are destined to become weak, and weak forests are susceptible to insect and disease outbreaks (Hessburg and others 1994).
By controlling natural underburns, land managers allowed fire-resistant pines and larches to be replaced with shade-tolerant, late-successional species. Many of the replacement species are susceptible to the effects of western spruce budworm, Douglas-fir tussock moth, Indian paint fungus, Armillaria root disease, and other insects and pathogens. (p. 19)
The other reason was the attraction of cutting pine and leaving the GWH firs. Powell provides some detailed explanations of why that seemed like a good idea at the time (mo clearcutting, no expensive tree planting)(p. 27) . And there were interactions between controlling underburns and reducing tree vigor due to competition, so then they would want to take these stressed pines.
Since old pines often have low vigor and little resistance to insect attack, they were harvested before being attacked and killed by western pine beetle or mountain pine beetle. One reason for low vigor in oldgrowth pine trees was competition from a dense understory, an understory that would not have been present if underburning had been allowed to play its natural role.
In 1994 folks were thinking about climate change:
Reestablishing ponderosa pine and western larch on sites that are suitable for their survival and growth, and a thinning or prescribed fire program to keep those stands open and vigorous, would probably do much to address global warming concerns. Using a plan like that one would not only restore much of the pine and larch that was removed by partial cutting (see fig. 21), but it could also create healthy forests with an increased resistance to a variety of insects and pathogens.
And they were also thinking about (healthy=preEuro times) (p. 34)
Perhaps an appropriate yardstick of ecosystem health is natural variation: are the changes caused by budworm consistent with the historical range of variation for similar ecosystems and vegetation conditions? For the mixed conifer forests of the southern Blue Mountains, the answer is probably “no.” It seems that 80 years of fire suppression and 50 years of selective harvesting have resulted in vegetation conditions that differ significantly from those of presettlement times (Table 3).
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If some think that the FS wants to cut larger GWH fir unnecessarily, why would they want to do that?
Foster (1907) White fir, though occasionally used for fuel when no better species are available, makes poor fuel wood, while for saw timber it is all but valueless owing to the fact that nearly all mature trees are badly rotted by a prevalent polyporus, and the wood season-checks badly. (p.30)
Forest Service employees have sometimes been called p— firs due to the “badly rotted” characteristics of white fir.
Excellent story from the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network. While some of us think that NEPA via plan amendments would be good, the work that the San Juan is doing without a plan amendment is also good.
Assessing local fire danger, weather data, and utilizing Risk Management Assistance (RMA) analytical tools, the Forest developed a plan to bring the fire out to the prescribed fire unit/POD boundary. The local team conducted a structured risk-based conversation using the Incident Strategic Alignment Process (ISAP) framework, where agency administrators and local stakeholders collaboratively evaluated critical values at risk, developed strategic actions, documented risks to responders, and determined the probability of success.
The story is worth reading in its entirety, I just excerpted the lessons learned below.
Key Lessons Learned
Identify windows of opportunity: Fuel and weather conditions and resource availability are dynamic. Thinking outside the box can help realize opportunities to manage wildfire differently. Additionally, this year’s large incident can be used as the next fire’s best holding feature – as demonstrated during Trail Springs. Incorporating new disturbances into pre-response planning can help maximize their potential as holding features.
Provide clear leader’s intent: Without clear intent from agency administrators, firefighters and IMTs default to their experience and often suppress fires at the smallest possible size and earliest possible opportunity. Clear intent is required to consistently execute an alternative approach, and ensure we leverage our highly skilled fire workforce in pursuit of strategies that will more effectively reduce long-term ecosystem, community and firefighter risk.
Invest in stakeholder engagement: Working with partners and local collaboratives well before a fire starts is imperative to fostering a sense of shared responsibility. Ongoing communication and dialogue with stakeholders before, during, and after fires is critical to a successful, long-term fire management strategy. These efforts build social capital to better support complex decisions both now and in the future.
Leverage analytics and facilitate risk-based dialogues: Using analytics to facilitate strategic, risk-informed, and transparent dialogues can improve alignment between incident leadership, land managers and firefighters on the ground, resulting in higher quality decisions and increased trust.
Be prepared: Facilitating and participating in collaborative pre-season strategic planning efforts, such as Potential Operational Delineations (PODs), can help prepare a landscape to manage fires more proactively by creating a common operating picture and institutionalizing local fire knowledge. Additionally, actively preparing for long-duration events, anticipating, and mitigating late-season workforce fatigue, and building local fire management programs with the needed skill sets to manage long-duration fires can help develop local capacity and evolve the fire management paradigm.
Communicate the “why”: Good decisions may come with considerable institutional and personal risk, but with thoughtful, inclusive, and transparent processes risks can be considered more holistically. Understanding the “why” behind decisions provides critical context and can help create alignment between land managers, incident teams, firefighters, and the local community.
