Thanks to Matthew Koehler for these.. what can explain both sets of fire impacts? (these and Derek’s). Perhaps the fire was more extreme, or Plum Creek didn’t have large openings of different ages?
Two links..
First, Mineral Primm Fire Complex:
Comparing Plum Creek Timber Company Lands with
US Forest Service Wilderness and Unroaded Lands
and Plum_Creek_8mile
Note: I couldn’t pull the photos out of the pdfs to post so posted one that looks similar from this virtual tour of the Mineral Primm Fire- SF
Matthew, I thought it interesting that the virtual tour had this statement..
Meanwhile, the FS is trying not to use timber sale contracts in Berwyn’s piece here.
Excelent photos Mathew. But I’m not seeing the block of “old growth don’t burn” in the midst of charred Plum Creek. The “old growth don’t burn” photo’s would have been much more convincing if they were adjacent to burned “logged lands”. This is “checkerboard” lands isn’t it? One would think there would have been ample “photo ops” looking down the section line with unburned old growth on one side and burned Plum Creek on the other. The Google earth images seem to show the fire burned old and new indiscriminately. Perhaps you could share the lat. and long. or township, range, quarter section of the old growth stand.
Never-the-less, the Fish Creek photo’s demonstrate that “slope” is a huge factor. Of the clearcuts that I’ve seen burn most were on steep ground. But then, firefighters know you stop a fire on the ridges not the sidehill. Someday I’d love to talk to a Plum Creek forester and see maps of treatment areas and dates. Like I say, pre-commercial thinning slash is a fire hazard for 10 years. It’s been my observation that Plum Creek doesn’t treat 40 acres here and 100 acres there, they treat entire watersheds. But I only speculate. I’d love to know their “slash disposal” methods on skyline units? Did they broadcast burn after. The clearcuts I did were Dozer piled and burned(I never skylined). No surface fuels there.
So much to discover.
Sharon, I had written out a pretty lengthy comment and response to Derek and attempted to post it on Wed morning. Did it not come through? If so, bummer, because I didn’t save what I wrote. Thanks for checking if the comment is tied up somewhere.
This is the only one I could find from you on Wednesday. That is strange. I always advise writing longer posts in a word processing document, but I don’t often follow that advice myself. On another blog, I found that Mozilla stopped working and I had to go to Explorer for my posts to work. But yours did work that AM. Like I said that is strange.