2013 Fire Season in New Mexico Below Normal: Nearly 60% of forest land within fire boundaries remained unburned or burned at low severity

The following press release is from WildEarth Guardians. If you click on this link, you can see a few charts and a map. If anyone has questions about the information contained within this press release from WildEarth Guardians, please contact WildEarth Guardians directly. Thank you. – mk

2013 Fire Season in New Mexico Below Normal:
Nearly 60% of forest land within fire boundaries remained unburned or burned at low severity

Contact: Bryan Bird (505) 699-4719

Santa Fe – New Mexico experienced several expensive fires early this summer, the largest was the Silver Fire covering nearly 217 square miles in the Black Range. Fire costs in the U.S. have topped $1 billion so far this year; less than last year’s $1.9 billion, but the fire season is not over. The Thompson Ridge fire alone cost $16,326,136 before it was declared contained. Rising plumes of smoke could be seen on the horizon of Santa Fe and Albuquerque and breathless reporters gave statistics of ever increasing acreages of devastated forestland.

But, the numbers tell a different story. The four major fires in New Mexico this summer covered a total of 184,024 acres or nearly 288 square miles, but just 16% of that area burned at high severity. In all 213,289 acres have burned to date in New Mexico. While there is still a chance for late season fires, the total burned area for 2013 is significantly less than the 372,497 acres burned in 2012.

“Once the smoke cleared, the environmental benefits of the 2013 fire season were obvious,” Said Bryan Bird, Wild Places Director for WildEarth Guardians. “Though flooding is always a risk, these fires do more to clear fuels and reduce fire hazard than we could do with mechanical treatments and a large chunk of the federal budget.”

Burn Area Emergency Response (BAER) teams take action immediately after fires to analyze the area within the burn perimeter and take action to minimize immediate damage from flooding, which can have severe consequences downstream. The BAER teams measure fire severity to analyze the loss of organic matter from the forest. In areas of low fire severity ground litter is charred or consumed, but tree canopies remain mostly unburned and the top layer of soil organic matter remains unharmed. Areas of moderate severity have a higher percentage of both crown and soil organic matter consumed. Areas of high severity have lost all or most of tree canopy organic matter and soil organic matter is wholly consumed.

The numbers reported by the BAER teams for the 2013 fire season in New Mexico put into perspective the burn results. Of all acres within fire boundaries over 10,000 acres this summer, 59% (109,290 acres) were ranked as unburned or low severity. Another 24% (44,880 acres) was moderate severity. Finally, just 16% (29,125 acres) burned at high severity.

The Joroso Fire, located in the Pecos Wilderness, burned primarily in mature Spruce Fir stands with high levels of wind blown material. These conditions create an environment where high severity burns are much more likely than the other fires, so it is instructive to remove it from summary statistics. When removing this fire from the analysis the overall numbers demonstrate even less severe effects on the vegetation: 61% remained unburned or burned at low intensity, 25% burned at moderate severity, and only 13% burned at high severity.

Fire fighting in the United Sates has become a very costly endeavor. While most fires are extinguished quickly, it is the very small portion of wildfires that are not immediately controlled and result in significant financial burdens to states and the federal government. Already this year the Forest Service has exhausted its fire-fighting budget and has had to tap other budget line items. And yet, it is not clear that committing such resources is necessary or beneficial when human life and property are not immediately at risk.

“Fire is an essential process in western forests and we cannot eliminate it. Resources need to be reserved for protecting lives, not supporting huge operations in the backcountry.” Said Bird. “We can fire proof communities, but we cannot fire proof the forest.”

15 thoughts on “2013 Fire Season in New Mexico Below Normal: Nearly 60% of forest land within fire boundaries remained unburned or burned at low severity”

  1. So Matthew, I am learning from you! I have written Mr. Bird and asked him to identify the “huge operations in the backcountry” in New Mexico.

    Reply
  2. The title of the press release leaves me with more questions than answers. It says that “2013 Fire Season in New Mexico Below Normal.” What, specifically, is below normal? The release says that “the total burned area for 2013 is significantly less than the 372,497 acres burned in 2012.” But what is a “normal” year in NM? Was 2012 way above normal? What is the average acres burned in the state over the last decade? Century?

    The release also devotes quite a bit of attention to fire severity. For example, “just 16% (29,125 acres) burned at high severity.” What is the normal distribution of burn severity? How much burned at low, moderate, and high severity in 2012? Over the last decade? Century?

    If WildEarth Guardians has this information, it ought to have included it.

    Reply
  3. Is that “soil burn severity” or “vegetation burn severity.” If I recall, the CBD put out a similar report after the Wallow Fire, which was based on Soil Burn severity…while the vegetation severity was twice as much. If I recall…the vegetation “high severity” on the Wallow was 50% while the “soil high severity” was like 30%. Maybe I’m wrong…and I have other things to do than research it…but I am right about the Wallow. Frankly…I thought it was very deceptive of the CBD to use soil burn severity rather than vegetation severity…which at the time took me ten minutes to find in the Wallow BAER report.

    Reply
  4. Matthew

    I’m having trouble understanding why you want to pull the data that doesn’t support your point. As you say “The Joroso Fire, located in the Pecos Wilderness, burned primarily in mature Spruce Fir stands with high levels of wind blown material. These conditions create an environment where high severity burns are much more likely than the other fires, so it is instructive to remove it from summary statistics”

    –> The data that you pulled is part of the fire mix and pulling the data didn’t really change any of the numbers that you report in any meaningful way. So how was it instructive?

    Reply
  5. The Jaroso Fire was one of the most important burns for restoring aspen in the Sangre de Cristos in a century: blowdown of beetle-killed pine was reduced to ash then carried away by heavy rains. An aspen clone guarding the Santa Fe watershed is bright green right now and will expand into the Pecos Wilderness.

    The Thompson Ridge Fire was primarily of lesser intensity and killed many acres of dense ponderosa pine that had been allowed to inundate the land around the Valdez Caldera where cattle have been destroying browse for historic ungulates.

    Interesting how the fire season moved like a wave up the Rocky Mountain chain.

    Reply
  6. I agree the title of my PR may have been a little confusing. There really is no normal anymore for fire seasons. To be more clear, though sensational, the 2013 fire season to date has had far different ecological effects than recent years in NM.

    The BAER teams report burn severity as a measure of organic biomass consumption. This is different than soil impacts and different than burn intensity, which is usually a measure of the flame intensity of the fire.

    It is instructive to pull the Jaroso Fire, becasue the forest type/conditions were very different than the others. In the high rocky mountain spruce-fir forests of NM, we should expect a larger portion of high burn severity or total above ground vegetation loss. But you are correct,it does not dramatically change the results.

    For more background on recent fire history in NM and AZ, please go to WildEarth Guardians’ reports page and scroll down to our 2011 fire season summary. That report has much more background on the average burn severity distributions. http://www.wildearthguardians.org/site/PageServer?pagename=publications_reports

    Typically, in my experience, it can be expected in ponderosa pine and xeric, mixed conifer forest somewhere around a quarter of the burn area in any fire will be high severity. Of course, there are anomalies and stand out fires and this is certainly not to say that we have had some abnormally large patches of total biomass loss in forest types that would not have typically demonstrated such results in recoded fire history.

    The intention of my press release was not to deny that southwestern wildfires have been abnormal in recent years or have not had some long-term ecological impacts (e.g Las Conchas) rather to point out that sometimes the smoke and rhetoric during a fire event masks the end ecological results. Such circumstances, as are playing out now in California, can be a great disservice to meaningful fire policy discussion and outcomes.

    Reply
    • Hi Bryan: Thank you for your participation and thoughtful responses in this blog. I am an historical ecologist that focuses on wildfire and reforestation history. Two questions:

      What are the “ecological results” of a wildfire, good and bad?

      Do you think prescribed fire (planned and ignited by people) can minimize the negative effects (as evaluated by people) of subsequent wildfires and replicate or increase the positive effects (as evaluated by people)?

      Thanks for your thoughts on this.

      Reply
      • Good questions. Of course, the ecological results of wildfire are too numerous to review here. But, I would argue that several important examples because of acute human interactions are forest structure, soil sterilization and post-fire flooding. Good and bad is pretty subjective, but from a human perspective I suggest that post-fire flooding can be bad and that changes in forest stand structure can be both (i.e. fuel profiles and wildlife habitat). Forest structure can be modified with fire in some cases in ways that increase fire resiliency but sometimes in a way that resets successional stages or even crosses ecological thresholds (e.g. some recent fire in New Mexico).

        I do think prescribed fire can be hugely beneficial in both minimizing negative effects and maximizing positive. I would also argue, that not every acre can be burned without first some mechanical treatment, especially in close proximity to human structures.

        Reply
      • It’s important to remember that some of the 70 million bison that used to migrate between the Rio Grande and the Yukon wintered in much of New Mexico for countless eons browsing aspen shoots. Those conditions could be reproduced today given the political will.

        Reply

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