Folks studying reforestation post-fire in New Mexico at UNM:
There have been a couple of these stories recently that follow the same script..with different folks interviewed in different parts of the country. So I’ll place them “in conversation” as they say, with other studies and reporting. Yes, I think we already knew that if there are no Momma trees left, there won’t be baby trees. But that is a mechanistic view of the world, I guess, and nowadays we can predict things, so we are told, without understanding the mechanisms.
From the WaPo on October 7..
But in 2011, the Las Conchas Fire ripped through the landscape, breaking what was then the record for largest blaze in state history. The fire was so extreme it killed nearly every conifer across thousands of acres of land. In the aftermath — made hotter and drier by human-caused warming — many species were unable to re-germinate. New plants began to colonize the empty space, including stunted oaks and invasive weeds.
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Coop worked with other experts on two recently published studies to show how rising global temperatures are allowing fires to burn bigger, faster and more intensely, making it difficult for vegetation to recover. These blazes are fundamentally unlike those that ecosystems evolved to handle, the research suggests, and the places they strike will likely never be the same.
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These fires carry the telltale characteristics of events that can lead to profound ecosystem change, Coop said.
In his first study, published in August in the journal Science Advances, he and his colleagues analyzed nearly 3,500 fires that occurred in conifer forests across the U.S. and Canada. They discovered that the fastest growing fires tended to burn bigger areas and create larger “high severity” patches, where the vast majority of trees are killed and soils are scorched. They also result in greater distances between areas of bare earth and the surviving trees that could be potential seed sources.
What emerges in the aftermath is often quite different from the forest that existed before, Coop said. Grasses and other herbaceous plants, whose seeds can be carried long distances by the wind, rapidly take advantage of any empty space. Ponderosa pines are replaced by trees like aspen, which can regrow from underground root systems.
“It’s still an ecosystem, but it’s not the ecosystem that has dominated this landscape for the last 9,000 years,” said Craig Allen, an ecologist at the University of New Mexico who was not involved with the Science Advances study.
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Long after a fire is extinguished, the environment remains hostile to species that evolved to grow in a cooler and wetter climate. Even when scientists try to replant burned areas, Allen said, the seedlings frequently don’t survive.
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The easiest way to curb such landscape-altering disasters, Allen said, is to allow more low-severity fires to burn. Prescribed fires and naturally occurring blazes that happen under the right conditions — cool temperatures, low winds — can reduce the buildup of vegetation that gives rise to the worst infernos.
OK. Yes. I think we knew that.
Yet these measures can only achieve so much amid the intensifying conditions created by greenhouse gas pollution, Allen said. Fires will continue to burn bigger and hotter as global temperatures rise. Young trees will have an even harder time germinating in a climate that becomes increasingly less like the one in which they evolved.
So…yes the Wildfire Tech summit is this week, and how big the future fires are is more related to suppression efforts than air temperature.
Also, the term germination has a specific definition “germination is the process by which a dormant seed, spore, or pollen grain “wakes up” and begins to sprout, grow, and develop into a new organism.” There are people who studied germination- and you can find info on those studies in the Silvics manual.
I was thinking “why did the reporter not talk to Matthew Hurteau or cover these efforts by those scientists?” This article about New Mexico’s and UNM efforts was from June of this year.
And then there’s evolution. Don’t you think the capacity of a tree species to adapt might depend on its adaptation mechanisms? Which may not be understood by folks with expertise in observing systems as opposed to working directly with forest trees. It’s a fascinating dichotomy. Recent research topics of Coop include:
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Landscape-scale forest management for ecological resilience
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Wildfire and climate-driven conversions of forests to alternate and non-forested states.
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The role of forest residuals and refugia in maintaining species and promoting forest resilience to changing climate and disturbance regimes
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Prescribed fire as a tool for increasing forest persistence through subsequent wildfire.
To predict the future of forests, wouldn’t you have to understand a) tree species genetic and epigenetic adaptation mechanisms, b) the current status of reforestation knowledge, c) suppression future policies and technologies, d) future presence of PODs, and other fuel treatments across the landscape?
Thanks for mentioning the FIR program. It was the source of much needed information on tree planting in Southern Oregon and wouldn’t have happened without agency and industry backing.
RE FIR program, look up Steve Hobbs, et al, Reforestation Practices in Southwestern Oregon and Northern California, 1992.