Steve Wilent

This essay by Roger Pielke Jr. offers an unusual and welcome take on Climate: “Is the World Ready for Good News on Climate?” Subhead:
“A new assessment of plausible futures suggests reasons for considerable optimism on climate policy.” Optimism on the climate? That’s virtually unheard of in the media.

Part of the subtext is that much of the scientific literature on climate change continues to base projections on implausible models, RCP 8.5 and its newer version, SSP5-8.5. Pielke and two coauthors of a paper on the topic in Environmental Research Letters (open access) suggest that the use of the more plausible scenarios “suggests that the world thus sits in an enviable position to take on the challenge of deep decarbonization.”

With this in mind I looked at the revised forest plan for the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests released this month. Here’s how they approached the scenarios:

Future climate: The modeled future climate projections are Localize Constructed Analogs (LOCA) downscaled from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) model realizations. This includes the hindcast (historical) and the projected (future) climate for the RCP4.5 (low) and RCP8.5 (high) emission scenarios. Each year, the range is defined by the highest and lowest model values for that year across all 32 models, and the central line represents the weighted mean across all models (Taylor et al. 2012, Sanderson et al. 2017).

This seems like a valid approach, and I commend the planners for not relying solely on RCP8.5 and for using RCP4.5, which is in the middle of the range of scenarios (1.9, 2.6, 3.4, 4.5, 6.0, 7.0, and 8.5). It would be interesting to know why they used RCP8.5 at all, since it is widely viewed as an implausible — not merely “high” — emissions scenario.

FWIW, here is a discussion (for climate nerds) of the relationship of the RCPs and the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5).

In any case, the plan’s “futurecasting” of conditions on the forests is highly useful for forest managers. For example, the FEIS includes charts that provide “Projected temperature variables for the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains – M221Dc under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 for (A) average daily maximum temperature, (B) average daily minimum temperature, (C) days per year with maximum temperature above 90°F, and (D) days per year with minimum temperature below 32°F.”

Anyone know how this has been is will be handled in other plan revisions?

This article about Ashland, Oregon, “How one Oregon town put politics aside to save itself from fire,” was first published back in September in Grist, but was republished today by InvestigateWest. Excellent piece.

“After another year of meetings and paperwork, the Forest Service approved the Ashland Watershed Protection Project. Environmentalists who had once thought that the notion of cutting down trees to reduce wildfire damage was simply a Trojan horse for loggers had engaged deeply with the evidence suggesting that human intervention could make the watershed resilient to fire. They had devised a plan of action they believed in. The doubters who had claimed that the environmentalists were obstructionists who would never agree to any real management watched in amazement as workers began cutting down trees.”

I attended one SAF tour of part of the Ashland Watershed Protection Project maybe 20 years ago. Lots of work has been done since then, but there’s a long way to go.

Maybe we’re too Serious here on Smokey Wire. Please forgive my non-original? attempt — meaning no disrespect at all to anyone — to lighten things up….

Q: How many Forest Service employees does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Scroll down for the answer….

Please post anything better…. — Steve

Scroll down…

Scroll down more….

Just a bit more….

A. One to screw in the light bulb and at least a dozen to write the EIS.

Here’s an open-access paper in which the authors find that:

Solely considering changes in summer daily temperatures from climate model projections, we estimate that by the 2040s, fire number will increase by 51 ± 32%, and burned area will increase by 59 ± 33%. These trends highlight the threat posed to fire management by hotter and drier summers.

Other factors are at play, too, of course. But if this doesn’t make the case for fuels reduction and other work that will make forests and communities more resilient, what will?

“Five wildfire recovery strategies for the Sierra Nevada” is from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, a California state agency “that leads California’s efforts to restore and enhance the extraordinary natural resources and communities of the Sierra Nevada while protecting them from wildfire and a changing climate.” Its board of directors “is made up of state-appointed officials, local county supervisors, and federal land management representatives who provide strategic direction to our projects and programs.”

These 5 strategies might work well elsewhere in the western US:

1. Landscape-scale forest restoration
2. Water supply protection
3. Strategic reforestation
4. Rapid expansion of wood-utilization infrastructure
5. Support for community-led initiatives

In the NY Times on January 5 (I’m a subscriber). Excerpt:

When the Bootleg fire tore through a nature reserve in Oregon this summer, the destruction varied in different areas. Researchers say forest management methods, including controlled burns, were a big factor.

Just received this from the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University:

Mike Archer has this in his Wildfire News of the Day today:

CAL FIRE sent along a press release which announced that investigators determined that Pacific Gas & Electric was responsible for the Dixie Fire, which burned 963,309 acres, destroyed 1,329 structures and damaged 95 additional structures in Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Shasta, and Tehama counties after it started last July.
CAL FIRE Investigators Determine Cause of the Dixie Fire https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KOTmTdyMl-T1NGwF2s890NjHBFFyTWgu/view?usp=sharing

The Cal Fire PR says, “After a meticulous and thorough investigation, CAL FIRE has determined that the Dixie Fire was caused by
a tree contacting electrical distribution lines owned and operated by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) located west
of Cresta Dam.”

Looking at Google Maps, the power lines in question appear to be on the Plumas National Forest. If so, could the USFS be held liable? Or is it all on PG&E?

This study, “Forest restoration limits megafires and supports species conservation under climate change” ($), by Gavin Jones et al, is described in a Treehugger article. Excerpts:

“Forest restoration often involves some removal of live trees—mostly small and medium-sized trees in the forest understory that have grown in because of fire exclusion. These smaller trees increase fire risk to owl habitat, and removal of these smaller trees will protect the rare, larger trees that owls use for nesting,” lead author Gavin Jones, Ph.D., a research ecologist with the USDA Forest Service (USFS) Rocky Mountain Research Station, tells Treehugger.”

…

“We found the direct, and potential negative effects of forest restoration to owl habitat (that is, removal of trees in owl habitat) were small relative to the positive effects that restoration had on reducing fire risk to owls,” Jones says. “So even though in some cases we found that restoration could have negative short-term impacts to owls, it reduced the long-term impacts of severe fire. These long-term benefits led to better outcomes for owls.”

In some scenarios, the findings suggest that placing restoration treatments inside owl habitats would cut the predicted amount of severe fire almost in half compared to treating the same area outside of their territories.

This is another case of research confirming what many foresters and others have been saying for years.

An essay from The Conversation, “Big fires demand a big response: How 1910’s Big Burn can help us think smarter about fighting wildfires and living with fire.”

Excerpt:

A new fire paradigm

The response to the Big Burn was not only wrongheaded, in our view, but also crude in its single-mindedness. “Put all forest fires out” had a clarity to it, but a 21st-century fire paradigm shift will have to be connected to broader conversations about environmental knowledge and how it can best be shared.

The U.S. has learned that it cannot suppress its way to a healthy relationship with fire in the West. That strategy failed even before climate change proved it to be no strategy at all.

Building a more successful coexistance with fire includes figuring out how to work cooperatively. This includes broader conversations about environmental knowledge, what constitutes it and how best it can be shared. Indigenous communities have long lived with fire and used it to cultivate healthy ecosystems. Prescribed and cultural burning are important tools in mitigating catastrophic fire and simultaneously aiding forest health.

Living with fire also requires teaching everyone about fire. Schools at all levels and grades can teach fire knowledge, including the science of fire and its consequences for communities, economies and lives; the history and cultural practices of fire; and the plants, landscapes and materials that can help prevent fires.