Steve Wilent

An addition to our discussions of forest carbon and the management practices that impact carbon storage and ems, and calls for preservation, rather than active management. A new study from Cambridge University: “Fire effects on the persistence of soil organic matter and long-term carbon storage,” Nature ($), Dec. 23, 2021.

A Cambridge press release boils it down:

“Using controlled burns in forests to mitigate future wildfire severity is a relatively well-known process. But we’ve found that in ecosystems including temperate forests, savannahs and grasslands, fire can stabilise or even increase soil carbon,” said Dr Adam Pellegrini in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences, first author of the report.

He added: “Most of the fires in natural ecosystems around the globe are controlled burns, so we should see this as an opportunity. Humans are manipulating a process, so we may as well figure out how to manipulate it to maximise carbon storage in the soil.”

Fire burns plant matter and organic layers within the soil, and in severe wildfires this leads to erosion and leaching of carbon. It can take years or even decades for lost soil carbon to re-accumulate. But the researchers say that fires can also cause other transformations within soils that can offset these immediate carbon losses, and may stabilise ecosystem carbon.

Fire stabilises carbon within the soil in several ways. It creates charcoal, which is very resistant to decomposition, and forms ‘aggregates’ – physical clumps of soil that can protect carbon-rich organic matter at the centre. Fire can also increase the amount of carbon bound tightly to minerals in the soil.

“Ecosystems can store huge amounts of carbon when the frequency and intensity of fires is just right. It’s all about the balance of carbon going into soils from dead plant biomass, and carbon going out of soils from decomposition, erosion, and leaching,” said Pellegrini.

When fires are too frequent or intense – as is often the case in densely planted forests – they burn all the dead plant material that would otherwise decompose and release carbon into the soil. High-intensity fires can also destabilise the soil, breaking off carbon-based organic matter from minerals and killing soil bacteria and fungi.

Without fire, soil carbon is recycled – organic matter from plants is consumed by microbes and released as carbon dioxide or methane. But infrequent, cooler fires can increase the retention of soil carbon through the formation of charcoal and soil aggregates that protect from decomposition.

This item was listed in Nick Smith’s HFHC newsletter yesterday. The trailhead in question is a few miles from my home. I walked the footbridge before the USFS stopped installing it each spring. Without the footbridge, hikers must ford the Sandy River, a glacier-fed stream that often is to fast and furious to cross.

The court’s opinion is interesting for its mention of USFS “parking fees” in the form of day-use fees and passes, which I think the USFS has been at pains to avoid calling “parking fees.” Also, an Oregon state law worked in the USFS’s favor: “a property owner is immune from tort liability if it charges a parking fee of less than $15 for use of its land.” Why $15? I have no idea.

The November 2021 edition of the Journal of Forestry just arrived in my mailbox. One open-access paper may be of interest to Smokey Wire folks:

Piloting a Climate-Change Adaptation Index on US National Forest Lands

It’s open to SAF members only.

Abstract

How about a break from looking at Western US issues? A News article here has links to several documents….

Excerpts:

The plan’s stated goal is to: “Create, restore and maintain ecosystems that are more resilient to natural disturbances.”

In the final draft of the plan, released Oct. 26, forest supervisor Edward Hunter Jr. wrote, “The reality facing our forests is that without active management on the ground to increase the resiliency of these ecosystems and difficult decisions for the sustainability of our recreation program, these public lands and all their inhabitants are at severe risk.” 

…

But Georgia ForestWatch, the Chattooga Conservancy, Georgia Chapter of the Sierra Club, and the Wilderness Society filed a joint 25-page objection to the plan on Dec. 13. The objection states the plan lacks sufficient opportunities for public participation, circumvents future National Environmental Protection Agency review and lacks clarity on how the plan will be implemented in specific areas. The plan does not properly account for carbon emissions and carbon storage, the objection states, and the plan would lead to an increase in carbon emissions in the near term. 

The final environmental assessment, “unlawfully fails to identify the actions that will receive additional review and the actions that will not,” wrote J.D. McCrary executive director of ForestWatch in a statement to The Times. 

“(The final assessment) does not quantify the project’s likely impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Given the threat posed by climate change and the need to reduce emissions in the near term, it is important for the Forest Service to understand the impact of its actions on carbon emissions and sequestration.”

Nick Smith listed this South Dakota Public Broadcasting program in his Dec. 10 HFHC news email. The show lasts almost an hour.

In the Moment brings you an hour of conversations about the Black Hills National Forest plan and the debate over the timber count.

Seth Tupper joins us (back & forth with audio clips) for a conversation about the Data Quality Act and administrative action from the Black Hills forest products industry seeking corrections to a scientific report that recommends significantly reducing the timber harvest.

Ben Wudtke with the Black Hills Forest Resource Association discusses the Data Quality Act challenge and detailed examples of challenges to the General Technical Report published by the US Forest Service.

Kevin Woster joins us with thoughts from his conversation with U.S. Senator Mike Rounds regarding the loss of his beloved wife and his return to work in Congress.

According to the American Forest Resource Council’s November 2021 newsletter, “the Forest Service’s timber sale outputs for Fiscal Year (FY) 2021, which were 2.844 billion board feet (BBF). This is a reduction of more than 11 percent, or 370 million board feet (mmbf), from the previous fiscal year. About 20 percent of the FY 2021 timber sale accomplishment was comprised of firewood permits, biomass, and other convertible materials, so the volume of sawtimber sold was closer to 2.3 BBF from the 188 million acres of National Forest System lands. The Forest Service has cited COVID and the massive 2020 wildfire season as key contributors to the decline. For a comparison, the Washington Department of Natural Resources annually sells about 550 MMBF – nearly 25% of the Forest Service’s national timber sale volume from just 2.5 million acres of state forest trust lands.”

Nick Smith’s Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities newsletter today has a link to a letter by a group of scientists who support the Forestry title of the Build Back Better reconciliation package pending before Congress. Signatories include some well-known folks, such as

Craig D. Allen (PhD Adjunct Professor, Department of Geography & Environmental Studies University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM, and a retired USGS research ecologist — he’s done some outstanding research), Gregory Aplet (Senior Science Director The Wilderness Society), Jerry Franklin, and Thomas Swetnam, Director Emeritus of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona. Too many to list.

“As researchers and practitioners with the overwhelming weight of the scientific evidence behind us, we write in support of the Forestry title of the Build Back Better reconciliation package pending before Congress. In our view, the $27.7 billion investment in science-driven, ecologically based forest and fire management is an historic commitment that should be enacted into law. This investment supports dry forest restoration, climate- and wildfire-adaptation, fire risk reduction, and carbon storage as well as collaboration, forest inventories, monitoring and adaptive management, and other forest programs.”

It is interesting that they mention those who oppose some or all of these management activities:

“A minority view opposes forest and fire management that involves cutting trees or fire use, such as prescribed burning; however, as recent events and the preponderance of scientific evidence demonstrate, the combined influence of more than a century of fire exclusion and rapid climate warming jeopardizes both forests and communities.1 The scientific evidence also shows that combinations of forest and fire management can mitigate wildfire impacts and protect our forested communities from the ravages of climate-driven wildfires.2 The most successful resilience treatments are those that facilitate the role of low- to moderate-severity fire as an ecological process.3 Mechanical treatments in dry pine, dry and moist mixed conifer, pine and oak woodlands, and hardwood forest types reduce tree density, remove ladder fuels, and prepare forests for a warmer, drier climate. To mitigate future fire behavior and severity, prescribed burning is necessary to reduce hazardous fuels.4 Revitalizing and supporting Indigenous burning practices is also a key component of landscape and community resilience.” [emphasis mine]

The National Park Service has released a report on the recent fires in giant sequoia groves. Long report — I’ll post onlt the discussion section here, for its conclusions about the efficacy of fuels treatments and Rx fire, and the need for more treatments.

DISCUSSION

Overall, the KNP Complex and Windy Fires burned all or portions of twenty-eight sequoia groves, burning a total of 6,109 grove acres out of an estimated ~28,000 grove acres rangewide. Although much of this acreage burned at undetected change to low severity (3,905 acres) and is expected to have beneficial effects on grove ecosystem functioning, a total of 2,204 acres burned at moderate to high severity. In previous recent wildfires that burned at moderate to high severity we have seen significant mortality of large giant sequoias (Shive et al., in review). For these two 2021 fires our preliminary estimates (based on mortality rates from these previous field surveys combined with severity mapping for these two fires) suggest a potential loss of giant sequoias over four feet in diameter between 2,261 and 3,637 large giant sequoias. These estimates need to be updated by field surveys in coming years to document the full impact of these fires. Current maps of fire severity and estimated losses from this report can be used to stratify field survey efforts across severity and anticipated mortality.

The findings in this report indicate that wildfires that burn under conditions that result in high to moderate severity fire effects are a significant threat to the persistence of large sequoias. Fires burning with large areas of high severity is a dramatic change from historic fire patterns. Data from previous prescribed burns, wildfires, and tree-rings indicate that prior to the impacts of climate change and fire exclusion, large numbers of large giant sequoias were not killed during fire events (Stephenson 1996).

Our analysis of the KNP Complex, as well as the Windy Fire Burned Area Emergency Response report, indicate that prescribed fire and thinning treatments can reduce fire severity and provide fire fighters with opportunities to safely control and manage wildfires in some locations under some conditions during wildfire events. These treatments may not be effective under all wildfire conditions but did appear to positively affect fire behavior and allow fire suppression in Giant Forest and other groves impacted by these fires.

The mortality values within this report are estimates of potential mortality. The mortality rates used for moderate severity fires do not reflect the highest mortality rate measured in post-fire sequoia groves (45% in Save the Redwoods League data for Nelder Grove) because we wanted to be conservative in our estimates. Moderate severity areas in particular should be tracked over time to assess how these rates vary by location over time.

The KNP Complex BAER report suggests a potential management action of replanting giant sequoias in high severity areas greater than 100 meters distant from intact sequoia grove areas. While planting of giant sequoias as part of reforestation, restoration, and plantation forestry has been done successfully in California (see project descriptions from Sierra Pacific Industries at https://spi-ind.com/ and Fahey et al. 2012 and references therein), evaluating whether post-fire seedling densities are sufficient to restore giant sequoias to burned areas should be done prior to moving ahead with active reforestation. In addition, areas proposed for reforestation should be evaluated for their potential to persist under a changing climate. The National Park Service memo regarding climate change adaptation and the framework focusing on Resist, Accept, Direct (NPS 2012) and the USFS General Technical Report 270 (Meyer et al 2021) are useful frameworks for evaluating restoration areas within a climate change context.

Finally, these ecosystems will continue to see wildfire. Grove areas that were in the fire perimeters but that had very little or no wildfire (“undetected change”) may still be at risk of severe fire in the immediate future. In areas where surface fuels were removed and tree densities were reduced, reburning is unlikely for ~10 years, giving ample opportunity to plan for the next wildfire or prescribed burn. Although reburning at low severity would be desirable, high severity reburns are of concern. Many past high severity burn areas in mixed conifer forests, which are a similar fuel type, have reburned severely due to the high fuel loads created by dense fire-killed trees that eventually fall to the surface, and vigorously regenerating shrubs (Coppoletta et al., 2016; van Wagtendonk, 2012). The potential for reburning at high severity in sequoia groves should be a priority for field investigation and where such an outcome seems likely, these areas should be targeted for fuel reduction work.

Roger Pielke Jr. Tweeted about a post on the “…and Then There’s Physics” blog, which is run by an anonymous someone who describes themself as “not a climate scientist, but a professional and active scientist who teaches and carries out research at a university in the UK. The views I express here are my own and not those of my employer.” The blog post is about “ClimateBall,” which I do not address here. However, a paragraph in the post is worth thinking about in a Smokey Wire context. The first part of a paragraph in the post is:

It would be wonderful if we could have thoughtful discussion amongst people who broadly disagree, but who are willing to listen to what the other person has to say, give it some thought, and maybe actually agree with some – if not all – of it.

Or maybe not agree with much or any of it, but at least listed and give it some thought. That’s the ideal for our discussions here. However, too often we — myself included, at times — respond this way:

Instead, it’s more about scoring points. Find a way to undermine the other person’s argument. Find a way to undermine their credibility. Find a way to dodge their arguments against your position. Don’t necessarily apply the same standards to yourself as you apply to everyone else (of course, you then make out that you hold a higher moral ground). Again, to be clear, I certainly don’t think this is how it should be conducted; it just appears as though this is – sadly – how it is often conducted.

I’m going to print this paragraph and tape it to my monitor, and look at it before I post anything here…. It might be good if we all did that.

From the latest USFS R&D newsletter — subscribe here.

“Most dead trees fall within 10 years after a wildfire. To keep firefighters and those involved in restoration efforts safe, Forest Service researchers and partners developed a new tool that maps where dead trees are likely to fall.”

A related study, “Spatial and temporal assessment of responder exposure to snag hazards in post-fire environments,” notes that:

“Snag hazard increased significantly immediately post-fire, with severe or extreme hazard conditions accounting for 47%, 83%, and 91% of areas burned at low, moderate and high-severity fire, respectively. Patch-size of severe or extreme hazard positively correlated with fire size, exceeding > 20,000 ha (60% of our largest fire) 10-years post-fire when reburn becomes more likely. After 10 years, snag hazard declined rapidly as snags fell or fragmented, but severe or extreme hazard persisted for 20, 30 and 35 years in portions of the low, moderate and high-severity fire areas.”

FWIW, I recently talked with loggers on a fire salvage timber sale, less that one year post-fire, on private land. They said it’s common to see or hear trees fall spontaneously, even with light winds.