Steve Wilent

The political fight has begun over the Interior Department’s proposal to relocate the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters to Grand Junction, Colo.

I makes sense in some ways to put BLM’s HQ in the middle of most of the land it manages, but it will be wrenching for many employees. OTOH, maybe some are happy to leave D.C.

A juxtaposition is two articles linked in Nick Smith’s Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities News Round Up today. Enviros in New Mexico say don’t thin, citing a need to consider negative effects, while s scientists in Alberta documents a change in stand density and an increase in fire severity. Yes, different regions, but the basic premise in the same: Relatively minor negative effects of forest management vs. longer-term effects of severe wildfires.

AP/SF Chronicle:
Groups appeal ruling over Santa Fe forest thinning plans

Environmentalists went back to court Monday in hopes of putting the brakes on plans to thin thousands of forested acres in the mountains bordering Santa Fe.

Wild Watershed and others filed their appeal with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, arguing that a district court judge erred when allowing Santa Fe National Forest to move ahead with its plans for Pacheco Canyon and areas near Hyde Memorial State Park.

The plaintiffs contend that forest officials failed to analyze the cumulative and indirect effects of clearing and burning in the area.

“These projects are the first of what could become the most extensive ever slash and burn forestry near Santa Fe,” said Sam Hitt, founder of Wild Watershed and president of the Santa Fe Forest Coalition.

In approving the projects in 2018, forest managers said thinning and prescribed fire would be used to reduce risks posed by disease, insect infestation and catastrophic wildfire.

The work is part of a larger-scale effort to tackle problems that have resulted from decades of fire suppression and other land use practices in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, specifically the area that makes up the region’s watershed.

The Star (Edmonton, Alberta):
Fewer trees in Alberta Rockies could mean more manageable wildfires, researcher says

Forest fires in Alberta’s southern Rockies would be much more manageable if the landscape looked like it used to more than a century ago, research suggests.

As part of his 2016 PhD dissertation at the University of Alberta, Chris Stockdale, now a research and extension scientist with the Canadian Forest Service, looked at how forest fires have burned through southern Alberta Rockies from Bow Valley all the way to the border with the United States.

Using simulation technology, he looked at how fires burned through the current landscape filled with coniferous trees, as well as what the landscape looked like a hundred years ago, which was mostly grasslands with a small mix of coniferous and deciduous trees.

While the number of fires that hit the area did not change between the early 20th century and early 21st century, the severity of the fires did.

From the AZ Daily Sun: “U.S. Forest Service hopes new minimum rates can help clear forests” — thanks to Nick Smith of Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities for the link. In areas with no-value biomass, paying to have it hauled away may be an option to leaving it in place or burning it.

Title of a paper ($) in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, “Is fire “for the birds”? How two rare species influence fire management across the US,” by 17 authors including noted fire ecologist Scott L. Stephens (professor at UC Berkeley) and Thomas A. Spies (key owl researcher at the Pacific Northwest Research Station). UC Berkeley press release:

Spotted owl populations are in decline all along the West Coast, and as climate change increases the risk of large and destructive wildfires in the region, these iconic animals face the real threat of losing even more of their forest habitat.

Rather than attempting to preserve the owl’s remaining habitat exactly as is, wildfire management — through prescribed burning and restoration thinning — could help save the species, argues a new paper by fire ecologists and wildlife biologists and appearing today (July 2 ) in the journal, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

The paper compares the plight of the owl with that of another iconic threatened species, the red-cockaded woodpecker, which has made significant comebacks in recent years — thanks, in part, to active forest management in the southern pine forests that the woodpecker calls home. Though the habitat needs of the two birds are different, both occupy forests that once harbored frequent blazes before fire suppression became the norm.

“In the South, the Endangered Species Act has been used as a vehicle to empower forest restoration through prescribed burning and restoration thinning, and the outcome for the red-cockaded woodpecker has been positive and enduring,” said Scott Stephens, a professor of environmental science, policy and management at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author on the study.

“In the West, it’s just totally the opposite,” Stephens added. “Even though both places physically have strong connections to frequent fire, the feeling here is that the best thing to do is to try to protect what we have and not allow the return of frequent fire — but that’s really difficult when you have unbridled fires just ripping through the landscape.”

…

However, suppressing all fires in order to encourage growth of these dense canopies also creates conditions that are ripe for large, severe wildfires that can take out not just the smaller trees, but entire forests, obliterating swaths of owl habitat in the process. The 2014 King Fire, for example, tore through regions of the Eldorado National Forest that were home to a long-term study of the California spotted owl and caused the bird’s largest population decline in the 23-year history of the study.

“A key question to be asking is: Where would owl habitats be with more characteristic fire regimes, and could we tailor landscape conditions where these habitats are less vulnerable and more supportive of today’s wildfires?” said co-author Paul Hessburg, a research landscape ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station.

The solution would mean, “essentially creating less habitat in order to have more in the long run,” he said.

Greenwire’s article today, “Will more cell towers fuel a ‘nature deficit’?” reminds me of my recent visit to the Mount St. Helens National Monument in Washington (managed by the Gifford Pinchot NF). At the Windy Ridge viewpoint, I walked to the end of the viewing deck with fewer people — just two. Turned out that both of them were talking on their cell phones; one of them was sheltering from the wind and drizzle under the roof over an interpretive kiosk, and the roof acted like a megaphone. I soon departed for other, quieter viewpoints and the USFS campground outside the monument, which had no cell service.

The article reports that National Parks are adding cell infrastructure.

And at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, in perhaps the biggest digital expansion of all, park officials ignited a controversy with their plan to install new towers at nine sites, along with 62 miles of high-speed fiber-optic cable, near the park’s main roads.

With no nationwide policy to guide them, officials at the National Park Service’s 419 sites are finding all sorts of ways to increase their digital connections, hoping to lure more younger visitors. Supporters say it boosts safety and interest in visiting parks.

But critics say it’s a big mistake and actually ensures that children will feel more disconnected from nature in the long run.

“People should have a right to a no-Wi-Fi zone — there should be places where we’re not in contact and reachable,” said Richard Louv, a California author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.”

Louv acknowledged that he appears to be on the losing end of the argument with park officials, but he said people should be taught “that connecting to other life is more important than collecting your email.”

I was somewhat encouraged by the family camping a few sites from mine. They apparently weren’t using any electronic devices — they spent most of their time fishing and hanging out by the fire, and the 3 kids spent a lot of time running around with their dog and playing in the woods. If there had been cell service, those folks might have been disconnected from nature much of the time.

Found this message in my inbox…. mentions the Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2019, introduced in May by Rep. Ruben Gallego, (D) Arizona. “To provide lasting protection for inventoried roadless areas within the National Forest System.”

Last line of the bill is the heart of it: “The Secretary shall not allow road construction, road reconstruction, or logging in an inventoried roadless area where those activities are prohibited by the Roadless Rule.”

Sounds like this prohibits thinning and other types management.

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Steven,

Grizzly bears, bald eagles and other wildlife have thrived for centuries amid the towering trees of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. Now they need our help.

The Trump administration is poised to open the Tongass up to logging, mining, road-building and other destructive development, potentially clearcutting its pristine wilderness.1

But today, we have a chance to protect the Tongass — permanently.

Tell Congress: Keep the Tongass wild.

In 2001, our national network’s staff and 1.6 million supporters helped convince the Clinton administration to protect roadless areas in national forests from logging and other development.

The principle was simple: If it’s still wild, it should stay that way.

The resulting “Roadless Rule” protected 58.5 million acres of national forest in 39 states.2 But the Trump administration is poised to remove this protection for the Tongass, putting the ancient forest and the wildlife that call it home directly in the path of logging, mining and drilling interests.3

A new bill in Congress, the Roadless Area Conservation Act of 2019, would give the Roadless Rule the full force of law. That means the Trump administration — or any future administration — would no longer have the authority to exempt the Tongass from Roadless Rule protections.4

Tell your U.S. House representative: Pass the Roadless Area Conservation Act.

The trees of the Tongass are older than America itself. The forest forms a sprawling ecosystem that is home to moose, deer, bears and more. Its rivers teem with salmon and more than 300 different species of birds perch in its branches.5,6

Our world is already running short on nature. To risk losing a place like the Tongass simply to extract just a few more resources from the earth would be a tragedy. Tell your representative to stand up for the Tongass.

Thank you for making it all possible.

Sincerely,

Celeste Meiffren-Swango
State Director

1. Elizabeth Jenkins, “Is there something for everyone in a new vision for Tongass roads?” KTOO Public Media, November 28, 2018.
2. “New Legislation Blocks New Roads On Nearly 60 Million Acres Of Public Forests,” KXRO News, May 3, 2019.
3. Elizabeth Jenkins, “New legislation introduced in Congress aims to strengthen Roadless Rule,” KTOO Public Media, May 2, 2019.
4. Elizabeth Jenkins, “New legislation introduced in Congress aims to strengthen Roadless Rule,” KTOO Public Media, May 2, 2019.
5. “Conservation: Tongass National Forest,” Audubon Alaska, accessed June 11, 2019.
6. “Tongass National Forest: Glaciers,” United States Department of Agriculture, accessed June 11, 2019.

Here are the first few paragraphs of an entry on Judith Curry’s blog. Curry is a respected scientist who is criticized by some for her work and views when they don’t conform to climate-change orthodoxy. Her bio: “I am President (co-owner) of Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN). Previously, I was Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.”

This blog post isn’t about forestry or climate change specifically, but about science/research in general. She discusses an article whose authors write that “Scientists are not immune to confirmation biases and motivated reasoning.” Neither are foresters, environmentalists, and others who post on this blog, myself included, at times. Interesting insights! The entire post is worth reading and discussing.

Climate scientists’ motivated reasoning

Posted on June 19, 2019 by curryja | 99 Comments

by Judith Curry

Insights into the motivated reasoning of climate scientists, including my own efforts to sort out my own biases and motivated reasoning following publication of the Webster et al. (2005) paper

A recent twitter thread by Moshe Hoffman (h/t Larry Kummer) reminded me of a very insightful paper by Lee Jussim, Joe Duarte and others entitled Interpretations and methods: Towards a more self-correcting social psychology

Apart from the rather innocuous title, the paper provides massively important insights into scientific research in general, with substantial implications for climate science.

The Jussim et al. paper is the motivation for this blog post that addresses the motivated reasoning of individual climate scientists. And also for my next post that will address the broader ‘masking’ biases in climate science.

<begin quote>

“Getting it right” is the sine qua non of science. Science can tolerate individual mistakes and flawed theories, but only if it has reliable mechanisms for efficient self-correction. Unfortunately, science is not always self-correcting. Indeed, a series of threats to the integrity of scientific research has recently come to the fore across the sciences, including questionable research practices, failures to replicate, publication biases, and political biases.

Motivated reasoning refers to biased information processing that is driven by goals unrelated to accurate belief formation. A specific type of motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, occurs when people seek out and evaluate information in ways that confirm their pre-existing views while downplaying, ignoring, or discrediting information of equal or greater quality that opposes their views. People intensely scrutinize counter-attitudinal evidence while easily accepting information supporting their views. People generate convincing arguments to justify their automatic evaluations, producing an illusion of objectivity.

Scientists are not immune to confirmation biases and motivated reasoning. Values influence each phase of the research process, including how people interpret research findings. Reviewers’ theoretical and ideological views can influence their evaluation of research reports, leading them to judge studies that oppose their beliefs more critically than studies supporting their views. Consequently, they are then less likely to recommend publication of studies with undesired findings or funding for studies based on undesirable theories or hypotheses.

There are powerful incentives to present a strong, compelling story when describing their research. Most of us are motivated to get the science right, but we are also motivated to get the studies published and our grants funded. We want our colleagues to find our research sufficiently interesting and important to support publishing it, and then to cite it, preferably a lot. We want jobs, promotions, and tenure. We want popular media to publicize our research and to disseminate our findings beyond the confines of our lab. We might even hope to tell a story so compelling we can produce a bestselling popular book and receive lucrative consulting and speaking engagements, or have our findings influence policy decisions.

In brief, powerful incentives exist that motivate us to achieve — or, at least, appear to achieve — a “Wow Effect”. A “Wow Effect” is some novel result that comes to be seen as having far-reaching theoretical, methodological, or practical implications. It is the type of work likely to be emulated, massively cited, and highly funded.

….

June 12 press release:

USDA Proposes Bold Moves to Improve Forest, Grassland Management

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Forest Service (USFS) released proposed changes to modernize how the agency complies with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The proposed updates would not only give the Forest Service the tools and flexibility to manage the land and tackle critical challenges like wildfire, insects, and disease but also improve service to the American people. Revising the rules will improve forest conditions and make it simpler for people to use and enjoy their national forests and grasslands at lower cost to the taxpayer. The revised rules will also make it easier to maintain and repair the infrastructure people need to use and enjoy their public lands—the roads, trails, campgrounds, and other facilities.

While these proposed changes will save time and resources, they are ultimately intended to better protect people, communities and forests from catastrophic wildfire and ensure a high level of engagement with people and communities when doing related work and associated environmental analyses.

From the FAQ:

The CEs covered in the proposed rule fall into three general categories: (1) those covering restoration activities, (2) those covering infrastructure activities, and (3) those covering special uses. Some examples of the types of work that could be approved, based on hundreds of analyzed environmental assessments, are listed below.

Restoration projects— Removing trees affected by insects or disease through commercial timber harvest in combination with stream restoration in a 4,200-acre area to improve forest health and watershed conditions is one example of a restoration project. Restoration projects could also include reducing overgrown areas around a community and improving wildlife habitat through mechanical thinning and use of prescribed burning. 

Mike Archer had this item in his Wildfire News Of The Day newsletter on June 18, from High Country News:

The rise of wildfire-resilient communities
As fire seasons become longer and deadlier, communities turn to urban planning to combat dangers.

The 2017 fire season, at 665,000 acres burned, was the worst Oregon had seen, according to the Oregon Forest Resources Institute. The next year, a community coalition of city council members, fire managers and city planners from Sisters enrolled in the Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire program (CPAW), a federal program designed to reduce wildfire risk through improved land use planning.

Through a coordinated team of land-use planners, foresters, economists and wildfire risk modelers, CPAW, funded by the U.S. Forest Service, integrates land-use planning with fire management to help communities draft a customized plan to reduce wildfire dangers.

Community fire adaptation has been one of the more popular approaches the Forest Service has funded and promoted in the past decade, according to Pam Leshack, the national program manager of the agency’s fire-adapted communities and wildland-urban interface programs. The federal government has moved away from solely educating communities about fire dangers and towards a holistic, localized approach, she said.

…

But this combination of land-use planning and forest management can be an effective tool for mitigating the wildfire damage to a community, according to John Bailey, professor of fire management at Oregon State University. Communities can be at the mercy of fires without local urban planning and forest management, with support from the state and federal level, Bailey said. “We’re going to have to make changes,” he said. “You have to acknowledge that’s where you’re living and plan for it. Then we can adapt.”

The article from Sacramento TV station KCRA is about the French Meadows project on the Tahoe National Forest. I think we’ll see many more such collaborative projects aimed at protecting water supplies.

Work is scheduled to begin this week on a first-of-its-kind partnership to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire around essential drinking water supplies stored in the Sierra.

“This is the first time Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds from the state’s carbon tax are being put back into a watershed to reduce emissions from catastrophic wildfire,” said Andrew Fecko of the Placer County Water Agency.

The partnership includes a unique collaboration between public agencies including, the U.S. Forest Service, Placer County Water Agency, the County of Placer, community organizations like The Nature Conservancy and private business, including Coca-Cola and Anheuser Busch.

…

Researchers from UC Merced are providing information about optimal forest densities for current and future climate conditions.

The Nature Conservancy is also leading research to monitor the impact of forest thinning on future fire behavior.

The decision notice and FONSI states that the project involves “a variety of forest restoration treatments, including mechanical thinning, mastication, hand thinning, reforestation, and use of prescribed fire, will be conducted on a total of approximately 12,183 acres in specific locations. Treatments are designed to reduce potential wildfire intensity and severity, reduce accumulation of surface and ladder fuels, improve forest health and resiliency, and enhance structure and function of forested lands across a broad landscape on National Forest System lands in the French Meadows Project area.”

Yes, commercial harvesting is one element of the plan: 8.4 MMBF of sawlogs and 7,000 bone-dry tons of biomass, and all live conifers 30 inches dbh and larger would be retained.