Fire and Fuels

This WaPo story is from a few weeks ago, but I thought what they did with graphics and maps was very interesting and novel.. TSW readers with long memories may remember Seeley Lake maps from our discussions of the Colt Summit project.

There are at least ten TSW posts following this project as it wended its way through objections and a couple rounds of litigation and more analysis. Dueling op-eds in the Missoulian and all that. After several trips through the court system, though, the project was successfully implemented.

So I was curious as to whether any of the projects shown in the WaPo piece were part of Colt Summit and so I asked Tim Love, the District Ranger when this happened (who turned out to be on a fire). It turns out that the Rx burning pictured was on units in the Horse Shoe Hills treatments which were part of their CFLR projects that weren’t litigated.

Please see previous post for links and background on this paper.
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1.”Are the effects of fire exclusion overstated? If so, are treatments unwarranted and even counterproductive?”

Concerns about forest thinning and other forms of active management are sometimes based on the assumption that contemporary conditions and fire regimes in dry pine and mixed-conifer forests are not substantially departed from those maintained by uninterrupted fire regimes (Hagmann et al. this issue). This perspective does not accurately reflect the breadth and depth of scientific evidence documenting the influence of over a century of fire exclusion. Support for the suggestion that ecological departures associated with fire exclusion are overestimated has repeatedly failed independent validation by multiple research groups (Hagmann et al. this issue). In addition, these arguments fail to consider widespread Indigenous fire uses that affected landscape scale vegetation conditions linked to valued cultural resources and services, food security, and vulnerability to wildfires (Lake et al. 2018, Power et al. 2018). As is explored in the following sections, a number of forest management and treatment strategies are shown to be highly effective. Site conditions and history are always important considerations. Moreover, there is no one-treatment-fits-all approach to forest adaptation.

Evidence from a broad range of disciplines documents widespread, multi-regional 20th-century fire exclusion in interior forested landscapes of wNA (see a detailed reference list and discussion in Hagmann et al. this issue). Collectively, these studies reveal extensive changes in tree density, species and age composition, forest structure, and continuity of canopy and surface fuels. Forests that were once characterized by shifting patchworks of forest and nonforest vegetation (i.e., grasslands, woodlands, and shrublands) in the early 20th-century gradually became more continuously covered in forest and densely stocked with fuels (Fig. 4).

However, for over two decades, a small fraction of the scientific literature has cast doubt on the inferences made from fire-scar based reconstructions and broader landscape-level assessments to suggest that estimates of low- to moderate-severity fire regimes from these studies are overstated. Hagmann et al. (this issue) examine this counter-evidence in detail and identify critical flaws in reasoning and methodologies in original papers and subsequent re-application of these methods in numerous geographic areas. Subsequent research shows that studies relying on Williams and Baker (2011) methods for estimating historical tree densities and fire regimes overestimate tree densities and fire severity (see also Levine et al. 2017). Moreover, established tree-ring fire-scar methods more accurately reconstruct known fire occurrence and extent. Other studies, also based on the methods of Williams and Baker (2011), conflate reconstructed low-severity, high-frequency fire regimes with landscape homogeneity. These interpretations disregard critical ecosystem functions that were historically associated with uneven-aged forests embedded in multi-level fine-, meso- and broad-scale landscapes. By extension, claims that low-severity fire regimes are overestimated then imply that large, high-severity fires were a regular occurrence prior to the era of European colonization. Such interpretations may lead to the conclusion that recent increases in high-severity fire are still within the historical range of variability, and that there is no need of restorative or adaptive treatments (Hanson and Odion 2014, Odion et al. 2014, Baker and Hanson 2017).

Indeed, research from across wNA has shown that high-severity fire was a component of historical fire regimes, and that fires of all severities are currently in deficit (Parks et al. 2015b, Reilly et al. 2017, Haugo et al. 2019, but see Mallek et al. 2013). Reanalysis of the methods of Baker and others shows that their methods inherently overestimate fire severity and the frequency and area affected by high severity fire (Hagmann et al. this issue, Fulé et al. 2014). In addition, high-severity patches in recent fires are less heterogeneous and more extensive than the historical range of variability for forests characterized by low- and moderate-severity fire regimes (Stevens et al. 2017, Hagmann et al. this issue). Finally, research across wNA reveals key climate-vegetation-wildfire linkages, where fire frequency, extent, and severity all increase with increasing climatic warming, suggesting that observed trends in fire patterns are commensurate with predicted relationships with ongoing climate change (McKenzie and Littell 2017, Parks and Abatzoglou 2020).

Another perspective on this debate contends that whether historical records can be agreed upon is of ancillary importance. Adaptive forest management and fuel reduction treatments are primarily aimed at increasing forest resilience and/or resistance to climate change, fire and other disturbances, which has positive societal and ecological impacts that do not require justification based on historical conditions, particularly given the no-analog present and future that climate change presents (Freeman et al. 2017). For example, the most concerning contemporary high-severity fire events are associated with large patches of complete stand replacement (Miller and Quayle 2015, Lydersen et al. 2016). In some cases, high-severity fire events convert forests to shrubland and grassland assemblages as alternative stable states in uncharacteristically large patches (Falk et al. 2019, Kemp et al. 2019, Stevens-Rumann and Morgan 2019). As such, a critical forest management concern is that high severity wildfires are accelerating rates of vegetation change, forest conversion, and vulnerability of native habitats in response to a warming climate.
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I bolded that another perspective, as the authors state, is that “management does not require justification based on historic conditions.” They have a citation for that, but I don’t think it requires a scientist to say that. As the authors state (and I have also) the point is to increase forest resilience/resistance to climate change, and that with climate change the future is unlikely to be like the past, so the past has limited relevance and is certainly not a target. Certainly scientists from a discipline, say historic vegetation ecology, may think that their research is extraordinarily relevant- but scientists from other disciplines- not to speak of managers and the public, may not agree.  The relationship of “what was” or “what is” to “what should be”, is a societal question, as is the question of “what should be” itself.

It’s Science Friday, and today’s paper is 81 pages, so it’s a lot of science! The title is “Adapting western North American forests to climate change and wildfires: ten common questions” and the authors are:
Susan J. Prichard, Paul F. Hessburg, R. Keala Hagmann, Nicholas A. Povak, Solomon Z. Dobrowski, Matthew D. Hurteau, Van R. Kane, Robert E. Keane, Leda N. Kobziar, Crystal A. Kolden, Malcolm North, Sean A. Parks, Hugh D. Safford, Jens T. Stevens, Larissa L. Yocom, Derek J. Churchill, Robert W. Gray, David W. Huffman, Frank K. Lake, Pratima Khatri-Chhetri. Please let me know if you can’t access the paper, I also have a pdf I can post.

I think it’s super-relevant to our discussions here, and I thank the (many) authors for doing this review and organizing it to address many of the questions we have discussed over the years (most notably in the series “why we disagree about fuel treatments”).  I particularly like how the authors dig into some of the potential reasons for scientific disagreements.  If you disagree with the authors, then you are most welcome to describe your reasoning in the comments, and we can have a open public discussion about scientific disagreements that should enlighten us all.

The whole thing is worth reading for true enthusiasts (or those writing NEPA docs), but I’ll excerpt pieces to discuss. Here’s some of the background for why the review was written:

TEN COMMON QUESTIONS ABOUT ADAPTIVE FOREST MANAGEMENT

Although the need to increase the pace and scale of fuel treatments is broadly discussed in scientific and policy arenas (North et al. 2012, Franklin and Johnson 2012, Kolden 2019), there is still confusion and disagreement about the appropriateness of forest and fuel treatments. For example, recent publications have questioned whether large, high-severity fires are outside of the historical range of variability for seasonally dry forests, and whether the risk of high-severity fire warrants large-scale treatment of fireprone forests (Bradley et al. 2016, DellaSala et al. 2017). Others have questioned whether intentional management, including forest thinning, is effective or justified outside of the wildland urban interface (Moritz et al. 2014, Schoennagel et al. 2017).

Furthermore, debates around the management of fire adapted forests are occurring within the context of long running conflicts over timber production on public lands, especially federal lands, leading to questions about science-based benefits of management treatments where they align with economic incentives (Daniels and Walker 1995). Currently, management strategies employing active fire suppression and limited use of fuel reduction treatments are common for most public land management agencies.

Among the many challenges to active management on public lands (e.g., funding, adequate and qualified personnel, smoke impacts, and weather and fuel conditions that fall within burn prescription parameters), uncertainty in the scientific literature about forest management and fuel treatments is commonly cited in planning process-public comment periods (Spies et al. 2018, Miller et al. 2020). In the following sections, we examine ten common questions about forest management and fuel treatments. We summarize them in Table 1 and provide key citations that examine these questions. For each topic, we evaluate the strength of evidence in the existing scientific literature concerning each topic. Our goal is to help managers, policy makers, informed public stakeholders, and others working in this arena to establish a robust scientific framework that will lead to more effective discussions and decision-making processes, and better outcomes on the ground.

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These include: (1) Are the effects of fire exclusion overstated? If so, are treatments unwarranted and even counterproductive? (2) Is forest thinning alone sufficient to mitigate wildfire hazard? (3) Can forest thinning and prescribed burning solve the problem? (4) Should active forest management, including forest thinning, be concentrated in the wildland urban interface (WUI)? (5) Can wildfires on their own do the work of fuel treatments? (6) Is the primary objective of fuel reduction treatments to assist in future firefighting response and containment? (7) Do fuel treatments work under extreme fire weather?  (8) Is the scale of the problem too great – can we ever catch up? (9) Will planting more trees mitigate climate change in wNA forests? and (10) Is post-fire management needed or even ecologically justified?

I’d like to take each question separately for discussion in its own post.

The last letter was from a group of some fire scientists (SFS). I don’t know how much experience they’ve had actually managing fires.

This letter is from a group of mostly agency retirees called the National Wildfire Institute (NWI). Similarly, I don’t know the specific fire experience of the folks who signed this letter. They raise, as might be expected, a number of different points from the fire scientists.

One of their concerns is the same as the fire scientists.. that there needs to be more support among  communities for managed fire.  The NWI solution is…planning and NEPA.

Chief, it’s time to declare that all fires will be promptly and aggressively extinguished, period. This would be direction until such time as the Agency would engage the public in a robust and comprehensive planning process to subject fire policy to widespread public involvement and public understanding. Anything less would simply serve to increase already fevered resistance to Forest Service fire policies. We reaffirm our strong support for Prescribed Fire and strong compliance with the law through approved burn plans.

As many of you know, I am a fan of the concept of standing down NFMA plan revisions, and standing up formal fire planning for forests, which could develop the support that both the SFS and NWI feel is needed. But even with delineations of areas where fires can be managed, possible condition and weather-based standards and guidelines, even with notice and comment of burn plans or other potential innovations, it seems to me that wildfire use is in a special category.  WFU is opportunistic by nature, and I don’t think they can be nailed down in advance and carefully reviewed by scientists, the public and legal authorities, like, say, a hazard tree project or a grazing permit renewal or pretty much anything else that’s subject to NEPA.

Because it’s a judgment call given the ever-changing conditions. And we’d probably agree that the best folks to make those judgment calls are the experienced fire professionals certainly informed by whatever has been hammered out in a plan.  Fires may not respect area delineations or any other plan components.

We also believe these uses of wildfire to manage natural resources and profoundly change ecosystems are not wise, especially during this time of severely clogged forests (forests are more than just trees); the expanding Wildland-Urban Interface; and the impacts of severe drought. We are concerned that the practice of “managed fire” has never been subjected to NEPA, NFMA, or to the plain requirements of the substantive Acts such as Clean Air, Clean Water, the Endangered Species Act, ARPA, and others. The truth is that our wildfire use has dramatically changed land and resource management plans and there seems to be no accounting for the cumulative effects and outcomes.

What’s interesting to me about this is that I agree in concept, the nature of different ICs doing different things on different fires under different conditions seems like it would make it impossible to predict any impacts. Of course, agency employees are perfectly capable of making assumptions.. but would they be meaningful, since fire weather and conditions are specific to time and place? I suppose you could do simulations under a variety of conditions but.. how close would they be to reality?

Perhaps public engagement is more important when impacts are more or less unknown or unknowable (and perhaps so is the no-action alternative), because only being honest and building a track record will build trust. In fact, we have many social scientists who have been studying communities and their responses to prescribed fire so those scientists could be brought together and asked to weigh in- and also explore peoples’ views about managed fires.
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We think that now is the time to engage the public and the agency to disclose the cumulative effects of our wildfire use programs, gain public understanding and acceptance, align our actions with our appropriations, and carry on together in a unified way with our partners and our people.

I’m going to post two letters from different groups of people about some aspects of restoring fire to landscapes in a climate-challenged world.

First the fire scientists’ letter.

We are a group of fire and forest scientists who study the range of interactions of fuels, fire, climate, and management. We are writing to express concern over your new directives to stop managing fire for resource benefit and requiring regional Planning Level 2 and Regional Forester approval for prescribed burning. Certainly, we recognize the underlying rationale to address short-term risks of escaped wildfires. Even if temporary, these directives will significantly limit options for resource managers in a time when increasing the pace and scale of forest restoration and fuel reduction is of critical importance. We request that you consider modifying the order, returning decision-making about managed fire and prescribed burning to the forest and district levels.

Now, I am not sure that I’ve ever met Chief Moore, so I am not a Current FS Chief apologist.  If you read the Chief’s letter, he’s pretty clear about his rationale (there aren’t enough resources and people are sick and tired), and that it’s for this unusual year.   But what’s really interesting to me about this paragraph in the scientists’ letter is the idea that decision-making should be returned to the forest and district levels.  It’s an interesting concept that fire scientists are weighing in as to what level is the best at decision-making. It seems like you would need some kind of evidence to make that assertion.  I agree that having to have the RO involved means that people are more serious about justifying their actions to other people.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, in my experience with NEPA.  In fact, some TSW folks (as well as some federal judges) think that district and forest folks can make bad NEPA decisions.  In my experience, most of the District and Forests make the right call most of the time. That’s why the decentralized system works.  But the risk of making a mistake here, even with a low overall probability of it happening, is pretty high.  If things went wrong, and I were making the decision, I’d want to make sure my boss was aligned in advance, and had my back, about something this potentially sensitive and dangerous. It’s a way of expanding the zone of potential blame.

And the Chief’s letter is only for this year… we can imagine from the national and state budget discussions that capacity will be ramping up in the future.  It’s taken us, what, a hundred years to get here? The scientists’ letter says “even if temporary”.. really it’s important to increase pace and scale this year of Pandemic? I just don’t get the urgency of needing to do it This Year.

Then there are many paragraphs in the letter that we would all agree with, about the general concepts of reintroducing fire via PB and WFU. Since the Chief has been in this business for a while (in Region 5, as the letter points out) I’m sure that this summary isn’t news to him.

The fire scientist authors go on to the need to convince “local leaders and residents”:

 The US Forest Service and other federal land management agencies should work with their state partners to help local leaders and residents understand the objectives and benefits of managed fire and to help them understand that fire and forest professionals are making science-based decisions about fire management. The number of examples of successfully managing natural ignitions far exceed the few cases with negative outcomes. The US Forest Service needs to advertise its successes and make the linkage to the 2009 decision that allows the flexibility to manage fires in a manner that is appropriate given the conditions.

This is a bit puzzling. Fire managers use their wisdom, experience, modeling and so on to manage WFU. Is the science-basis the general idea that fires should happen at some point? Or is each decision that a fire manager makes “science-based” somehow? And if community leaders are honestly worried about the “few cases with negative outcomes” happening to them, do they have a right to worry? This to me is not the territory of fire scientists.. to tell the FS how to change peoples’ minds about risks.  That’s the territory of social scientists.  I’m not one, but I think it’s about the challenge of building trust via starting small and not screwing up,  versus imposing your (albeit “scientific”) views on communities by citing.. the fact you decided it.  At least in part.

I know, at least via social media, and respect most of the signatories of this letter. I honestly don’t get why this cautious approach, for this year, bothers them enough to write a letter. And honestly it doesn’t really seem like a science issue at all; it’s a management issue- of what do do with the resources you have and don’t have, and how to reduce unnecessary stress on firefighters.

I was reminded of these Pinchot Principles.

* A public official is there to serve the public and not to run them.
* Public support of acts affecting public rights is absolutely required.
* It is more trouble to consult the public than to ignore them, but that is what you are hired for.
* Find out in advance what the public will stand for; if it is right and they won’t stand for it, postpone action and educate them.

vs. from the letter..

Our national forest system requires science-based leadership, even when political pressure is high.

Maybe we could discuss this with one or more of the signatories to understand their position better?

Here’s a Lessons Learned on escaped prescribed fires from 2005.

Below is the text of the letter referred to in the WSJ article from yesterday and here is a link to the letter itself..

Regional Foresters, Station Directors, IITF Director, Deputy Chiefs, and WO Directors

The 2021 fire year is different from any before. On July 14, 2021, the National Multi-Agency Coordination Group raised the national preparedness level (PL) to 5, the earliest point in a decade and the third earliest ever. There are currently over 70 large fires burning across the nation and 22,000 personnel responding, which are both nearly three times more than the 10-year average for the month of July. Severe drought is affecting over 70 percent of the West, and the potential for significant fire activity is predicted to be above normal into October. Our firefighters are fatigued, especially after more than a year of almost constant deployments, beginning with helping Australia in January 2020, and continuing through a difficult 2020 fire year and then supporting the vaccination effort in early 2021. In addition, COVID-19 infections are rising again. They are degrading our firefighting response capacity at an alarming rate, which will persist until more Americans are vaccinated.

In short, we are in a national crisis. At times like these, we must anchor to our core values, particularly safety. In PL 5, the reality is we are resource limited. The core tenet of the Forest Service’s fire response strategy is public and firefighter safety above all else. The current situation demands that we commit our fire resources only in instances where they have a high probability of success and they can operate safely and effectively. We will rely on the tested principles of risk management in determining our strategies and tactics.

At this time, for all of these reasons, managing fires for resource benefit is a strategy we will not use. In addition, until further notice, ignited prescribed fire operations will be considered only in geographic areas at or below PL 2 and only with the approval of the Regional Forester after consulting with the Chief’s Office. We are in a “triage mode” where our primary focus must be on fires that threaten communities and infrastructure. There is a finite amount of firefighting resources available that must be prioritized and fires will not always get the resources that might be requested. We will support our Agency administrators and fire managers as they make the best choices they can, given the resources at hand, the immediate threats, and the predicted weather.

Let me be clear. This is not a return to the “10 a.m. Policy.” This is the prudent course of action now in a situation that is dynamic and fluid. When western fire activity abates, we will resume using all the tools in our toolbox, including wildfire and prescribed fire in the right places and at the right time.

I know we all continue to remember the sacrifices of the fallen. Let us honor them by ensuring we do all we can to get everyone home safely, every single day. Thank you for all you are doing. I’m proud to serve alongside you.

Randy Moore
Chief

Bill Gabbert on Wildfire Today did a great job of summarizing the fuels and fire requests in the new infrastructure bill. I wonder whether anyone has reviewed it for other topics of forest or National Forest and BLM interest… if you have seen such, please post below. If you would like to review it for us, please do!

From Bill’s post..

The bill authorizes $600 million for management of personnel — those who fight fires.

The bill directs OPM to develop a distinct “wildland firefighter” occupational series.
The DOI and FS shall convert no fewer than 1,000 seasonal wildland firefighters to wildland firefighters that are full-time, permanent, year-round Federal employees who will reduce hazardous fuels on Federal land for at least 800 hours each year.
The base salaries of Federal wildland firefighters will be increased by the lesser of an amount that is commensurate with an increase of $20,000 per year or an amount equal to 50 percent of the base salary.
Develop mitigation strategies for wildland firefighters to minimize exposure due to line-of-duty environmental hazards.
Establish programs for permanent, temporary, seasonal, and year-round wildland firefighters to recognize and address mental health needs, including care for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Other provisions of the the bill. (M = million)

$20M, Satellite fire detection
$10M, Radio interoperability
$30M, Reverse 911 systems
$50M, Slip-on firefighting modules for pickup trucks
$100M, Pre-fire planning, and training personnel for wildland firefighting and vegetation treatments
$20M, Data management for fuels projects and large fires
$20M, Joint Fire Science Program (research)
$100M, Planning & implementing projects under the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program
$500M, Mechanical thinning, timber harvesting, pre-commercial thinning
$500M, Wildfire defense grants for at risk communities
$500M, Prescribed fires
$500M, Constructing fuelbreaks
$200M, Remove fuels, produce biochar and other innovative wood products
$200M, Post-fire restoration
$8M, Firewood banks
$10M, Wildfire detection and real-time monitoring equipment
One issue this legislation does not address is the inadequate funding of aerial firefighting, the use of air tankers and helicopters to assist firefighters on the ground by dropping water or retardant to slow the spread of wildfires, which is necessary for Homeland Security. The Federal agencies entered the year with 18 large air tankers and 28 large Type 1 helicopters, when they should have 40 large air tankers and 50 large helicopters on exclusive use 10-year contracts instead of the existing 1-year contracts.

Questions: (1) Anyone happen to know what firewood banks are? (2) it seems like there is some potential overlap between CFLRP projects, thinning, projects funded by wildfire defense grants, prescribed burning projects and fuelbreaks.. plus states also have funding for some of the same sounding things, plus regular appropriations for feds… has anybody added all that up and seen what it amounts to in total?