Fire and Fuels

Smoke maps can be handy for planning outdoor activities.

I’d always appreciated getting smoke maps from Bill Gabbert on Wildfire Today. Here’s how to get one for current and past days. If you don’t see the smoke colors, just go to the three lines on the left and make smoke toggle on. For some reason, I get the smoke overlay on some devices/days and not others, so if you don’t see it don’t give up.

Matthew posted this by Doug Bevington about a documentary that elicited some discussion, but since it was shown by different stations across the US at different times, it was hard for us to see it together and discuss.

Stephen Most told me that Amazing Earthfest has a discussion of it on their schedule of events for August 22 at 6pm MDT. You can see Wilder than Wild online for free plus a Q & A with Stephen Most and the director, Kevin White, after it streams. You just need to register here, at the Amazing Earthfest site. Once you’ve registered, they provide a link so that you can view the film.

I watched the film and then re-read Bevington’s post, which, as you may recall started with:

Unfortunately, the filmmakers have chosen to make glaring omissions—excluding key scientific and environmental voices and leaving out essential facts—that cause their film to distort these issues more than it informs. As a result, the film gives cover to policies that are harmful to forests, dangerous for public safety, and detrimental to the climate, while steering attention away from genuine solutions.

I suppose it goes without saying that I did not see it that way.

What the film said to me is that:

1. Wildfires can do bad things to people, wildlife and their habitat, and watersheds.
2. Climate change will make things worse.
3. To protect things humans value, plus places where other creatures can live, we need to use PB and WFU.
4. Native Americans managed land using burning, and so PB has been used for thousands of years before Native Americans were killed off and displaced.
5. Given changed conditions, vis a vis people and climate change, we need to work together to figure out what is best for our mutual futures.

I don’t know how anyone can argue with these, but am willing to have the discussion in the comments.

The film also calls into question some of the proposed solutions:

6. Some have said that the solution is for people to move somewhere else -out of the WUI- but you just can’t move entire towns and cities away. Plus the population is growing, and major cities have housing costs that are so high, people move farther away for affordability. There’s no way to force people to pay high rents for tiny places. The film says that there are 50 million folks currently living in the WUI.

7. Some have said something along the lines of “if you just protect 100 feet around your home, everything would be fine.” But the film shows a variety of infrastructure other than structures that are burned. Is a solution to make communities more fire-resilient? Yes. Is a solution also to keep fires out of cities and towns? Also yes. Is this controversial or wrong?

Finally, I thought it was interesting that people used the concept of “ecosystems evolving with fire”- but if Native Americans are thought to have been in California for 19000 years then the ecosystems evolved with Native Americans’ use of fire. We also know the climate has been changing for that time period, such that then we can’t really go back to a pre-Native American time (if we wanted to pick a human-free time). It seems that we’d have to say “the Native Americans got it right and that’s where we need to go even though the climate has changed since they were killed off” or “everything’s changed, given our values for species and people’s needs, we’re going to have to muddle through together.”

My own observations:

* Great videography of the fires and post-fire from above.

* There’re photos that show an old growth forest before and after an intense fire that certainly gives you the impression that at least some fires are not good for old growth and old-growth dependent species.

* Note that Calfire and the Park Service have prominent role in the film- hard to fit in the framing that it’s all about the FS wanting to log.

* The film shows the personal impacts of having a fire run through your community. In the El Paso County (Colorado) offices, we used to have an art exhibit created by people impacted by the Waldo Canyon Fire. These stories of personal impacts of wildfire I think are important to hear. Because (at least here) we do all need to work together, to keep fire out of communities, to evacuate, to house the people and animals, to tolerate PB smoke, and so on.

Quibbles:

If the quote about FS vs. NPS policies seemed not what you remember from the past… here’s an article by NPS that goes into more detail.

One thing that seemed to fit that wasn’t mentioned was the liability problem with PB. But this documentary was about California, and perhaps that is not a problem there.

Your thoughts?

This is the second of the two papers on how past human activities have affected current conditions. This is relevant to our understanding of what we see today, as well as any reference points for Historic or Natural ranges of variation. What I really liked about this 2016 paper is that it tackled the history of the Sierra Nevada specifically related to fire.

I first found the description of the study in this post by Leny Quinn-Davidson of the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network.  Here is a link to the original paper, which is also worth reading, especially for those who don’t know much California history and/or find it interesting. The excerpts below are all from the Quinn-Davidson post.

The authors identified four major fire regime periods since 1600, which they were able to link to patterns of human activity. The first regime shift occurred in 1776, triggering a 90-year period of enhanced fire activity. During that period, the mean fire index was almost twice what it had been before 1775. The paper shows that this regime shift was coincident with the timing of Native American contact with Spanish missionaries in the region, which occurred in 1769. It’s not exactly intuitive, but the authors explain that the decimation of Native Americans—and a subsequent reduction in light burning—allowed for an increase in fuel continuity and wildfire activity during that period. This connection is further evidenced by the increased sensitivity of fire activity to climate—a relationship that was relatively weak when Native Americans were conducting widespread burning.

The second regime shift occurred in 1866, at which point fire activity dropped back to pre-1776 levels. The authors attribute this shift to major land use changes across the region—mostly associated with intensive livestock grazing, which denuded herbaceous vegetation and had notable effects on fuel continuity and fire spread. During this period, fire activity was also less sensitive to climate than it had been during the previous period because of a lack of fuels.

The third shift is the one we’re all most familiar with: the beginning of the fire suppression era in the early 1900s. During the fire suppression period, in which we’re still operating today, fire activity has been 4–8 times less than in any other period in recent history. Likewise, the fire-climate relationship has been weak for most of this period; the 20th century has shown increased warming trends, yet fire activity has largely been squelched by human activity. Only in recent decades have we seen a strengthening of that relationship, as a perfect storm of high fuel accumulations, longer fire seasons and drier conditions enables fires of unprecedented severity and size, appearing to override the moderating effects of human management.

But the really valuable thing about this new paper by Taylor et al. is that it gives us a larger context to work within. Yes, recent decades have had increased fire activity and increased sensitivity to climate—we’ve all seen it. But let’s remember that our collective frame of reference is relatively short; for most of us, our vision of what’s natural or normal in terms of fire comes from the mid to late 20th century—the height of our fire disconnect. This paper allows us to look back and see that the human relationship to fire is enduring and powerful, and that our biggest mistake in the last century has been to deny ourselves that intimacy—to value “nature” over nurture. History tells us that we should be able to buffer climate effects, but only if we actively engage at a grand scale. I think we’re ready.

Kevin Vogler sent in this announcement:

Here’s a link to www.WildfireRisk.org that the USFS rolled out this afternoon:

Wildfire Risk to Communities is a free, easy-to-use website with interactive maps, charts, and resources to help communities understand, explore, and reduce wildfire risk. It was created by the USDA Forest Service under the direction of Congress and is designed to help community leaders, such as elected officials, community planners, and fire managers. This is the first time wildfire risk to communities has been mapped nationally with consistent methodology. Unlike other risk assessments that may focus on multiple values at risk, this analysis was designed to provide information related to the risk to homes and other buildings.

The highest mission priority for the Forest Service is sustaining our ability for wildfire management and emergency response. This interactive website provides valuable information on what communities can take to mitigate wildfire risks.

It’s always interesting to look at your favorite areas on the maps. I forwarded this to my county planning department in case they hadn’t seen it.