Fire and Fuels

Smoke Maps on the Web

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As a residents of the western US, we live with fire. For the last few weeks, I’ve been living with smoke. I wanted to know where it was from.. air quality websites were not particularly helpful. I found this neat EPA app here. However, I’ve noticed that my area has smoke, but is not even close to being on the map.

Here’s current air quality but not by reason (i.e., not just smoke)

Here are some maps on Wildfire Today..also from NOAA but different..

Maybe someone among our readers can explain.. ??

California’s Efforts on Dead Trees and Fuels

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PGE in California has cleared 100K miles (!) of powerline.

To add to the fuel treatment debate mix.. What does the fuel issue look like in a D state when you take the FS out of the equation? (given that the reporter isn’t as cautious about his language about “to blame” for wildfires as readers of this blog would prefer). Here’s the link.

While human error continues to be the leading cause of wildfires, the number of dead trees and densely overgrown brush are responsible for some of the most damaging and difficult to control fires.

In October 2015, Gov. Jerry Brown issued an emergency declaration to address the number of dead and dying trees as a result of extended drought conditions. An estimated 102 million trees died between 2010 and 2016 during the Golden State’s devastating drought, with about 62 million perishing in 2016 alone.

These trees are frequently to blame for wildfires, including the 2015 Butte Fire that burned 70,000 acres and destroyed 900 structures after a dead pine tree fell on power lines.

Cal Fire has partnered with the California Conservation Corps to organize crews to clear dead trees and conduct controlled burns in densely forested areas.

Pimlott informed the subcommittee that in the time since the declaration, Pacific Gas & Electric has cleared trees and brush from 100,000 miles of power lines across the state. California has spent $418 million to remove dead and dying trees statewide, which has been instrumental to reducing the amount of property damage caused by fires.

“Collectively, we have removed over 800,000 trees since the declaration,” Pimlott said. “We have focused primarily on the property damage side of things.” He credits the ability of multiple agencies, including Cal Fire, Caltrans, PG&E and others who have worked together to reduce the risk of unintentional fires.

Pimlott said the state needs to commit more money to fire prevention and forest maintenance projects.

“Fifteen million dollars really isn’t enough to deal with our forest health challenges,” Pimlott said. “We really need to look at more significant investments.”

Pimlott said a proposed $150 million appropriation would make a nice start toward a long-term solution to wildfires in California.

If you go to Governor Brown’s site here, you find:

The tree die-off is of such a scale that it significantly worsens wildfire risk in many areas of the state and presents life safety risks from falling trees to Californians living in rural, forested communities. Several counties have declared local state of emergencies due to this epidemic tree mortality.

The Governor’s state of emergency proclamation on the tree mortality epidemic builds on the April 2014 executive order to redouble the state’s drought response, which included provisions to expedite the removal of dead and dying hazardous trees. Today’s proclamation helps identify high hazard zones for wildfire and falling trees that have resulted from the unprecedented die-off and prioritizes tree removal in these areas. It also calls for state agencies to take several actions to enable removal of hazard trees. Governor Brown’s letter to Secretary Vilsack requests urgent federal action, including additional technical assistance for private land owners, matching federal funding and expedited approval for emergency actions on federal lands.

In addition, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and CAL FIRE are convening a Task Force on Tree Mortality comprised of state and federal agencies, local governments and utilities that will coordinate emergency protective actions and monitor ongoing conditions.

I’d be interested in observations from California NCFPers on this..

Fuel treatments to save an endangered species

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The case of the Mount Graham red squirrel seems to be another example of where everyone agrees that fuel treatments make sense.  According to the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, loss of habitat to fire is the primary threat to this species.  The draft recovery plan was revised in 2011 largely due to unanticipated increases in the fire threat.  It describes management occurring on the Coronado National Forest:

The Pinaleño Ecosystem Management (PEM) demonstration project, implemented from 2000
through 2008, is a large project in the mixed conifer zone of the Pinaleños. The PEM project
involved thinning, piling, burning, and sometimes broadcast burning in an area occupied by the
Mount Graham red squirrel, northern goshawk, Mexican spotted owl, and numerous USFS
Sensitive Species.

Currently (2011), the Coronado National Forest has also proposed a larger fuel reduction and forest restoration project called the Pinaleño Ecosystem Restoration Project (PERP). This project is designed to help reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire in much of the remaining mixed
conifer zone, and will begin to set the forest on a trajectory that will allow a low-intensity fire
cycle. Large-diameter trees, snags, and logs of all canopy species will be retained, while select
smaller-diameter under- and mid-story trees will be removed to achieve desired forest conditions
(considering species composition, life form structure, and landscape matrix of age classes). The
mixed conifer forest currently has the largest block of remaining squirrel habitat, and monitoring
of impacts to the red squirrel and its habitat is incorporated into the project’s design. This
project is currently undergoing formal consultation, and will take a decade or more to complete.
The success of this project in reducing the threat of stand-replacing wildfire, while having
minimal short-term impact on the Mount Graham red squirrel, will be key to setting the stage for
recovery of the species.

The project was ongoing in 2015, and there was apparently no litigation.  (The Center for Biological Diversity has been active in challenging the main human threat – astronomers.)  The key seems to be the mitigation measures that led to the FWS concluding there would be “minimal short-term impact” (and the squirrel’s limited range of around 12,000 acres probably helps).  How then to interpret this statement in a story about a fire there this summer?

“Until they do something with the Endangered Species Act, we’re going to continue to have these (fires) because they don’t let them thin the mountain up manually because of the squirrel,” Weech said.

A Roundup of Western Watershed/Fuels Partnerships

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This is a very long, and well worth reading, article by Sherry Devlin in Treesource about the Flagstaff effort, Forests to Faucets, and Feather River efforts in California. Below are couple of excerpts- feel free to post other excerpts of interest in the comments.

Jonathan Kusel on why California might be different from other efforts:

“One of the great frustrations of folks in the upper watersheds and those working on forests and forest health issues in California is that folks in urban areas do not make the connection between forest and watershed health, and water quality and quantity,” said Jonathan Kusel, executive director of the Sierra Institute for Community and Environment. “That’s particularly true in California because some of the water is moved so far.

“You ask the average person in Southern California where their water comes from and they’ll honestly and sincerely say, ‘The tap.’ In general, we have a pretty limited understanding of where water comes from and how far it gets moved before it comes out of the tap.”
The greater problem stems from the lack of connection the public makes between a healthy forest and a healthy watershed, Kusel said. “We have tried for well over two decades to help Californians make that connection, with limited success.”

and..

The Feather River provides one-quarter of California’s drinking water. The city of Los Angeles is one of the beneficiaries of the watershed.

California’s complex system of water-delivery reservoirs, aqueducts, pipes and tunnels commands much of the public’s attention, Kusel said. “It’s such an amazing system, such a complexity of conveyance facilities, that most people associate their drinking water with that infrastructure. They don’t make the same connection with the green infrastructure at the start of the delivery system.”

So while metro areas like Denver and smaller cities like Santa Fe and Flagstaff are able to convince utilities, ratepayers and voters to finance forest restoration projects, Kusel has no such buy-in from Southern California communities.

“Our accounting methods for these environmental benefits of forests are limited,” he said. “The payment for ecosystem services is, for the most part, not there. And that’s what we need. We can come up with the charges that would make a huge difference in the overall health of our forests and our watersheds, but no one wants their pocket picked.”

And on opposition to the Flagstaff project:

Opposition has been minimal, said Jessica Richardson, the Forest Service’s lead on the Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project. “I really think there will always be people who are not 100 percent in support, but even those folks are supportive of the general concept of what we are doing.”

It goes back to the bond’s 74 percent approval, said Elson. “We had the social capital. So some of the groups that might have opposed us chose not to in this case, even though there are visual impacts, steep slopes and spotted owls. There is an excitement about the project in the community.”

*

Forest Fires and Adaptation Options in Europe: Modeling Climate Change, Fuel Reduction and Suppression

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ig. 4
Sensitivity analysis of suppression efficiency for the SFM model calibrated using GFED data for years 2000–2008. Changes in burned areas per country are in percents relative to burned area corresponding to calibrated value of q (values of q vary within ±10 % range)

Thanks to 2nd Law’s comments about Bayesian analysis, I went hopping down a bunny trail of decision science links, and ran across this. It addresses how Europeans might adapt to climate change vis a vis wildfires. It’s interesting to take a look at how these scientists approach the problem that we have been talking about in the Western U.S.

Here’s the abstract:

This paper presents a quantitative assessment of adaptation options in the context of forest fires in Europe under projected climate change. A standalone fire model (SFM) based on a state-of-the-art large-scale forest fire modelling algorithm is used to explore fuel removal through prescribed burnings and improved fire suppression as adaptation options. The climate change projections are provided by three climate models reflecting the SRES A2 scenario. The SFM’s modelled burned areas for selected test countries in Europe show satisfying agreement with observed data coming from two different sources (European Forest Fire Information System and Global Fire Emissions Database). Our estimation of the potential increase in burned areas in Europe under “no adaptation” scenario is about 200 % by 2090 (compared with 2000–2008). The application of prescribed burnings has the potential to keep that increase below 50 %. Improvements in fire suppression might reduce this impact even further, e.g. boosting the probability of putting out a fire within a day by 10 % would result in about a 30 % decrease in annual burned areas. By taking more adaptation options into consideration, such as using agricultural fields as fire breaks, behavioural changes, and long-term options, burned areas can be potentially reduced further than projected in our analysis.

Here’s a free link to the article.
Here’s the description of the way the study was done and the problem framed (how to deal with fire as climate changes):

The present study is designed to explore the impact of adaptation options with regard to forest fires in Europe under projected climate change reflecting the SRES A2 scenario (Nakicenovic and Swart 2000) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The main aims of our study are: (1) to quantify the potential impacts of climate change on burned area in Europe under “no adaptation” scenario and compare the results with existing literature and (2) to extend that assessment with quantitative estimation of the potential effectiveness of different adaptation measures at pan-European scale. Among the different adaptation options, we test fuel removal via prescribed burnings and enhancement of fire suppression. These options were developed in consultation with relevant stakeholders, who provided essential inputs to the research.

Note that for the purposes of this scientific study, the discipline of historic vegetation ecology does not enter in to the framing of the issue. The implicit assumptions is that people want to reduce the burned area which will otherwise increase due to climate change.

Also this was interesting although the Australia claim did not have a cite.

The results of our study in terms of the estimated impact of prescribed burnings on burned areas, even though not always directly comparable, are in line with other studies on the effectiveness of prescribed burning for fire hazard reduction. For instance, a difference of about three times between the average size of a wildfire in treated and untreated areas in US has been shown (Fernandes and Botelho 2003). Similar results have also been obtained in Australia, where the average wildfire size was reported to be 50 % smaller in treated areas.

Politicians vs science

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Ideology was on display at a grandstanding event on the Lolo Peak Fire.

Secretary Sonny Perdue, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Congressman Greg Gianforte and Senator Steve Daines got a briefing from the fire management team, and then held a short press conference.

Senator Daines repeated a refrain that Montana Republicans have been saying for years: That lawsuits from extreme environmental groups are preventing the U.S. Forest Service from carrying out logging and thinning projects that would remove trees and prevent wildfires… “It is the lawyers who are – funding for these extreme environmental groups — who are having a tremendous impact, devastating impact on allowing us to move forward here on some common sense timber projects,” Daines said.

Both Perdue and Congressman Greg Gianforte pointed to a 5,000 acre logging project called the Stonewall that was approved by the Helena Lewis and Clark National Forest outside Lincoln in 2016. That was then put on hold in January by a judge responding to a lawsuit from the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council. That area is now burning as part of the Park Creek fire sparked by lightning this summer.

But, after listening to audio of the press conference this afternoon, the dean of the Forestry School at the University of Montana, Tom DeLuca, cautioned against expecting too much from a timber sale or wildfire  fuel management projects…  On a windy, hot day, a fire will carry right through that understory or in those crowns regardless of whether it’s been thinned or not. It does change the behavior…  There are also studies that try to quantify how much more severe wildfires are in recent years due to climate change. DeLuca says it’s clear that human-caused climate change from burning fossil fuels is making fire seasons longer and more intense.

Sen. Daines says, “We go through warmer cycles, cooler cycles, droughts, excessive precipitation. We are in a warm cycle right now, we are in drought conditions here in Montana consequently we’re having a severe fire season.”

(Climate scientist Steve) Running says.., “”What I heard is the kind of evasive response, ‘yeah weather’s always changing and we’ve had dry seasons and fire seasons before,’ and so the implication that there’s nothing really new and this is just part of natural cycles. Of course in the climate change research community we’ve well documented in dozens and dozens of peer reviews papers that the fire season’s getting longer and overall we’re burning more acres than in the past and that we’re on a trend of longer fire seasons and bigger fires,” Running says…  It’s always the case that if you pick any one year out you can say there’s been other years like this, but when we study climate, we’re studying decades, multi-decadal trends, and we clearly document multi-decadal trends of longer, warmer summers and more, bigger fires.”

At least Perdue agreed, “There obviously is climate change …”

Air Pollution from Wildfires compared to that from Prescribed burns

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New research has taken an exponential leap forward in measuring air pollution from forest fires. It confirms the importance of sound forest management in terms of health. To summarize: prescribed burns are significantly more desirable than wildfires. “Researchers associated with a total of more than a dozen universities and organizations participated in data collection or analysis. The scientists published their peer-reviewed results on June 14 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.” Georgia Institute of Technology was cited as the lead university and Bob Yokelson, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Montana were specifically mentioned in this article from ScienceDaily.

Some quotes from the article include:

1) “For the first time, researchers have flown an orchestra of modern instruments through brutishly turbulent wildfire plumes to measure their emissions in real time. They have also exposed other never before measured toxins.”

2) “Naturally burning timber and brush launch what are called fine particles into the air at a rate three times as high as levels noted in emissions inventories at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to a new study. The microscopic specks that form aerosols are a hazard to human health, particularly to the lungs and heart.”

3) “Particulate matter, some of which contains oxidants that cause genetic damage, are in the resulting aerosols. They can drift over long distances into populated areas.

People are exposed to harmful aerosols from industrial sources, too, but fires produce more aerosol per amount of fuel burned. “Cars and power plants with pollution controls burn things much more cleanly,””

4) “”A prescribed fire might burn five tons of biomass fuel per acre, whereas a wildfire might burn 30,” said Yokelson, who has dedicated decades of research to biomass fires. “This study shows that wildfires also emit three times more aerosol per ton of fuel burned than prescribed fires.”

While still more needs to be known about professional prescribed burnings’ emissions, this new research makes clear that wildfires burn much more and pollute much more. The data will also help improve overall estimates of wildfire emissions.”

I feel that the previously expressed concerns by many of us about the impact of wild fires on human populations for a thousand or more miles from a catastrophic fire have been reinforced, once again, by this landmark research. It matters not whether you are for or against human intervention to minimize the risk of catastrophic fires; sound, sustainable, science based forest management to accommodate human health and other needs in harmony with the needs of forests and their dependent species (as a whole system) is in the process of restoring some balance to piecemeal, emotionally driven, faux science and wishful thinking. Save the planet – save our forests – use statistically sound, replicated research validated by extensive operational trials over time and place to make sound environmental decisions.

Wildlife and last year’s eastern wildfires

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“Endangered snail survives devastating fall wildfires” and other stories from the Smoky Mountains.

The snail was placed on the federal endangered species list in 1978. Before the fires, the only place in the world it was known to exist was a 2-mile stretch the southern side of the Nantahala River Gorge in Swain County.

After the fires, biologists found snails in an area about 5 miles long and extending to near the top of the ridge, a much broader area than ever thought, he said.

One interesting point is that the drought that led to the fire may have also caused these less mobile species to seek out wetter areas that gave them more protection from the fire.

Why We Disagree About Fuel Treatments: VII. Framing Again: the Watershed Projects

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We have already talked about the Forests to Faucets partnership effort in Colorado here and here. I raised the question at the time (2012) and I think it’s still relevant.. why do watershed projects seem to have fewer critics? As I said then:

I wonder why this water partnerships like this are a New Mexico/Colorado phenomenon and not a California/Montana phenomenon? Maybe I just don’t know about them elsewhere? Maybe the lack of a forest industry means that these things can happen without the timber wars ghosts? Ideas?

So we have the Flagstaff project (thanks, Jon!), the Santa Fe Fireshed, the Rio Grande effort (thanks Bryan!). Here’s a page from the Santa Fe:

The Santa Fe Fireshed is so big, what can be done?
Protect communities by mitigation activities in the wildland-urban interface.
Promote fire adapted communities. Learn more at www.fireadaptednm.org. This includes mitigating fuels, assessing wildfire risk to structures, evacuation planning and drills, awareness, and education.
Develop a landscape strategy that uses a collaborative process to identify landscape priorities and values at-risk.
Conduct project planning at the landscape scale in high priority areas. On federal managed lands, this includes National Environmental Policy Act planning.
Make use of the suite of land management tools that fit the landscape. This can include strategic thinning, fuels modification through chipping and mastication, wood utilization where appropriate, and the use of fire to reduce fuels. The use of fire may include burning piles, broadcast burning of the forest understory to mimic natural fire regimes, or using wildfire for resource benefit when firefighter and public safety allow.

This seems like a comprehensive both/and approach.

Here’s the latest on Forests to Faucets from February:

DENVER — Over the next five years, Denver Water, the U.S. Forest Service – Rocky Mountain Region, Colorado State Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service will invest $33 million in forest restoration projects to treat more than 40,000 acres within Denver Water’s critical watersheds.

Under the From Forests to Faucets partnership, the U.S. Forest Service – Rocky Mountain Region has been working with Denver Water since 2010 to implement forest and watershed health projects.

The goal is to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires and restore forests impacted by wildfires surrounding reservoirs, as well as minimize erosion and sedimentation in reservoirs. More than 48,000 acres of National Forest System lands have been treated so far with fuels reduction, restoration and prevention activities.

Here are some hypotheses for why the “thinning doesn’t work” seems to be more popular in the Northwest and California.
1. They don’t have direct experience with bad fire/ water provider events (reservoirs filled with silt).
2. Water is not as important to them as they are wetter climates (although California gets water from Colorado..).
3. Different environmental groups in those areas are successful at framing the issue as being about “houses” or “logging the backcountry.”
4. A leftover of the timber wars.. so many people and organizations were developed to fight the wars, cooperation toward shared goals does not resonate the same way. People developed a lack of trust in the Forest Service, so that any utilization of wood resonates as a bad thing.
5. Related to #4, big universities full of scientists tend to be on the wet west side of Washington, Oregon and California, producing ideas and observations that might not fit the Interior West. Somehow they tend to take over the framing as being about returning to HRV, not about protecting values at risk.

Feel free to add your own hypotheses and thoughts..also feel free to give comments and additions/deletions to the table.

When the locals pay for national forest fuel reduction …

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Everybody wins?

“So were Flagstaff officials prescient when they proposed what, at the time, was one of the first municipal partnerships with a national forest to have lands outside city boundaries thinned at city expense?”

“Hindsight is 20-20, but it sure looks that way to us. Armed with a $10 million budget, the Forest Service immediately went to work on an environmental study that mapped the most fireprone timber stands as well as nests of endangered Mexican spotted owls.  Steep slopes most prone to erosion were pegged for less-harmful cable logging, and some stands of old-growth ponderosas were declared off limits. Using collaborative tactics learned from 4FRI, the draft EIS containing a thinning plan was ready in near-record time and drew no lawsuits that would cause delay.”

Could that be because there’s no revenue or profit motive driving more destructive logging practices?