Fire and Fuels

Difference engine: Fire on the mountain

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Thanks to Hipnology for this piece in the Economist

Here’s a quote:

As Ms. Poulos and Mr Workman note, a century’s accumulation of dry fuel on public lands makes it too expensive and risky—for people, property, habitats and carbon emissions—to unleash prescribed fires on a scale needed to manage America’s national forests more efficiently. (Including private land, national parks and other government property, forests cover nearly 750m acres in America—a third of the country’s land surface.) On the other hand, letting the lumber companies loose to go logging in the national forests on such a scale would engender a massive public outcry. So, what is to be done to release the water that over-stocked forests squander?

One practical solution, known as “forest to faucet”, is being undertaken in Colorado by Denver Water, a utility serving 1.3m Denver residents. After severe wildfires stripped the local landscape and left the soil exposed, subsequent storms drove so much sediment down the hillsides that the utility is now having to spend $30m to dredge the streams and reservoirs that supply its water.

The lesson the utility has learned is that, even though it is not its responsibility, it is far better to pay to have the upstream forests thinned and cleared—so future wildfires in the watershed are nowhere near as fierce, river flows improve, storms do less damage and droughts become less frequent. Under a five-year agreement, the Forest Service will share the cost with the utility to ensure the watershed is properly managed. Denver Water’s enlightened customers will each stump up $27 over the period.

This public-private approach is the kind the Wesleyan researchers favour. They note that water rights in western parts of America are valued at $450 to $650 per acre-foot and rising. It therefore pays thirsty downstream communities to spend $1,000 per acre (the average cost to the Forest Service) to remove the fire-prone trash trees in upstream forests that affect their water supply. In return for their investment, they get the 2.3 acre-feet of water (worth $1,000 to $1,500), which would have otherwise transpired into the sky, for every acre of forest that has been properly thinned.

What is stopping other communities in America’s arid west from following suit? Nothing, other than a mind-set among many who think that if a dozen trees are good, 100 are better. Meanwhile, to replenish the streams before they dry up, others have to accept that chopping down trash trees to prevent conflagrations, and thereby preserve the forests, is no bad thing. As the Wesleyan ecologists admit, “We lifelong tree-huggers must learn when and where to let go.”

Let it burn: Prescribed fires pose little danger to forest ecology, study says

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A prescribed fire in the central Sierra Nevada is set to reduce fuel that could otherwise feed a catastrophic wildfire. (Jason Moghaddas photo)

Note that this is a press release…

Let it burn: Prescribed fires pose little danger to forest ecology, study says
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/06/11/fire-fuel-reduction-treatments/

By Sarah Yang, Media Relations | June 11, 2012
BERKELEY —
Fighting fire with fire has been given the green light by a new study of techniques used to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. And with a rise in wildfires predicted in many parts of the country, researchers say controlled burns and other treatments to manage this risk should be stepped up.

The paper, published in the June issue of the peer-reviewed journal BioScience, and led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, synthesizes 20 years of research throughout the country on the ecological impact of reducing forest wildfire risk through controlled burns and tree thinning. It comes as California braces for a potentially bad fire season, particularly in the southern Sierra where precipitation was half its normal level.
“We need to act, because climate change is making fire season longer, temperatures are going up, and that means more fire in many regions, particularly ones with a Mediterranean environment,” said study lead author Scott Stephens, UC Berkeley associate professor of fire science.
The study authors, which included scientists from the U.S. Forest Service and six research universities in the United States and Australia, relied upon data from the U.S. Fire and Fire Surrogates Study, in addition to a wide range of other studies. Together, the studies represented a broad spectrum of ecological markers, detailing the effects of fuel-reduction treatments on wildlife, vegetation, bark beetles, soil properties and carbon sequestration.
“Some question if these fuel-reduction treatments are causing substantial harm, and this paper says no,” said Stephens. “The few effects we did see were usually transient. Based upon what we’ve found, forest managers can increase the scale and pace of necessary fuels treatments without worrying about unintended ecological consequences.”
A few of the researchers’ specific ecological findings include:

For the first five years after treatment, some birds and small mammals that prefer shady, dense habitat moved out of treated areas, while others that prefer more open environments thrived. The study authors said these changes were minor and acceptable.
When mechanical tree thinning was followed by prescribed fire, there was an increase in the overall diversity of vegetation. However, this also included non-native plant species. The researchers recommend continued monitoring of this effect.
Only 2 percent or less of the forest floor saw an increase in mineral soil exposure, which could lead to small-scale erosion. Other soil variables, such as the level of compaction, soil nitrogen and pH levels, were temporary, returning to pre-treatment levels after a year or two.
Increases in bark beetles, a pest that preys on fire-damaged trees, was short-lived and concentrated in the smaller diameter trees. Researchers noted that thinning out a too-dense forest stand improves tree vigor and ultimately increases its resilience to pests, in addition to fire.

The results of this paper may help inform an analysis of one of the larger prescribed fires in the history of the U.S. Forest Service. Called the Boulder Burn, the proposed treatment covers 6,000-9,000 acres in the Southern Sierra Nevada’s Sequoia National Forest and is tentatively set to begin by late fall.
“This paper is more comprehensive and definitive than any other article I’ve seen,” said Malcolm North, research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service and an associate professor in forest ecology at UC Davis. “In one place, it summarizes the state of the science in fuel-reduction treatments, and to my mind, it shuts the door on those who say that any type of fuels treatment is detrimental to the forest. If done properly where surface fuels are reduced, treatments work. It’s time to get on with it.”

Nearly a century of fire suppression and the preferential logging of large-diameter trees, which are better able to withstand forest fires, have left forests vulnerable to more destructive, albeit less frequent, wildfires, the researchers said. In addition, the lack of fire has hindered nutrient cycling in forests and the proliferation of certain plant species, such as the sequoia, that rely upon fire to promote seed dispersal.
This realization led to the gradual re-emergence during the past 20 years of fuel-reduction as a forest management tool. The goal is simple: Thin or remove dense stands of trees, ground vegetation and downed woody debris in a carefully controlled way before they become fuel for a raging wildfire. When low- or moderate-intensity controlled burns are not an option, fire-prone trees are mechanically removed or shredded on site.
Such techniques are an attempt to emulate the frequent fires common in California for thousands of years. Before 1800, Stephens said, an estimated 1.1 million acres of forest burned annually in California, including wildfires ignited by lightning and other natural sources, and blazes set intentionally by Native Americans as a way to manage or alter landscapes. Most were blazes of low-to-moderate intensity that more than 80 percent of the trees could survive, unlike the catastrophic wildfires of modern times.
“Today, the combination of wildfires and fuel-reducing treatments only touch 6-8 percent of the land that used to burn annually before 1800, and fuel-reducing treatments alone only affect 1 percent,” said Stephens. “That’s a pittance. At that level, it’s just triage rather than fire prevention.”
To approach levels that have a chance of reducing wildfire risk in the long term, he said, the amount of land to be treated in a year would need to increase by 2-4 percent — still low compared to historical levels.
Stephens noted that two-thirds of the fuel-reduction treatments in the western United States rely upon mechanical thinning, which would be much more costly than prescribed burns to scale up. In the southeast region, the use of prescribed fire dominates.
In the West, particularly in California, the biggest challenge to expanding controlled burns is the potential reduction in air quality during treatment, said Stephens.
“We have a choice,” he said, “of dealing with lower levels of smoke from prescribed fires that may only be needed every 15 years or so, and which can be timed for optimum wind conditions, or acute levels of smoke from catastrophic fires that can last for months when they hit.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture-U.S. Department of the Interior Joint Fire Science Program helped support this research.

RELATED INFORMATION

Prehistoric fire area and emissions from California’s forests, woodlands, shrublands, and grasslands (study in Forest Ecology and Management)
Boulder Burn (U.S. Forest Service project site)

Retaining Snag Habitat

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Here is a view of some other cutting units within the Power Fire. Above the road were tractor units, and a narrow stretch below the road, due to stream buffers, was helicopter yarded. Again, you see ample snag “recruitment”, years after salvage logging. Remember, we were also salvaging some trees with poor live/dead crown ratios. I do know that the marking was aggressive, as I did much of the inevitable follow-up marking, during the summer season.

What is really interesting about the tractor unit is how well the logger’s “alternate method” worked. My logger had a processor/loader, an excavator with a grapple attachment, a dozer and two skidders. The excavator would go out on the skid trails and grab/bundle the logs to orient them where the skidder can “grab-and-go”. Their crew was very experienced and efficient, not making messes they would have to clean up.

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To Burn (Prescribed) or Not to Burn; That is the Question

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Some of you may remember that we sheltered evacuees of the human and feline persuasion at our house during the North Fork Fire. Of course, during that period I overheard conversations all the time (at the hair salon, library) about “what they should have done” from folks who have never dealt with fire, prescribed or suppression.

When I first heard of this fire, my first response was “there, but for the grace of Gaia, go we.”

Here’s an op-ed today from the Denver Post with the views of some residents.

Now, a review was done by some FS folks that found no fault by the State. As a Colorado taxpayer, I am having some trouble with the homeowners’ quest to get into my pockets in the name of “justice.” I’m also concerned that this could happen with future (perceived, disputed and litigated?) “errors” in suppression.. leading to liabilities, one way or the other, that states can ill afford in this economic climate.

How can we live in a fire-adapted landscape, protect people and communities, and have the appropriate people (whoever they are) take the risks, do the dangerous work, and pay the bills?

Guest Commentary: What is the state’s responsibility in the Lower North Fork fire?

By Scott Appel and Tom Scanlan

Two months ago, a wildfire set by the Colorado State Forest Service burned 23 homes to the ground and tragically killed three of our loved ones, friends and neighbors. A so-called “controlled burn” quickly flared out of control, and within hours on a Monday afternoon, destroyed everything our families built up over a lifetime.

The physical decimation of our personal items and property pales in comparison to the loss of the lives of Ann Appel and Sam and Linda Lucas to their families and our community. Their deaths and the fire’s total devastation is horrific — and was completely avoidable. As residents of the now-ashen Kuehster Road community, we are grateful that Gov. John Hickenlooper and the state legislature acted to amend the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act to include a waiver for prescribed burns, which was signed Monday. This is a common-sense amendment and a step toward justice, not only for the victims of the Lower North Fork fire but also for all Colorado citizens who may in the future be similarly impacted.

However, the signing of this bill is only a preliminary action toward the state taking full responsibility for the devastation it has wreaked. This legislation is imperfect because it promises nothing more than an “avenue to seek compensation,” lacking any assurances that we will be compensated for our losses not covered by insurance. The legislation says only what the state can do, but does not say what the state will do.

We know exactly how this tragedy was brought upon us, yet we are faced with the feeling that the burden of proof is on us, having to endure a complex governmental review process before recommendations are made for restitution. The amendment makes no promises for the time frame of this process, or that any reasonable compensation will be awarded to victims. In the meantime, our bills and obligations continue.

We have spent the last two months sifting through ashes, testifying before the state legislature, working with our elected representatives to get the state to take responsibility for its actions. Serious questions remain surrounding why this fire was set under dangerously dry conditions when weather reports predicted high winds; why the state ignored its own protocols by leaving the burn unattended; why an evacuation wasn’t ordered earlier when it was already known the fire was out of control; and why the reverse 911 call system failed to warn people in harm’s way.

Moreover, the state’s own review of the fire failed to consult any of the families that lost their homes or numerous witnesses of the fire.

The Kuehster Road community is made up of responsible citizens who pay our taxes and look out for ourselves and our neighbors. We practice fire mitigation through state-recommended guidance to minimize the possibility of forest fires. It’s a far cry from justice when the state Forest Service runs away from taking responsibility for its actions.

We have never asked the state of Colorado for anything. We are not asking for a handout now, but we shouldn’t have to continue to fight for justice as we try to rebuild our lives from this tragedy. Coloradans understand fairness, and what it means to correct a horrible injustice. We sincerely appreciate the outpouring of sympathy from our fellow citizens, who instinctively know how wrong this was.

We are grateful to the governor and our other elected leaders for putting forth this legislation. The governor has personally promised us that this process would not get bogged down in a partisan politics, and we hope and trust that he can prevent it.

We call upon all our elected officials and state agencies to ensure that with the signing of this legislation, they too are fully committed to a quick and just resolution of this tragedy. We ask the state to act as expeditiously and fairly as the state insurance commission would require of any private party who had caused similar harm.

Scott Appel is the husband of Ann Appel, who died in the Lower North Fork Fire. Tom Scanlan is retired from the U.S. Air Force. They wrote this piece on behalf of the residents of the Kuehster Road community.

Note from Sharon: I personally know and respect the team leader of the FS review team. In all these high emotions and complex conditions of nature and humans, I don’t believe that we have anything else to fall back on but the personal integrity of experienced individuals.

10-12 Acres per Nest Not Enough? Black Backed Woodpecker Saga Continues

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Here’s the link.

RENO, Nev. — Forest Service officials have agreed to move post-fire logging operations at Lake Tahoe farther away from nests with rare, black-backed woodpecker chicks at the request of conservationists who’ve been fighting the overall project for years.

But leaders of the John Muir Project – who have documented one nest in the path of the logging and suspect there are more – say the no-cut buffers the agency is implementing are far too small to protect one of the rarest birds in the Sierra Nevada.

“No credible black-backed woodpecker scientist would say it is enough – not even close,” said Chad Hanson, a wildlife ecologist and executive director of the group who has filed a petition seeking protection of the bird under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

“It will kill them just as surely as logging right up to the nest tree,” he said.

Lawyers for the Forest Service told the group last week its proposed 60-acre buffers around each nest would undermine the 1,400-acre project’s goals of restoring the forest and reducing future catastrophic risks where the Angora fire destroyed 250 homes in South Lake Tahoe in 2007.

But Deputy Forest Supervisor Jeff Marsolais said Friday the agency and the private logging contractor agreed to move the fuels reduction operations at least 10 acres away from the nesting area until the chicks leave the nest. One acre is a little less than the size of a football field.

“The relocation shows our ongoing commitment to balance ecosystem values and our intent to maintain efficient operations in completing our Angora restoration efforts,” Marsolais said in a statement the agency provided to The Associated Press late Friday.

In addition to no logging within 10 to 12 acres of the identified nest tree, an additional 25 acres of habitat will be preserved within one-quarter mile of the tree, until the chicks “fledge,” USFS spokeswoman Cheva Heck said.

The area includes some of the last of the 156 acres of forest that remains uncut in the overall 1,400-acre project first proposed in early 2009 and under way for more than a year.

A federal judge in Sacramento earlier rejected a request for an injunction to block the logging filed by the John Muir Project and its parent Earth Island Institute.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals currently is considering their appeal claiming the Forest Service’s environmental assessment ignores the agency’s own science suggesting the project will harm the bird without effectively reducing long-term fire threats.

Hanson said the Forest Service’s own science consistently shows one pair of black-backed woodpeckers needs 100 to 200 acres of good habitat with a minimum 60-acre core for foraging. He said the latest logging will come so close to the nest tree that the noise alone may cause the adult birds to abandon the nest.

Rachel Fazio, a lawyer for the group who argued its case in the 9th Circuit last month in San Francisco, said it made no sense to rush to log the last remnants of the project area given it was more than 90 percent complete and therefore, based on the agency’s arguments, had already reduced fire threats accordingly.

Fazio said the chicks may “fledge” – or fly for the first time – within about three weeks but would remain dependent on their parents weeks longer and be especially vulnerable to predators.

“It will just be a little island of habitat so that maybe the birds survive for a week or so,” she said.

Hanson said the additional 25 acres of habitat retained within a quarter mile – approximately 400 meters – is too far away for a bird that historically won’t travel more than 150 meters at a time in unsheltered forest for fear of becoming someone else’s dinner.

Hanson said the Forest Service took the same approach – unsuccessfully – with a post-fire logging project in the neighboring El Dorado National Forest, leaving uncut three 40- to 50-acre patches of black-backed woodpecker habitat after the 2004 Freds fire near Kyburz, Calif.

“They tested this exact theory before and it didn’t work,” he said. “No one has been able to find woodpeckers near any of those patches since then.”

Heck said the agency is leaving intact about 1,168 acres of burned forest for the woodpeckers and other wildlife – approximately 43 percent of the area charred to varying degrees over more than 3,000 acres.

But Fazio said that less than 800 acres of that 1,168 is considered suitable for the black-backed woodpeckers, which highly dependent on the most intensely burned forest habitat for the beetle larvae they peck from the bark.

Heck said she couldn’t comment directly on that claim because it’s part of the ongoing litigation. She said the district court has denied the group’s request for an injunction blocking the logging “citing the project’s benefits to the public interest.”


Note from Sharon:
It seems to me that with the same $ to pay lawyers, folks could have bought a number of acres in the Sierra to be managed or not to their own specifications. Not to speak of all the feds (including judges) we’re paying, and the paper and ink we’re using to deal with it. Are we really talking about 160 acres here, or am I missing something?

The Power Fire, and the Blackbacked Woodpecker

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This helicopter unit experienced significant dieback, even as the fallers returned multiple times. The marking guidelines allowed for cutting trees with low crown ratios, and with the Forest Service getting projects together so quickly (six months!), the bark beetles hadn’t run their course, yet. In addition to the snag specifications in the project’s plans, you can clearly see that there are a great many more snags now, than the plans required. Also important in this is that snag of certain sizes had to be cut and flown out, as part of the fuels treatment (a HUGE expenditure!)  The Power Fire salvage project was halted by the Ninth Circuit Court, due to the new salvage marking guidelines, and a perceived need for more blackbacked woodpecker analysis. The cutting unit below was completed, though.

Also seen in the foreground is that nasty bear clover, which will dominate, until it is shaded out, or killed with herbicides. It is great to have this smelly carpet (AKA mountain misery) under a nice canopy but, in this case, it will hinder all trees from germinating and growing. Their roots can go 12 feet deep. Even the deerbrush is kept at bay by the bear clover.

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More on Angora Fire, Chad Hanson and Woodpeckers

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Here’s a link, there are many as it is AP. Thanks to Terry Seyden for this link.

Group wants Forest Service to delay Lake Tahoe logging around rare woodpecker chicks
By Scott Sonner, Associated Press

ENO, Nev. (AP) — Rare woodpecker chicks in burned forest stands at Lake Tahoe won’t survive if the U.S. Forest Service proceeds with a contentious post-fire logging project, according to conservationists pressing the agency to postpone cutting around the trees until after the nesting season in August.
The John Muir Project is asking for the delay while awaiting a ruling on an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit aimed at blocking what’s left of the salvage logging operation where the Angora Fire five years ago burned more than 3,000 acres and 250 homes on the edge of South Lake Tahoe, Calif.
Chad Hanson, the group’s executive director, documented black-backed woodpecker chicks this week in at least one nest in the cavity of a standing dead tree at the project site and suspects there are more.
Forest Service officials said Thursday they were reviewing the matter. Lawyers for the agency indicated to the critics earlier this week the plans could not be changed.
Hanson’s group and others recently petitioned the Interior Department for Endangered Species Act protection for the black-backed woodpecker in the Sierra Nevada, eastern Cascades of Oregon and Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming.
The petition is the first seeking protection of a species tied to post-fire habitat. It says the woodpecker has survived for millions of years by eating beetle larvae in burned trees — 13,000 larvae annually — but is threatened by dramatic reductions in habitat resulting from fire suppression and post-fire logging.
At least 300 acres of partially burned and standing dead trees remain uncut in the Angora project area that calls for logging up to 1,500 acres — a total area of more than 2 square miles on national forest land on the west edge of town.
Hanson said the logging had moved within a few hundred yards of the actual nest tree where he identified a mother black-backed woodpecker feeding chicks on Memorial Day, accompanied by a photographer for The Associated Press.
Agency officials told the group normal procedures dictate any documented nest tree itself be spared but no additional protection currently is planned at the project in the works since early 2009.
Hanson, a wildlife ecologist at the University of California, Davis who has been challenging logging projects in the Sierra for more than a decade with mixed success, said a bare minimum buffer of at least 60 acres is needed.
With less, he said even if the chicks’ parents don’t abandon the nest they won’t have a big enough foraging territory to keep the young fed. He said the chicks won’t be able to fly for weeks and logging already is up against the 60-acre core.
“There are some other unlogged areas they could fly to as long as the nest core area was protected, but if that’s gone, the chicks would just starve to death,” said Rachel Fazio, a lawyer for the group who argued their case last May 14 before a three-judge panel at the federal appellate court in San Francisco.
Fazio said it is ironic that the Forest Service and the Tahoe Institute for Natural Science are co-hosting the third annual Lake Tahoe Bird Festival on Saturday at the Taylor Creek Visitor Center just a few miles from the woodpeckers’ nest.
“We confirmed the nest tree and the birds were there on Monday but I don’t know if they’ll be there next Monday,” she told AP. “It’s one of the rarest birds in the Sierra Nevada. We can’t have logging activities which basically kill off the next generation. It seems like this should be a no-brainer.”
Forest Service spokeswoman Cheva Heck said Thursday they still were examining potential alternatives but had no immediate response to the request for delay.
“As managers of public lands, we have the responsibility of balancing multiple priorities. We are still researching each of our options before deciding the most effective way to proceed,” Heck said in an e-mail to AP.
Fazio notified Justice Department lawyers representing the Forest Service in the 9th Circuit case on May 24 that they had spotted two pairs of black-backed woodpeckers in an area slated for logging. She said additional observations would be necessary to confirm nesting but requested in the meantime that USFS delay operations in the area until nesting season is over.
Justice Department lawyers told Fazio in an e-mail May 25 the agency’s normal practice is to protect nest trees but it would not be possible to protect 60 acres around nest trees without undermining the project’s goals, including forest restoration and public safety.
Fazio repeated the request May 28 along with photos of the nest and mother she hoped would prompt the agency to “reconsider its decision to not protect this nesting pair and their chicks.” She said on Thursday she understood the photos had been forwarded to Forest Service biologists but she had received no additional response.
It’s not clear if the 9th Circuit will rule by August on the appeal seeking to overturn a U.S. district court ruling in Sacramento denying the John Muir Project’s request for an injunction to block the logging. The group says the agency’s environmental assessment of the project flies in the face of the latest, best scientific research.

Standing trees better than burning ones for carbon neutrality

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DURHAM, N.C. — The search for alternatives to fossil fuels has prompted growing interest in the use of wood, harvested directly from forests, as a carbon-neutral energy source.

But a new study by researchers at Duke and Oregon State universities finds that leaving forests intact so they can continue to store carbon dioxide and keep it from re-entering the atmosphere will do more to curb climate change over the next century than cutting and burning their wood as fuel.

“Substituting woody bioenergy for fossil fuels isn’t an effective method for climate change mitigation,” said Stephen R. Mitchell, a research scientist at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. Wood stores only about half the amount of carbon-created energy as an equivalent amount of fossil fuels, he explained, so you have to burn more of it to produce as much energy.

“In most cases, it would take more than 100 years for the amount of energy substituted to equal the amount of carbon storage achieved if we just let the forests grow and not harvest them at all,” he said.

Mitchell is lead author of the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Global Change Biology Bioenergy. Mark E. Harmon and Kari E. O’Connell of Oregon State University co-authored the study.

Using an ecosystem simulation model developed at Oregon State, the team calculated how long it would take to repay the carbon debt – the net reduction in carbon storage – incurred by harvesting forests for wood energy under a variety of different scenarios.

Their model accounted for a broad range of harvesting practices, ecosystem characteristics and land-use histories. It also took into account varying bioenergy conversion efficiencies, which measure the amount of energy that woody biomass gives off using different energy-generating technologies.

“Few of our combinations achieved carbon sequestration parity in less than 100 years, even when we set the bioenergy conversion factor at near-maximal levels,” Harmon said. Because wood stores less carbon-created energy than fossil fuels, you have to harvest, transport and burn more of it to produce as much energy. This extra activity produces additional carbon emissions.

“These emissions must be offset if forest bioenergy is to be used without adding to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in the near-term,” he said.

Performing partial harvests at a medium to low frequency – every 50 to 100 years or so – could be an effective strategy, O’Connell noted, but would generate less bioenergy.

“It’s a Catch-22,” she said. “Less intensive methods of harvesting release fewer emissions but yield less energy. The most intensive methods, such as clear-cutting, produce more energy but also release more carbon back into the atmosphere, prolonging the time required to achieve carbon sequestration parity.”

Given current economic realities and the increasing worldwide demand for forest products and land for agriculture, it’s unlikely that many forests will be managed in coming years solely for carbon storage, Mitchell said, but that makes it all the more critical that scientists, resource managers and policymakers work together to maximize the carbon storage potential of the remaining stands.

“The take-home message of our study is that managing forests for maximal carbon storage can yield appreciable, and highly predictable, carbon mitigation benefits within the coming century,” Mitchell said. “Harvesting forests for bioenergy production would require such a long time scale to yield net benefits that it is unlikely to be an effective avenue for climate-change mitigation.”

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The research was funded by a NASA New Investigator Program grant to Kari O’Connell, by the H.J. Andrews Long-term Ecological Research Program, and by the Kay and Ward Richardson Endowment.

Cascading species shift looms in fire-starved Eastern woods -E&E News

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Managing smoke is a continual challenge for prescribed burns, even in rural Arkansas. Plumes like this column, from a 1,400-acre burn of the Big Piney Ranger District in 2001, must be carefully monitored for dispersal and escapes. Photo by Steve Osborne.

I really liked this article and it is right up our discussion alley and also about the East. It might be worth getting a temporary subscription for those who don’t get Greenwire. Fundamentally the story is about fire in Eastern forests. I could have quoted any part and it would be interesting but here is the last section. The author is Paul Voosen, E&E reporter.

Here’s a quote from early in the piece:

On a hot spring morning, foresters and scientists tromped through the charred understory of a burned patch of the Ozark National Forest. They had recently wrapped their work, dripping fire this way and that beneath an open canopy of oaks. Soon, they hoped, a succession of grasses would bloom in blackened soil, bathing in restored light.

The site is an atonement for the Forest Service’s past sins.

I think it’s kind of funny to think of a prescribed burn as “atonement for sins”… maybe it would be cheaper for the taxpayer for the Chief to just sign a confession ;)..or we could have an atonement ceremony and be done…

Big questions

If there’s a model for a restored Eastern forest in Arkansas, it’s Buck Ridge.

An upward-sloping 29-acre woodland tucked in state wildlife land north of the Ozark National Forest, Buck Ridge is a gateway to the past. About 250 species of plant can be found in its understory, an astounding diversity. Through the year, each wave of grasses flowers taller than the last, chasing light. By midsummer, they are waist high; by the end of the year, the big bluestem grasses reach 6 feet high.

“Everything is adapted to work well in this system,” said Witsell, the botanist.

Possessing the rare ability to identify nearly any plant on sight, Witsell scrambled around the ridge like Darwin first alighting on the Galapagos. He listed off rare species that could only be found in a sun-drenched forest: Chapman’s purple top; Nuttall’s pleat leaf; snakeroot; all kinds of legumes; four different violets since leaving the car.

Above the grasses, the “swee-swee-swee” call of a redheaded woodpecker rang out.
Prescribed burns

Managing smoke is a continual challenge for prescribed burns, even in rural Arkansas. Plumes like this column, from a 1,400-acre burn of the Big Piney Ranger District in 2001, must be carefully monitored for dispersal and escapes. Photo by Steve Osborne.

“Those redheads are woodland birds,” said Steve Osborne, a retired Forest Service officer from Ozark National Forest. “You hear them all over the place right now. They’re here because of this treatment. I can tell you in the years past, I could go for months without seeing one of them in the national forest.”

For all its success, Buck Ridge’s restoration was not easy. The state has burned the ridge seven times in the past 15 years. Even then, the restoration did not truly take hold until a second tool was added: targeted herbicides. The dense pack of young trees did not easily give way, and so, in 2008, the forest managers injected herbicides into all the woody stems measuring from 1 to 10 inches in diameter.

From an ecological standpoint, the herbicides are not a problem, Witsell said.

“It’s a surgical approach,” he said. “You’re not spraying this from an airplane. You’re injecting it into the tree trunks. And it’s obviously not hurting the flora on the ground.”

But the hard truth scientists have found is that fire is often not enough to restore the forest. Most often, prescribed burns have to be combined with logging and herbicides, an active type of management that makes some environmentalists queasy. But perhaps it’s no surprise that such drastic steps are needed. Keeping fire out of the forest was itself a massive management choice, if one belatedly known.

“It’s been many years since fire was an active agent on our landscape,” said Nowacki, the Forest Service ecologist. “We’re dealing with decades here. And so it shouldn’t be surprising it might take decades to rehabilitate the forests.”

Indeed, much of the Forest Service’s interest in the historical fire conditions of the Eastern forest has been driven by the notion that logging can be ecologically justified. It’s the subtext for much of its financial support, Duke’s Christensen said. Even Abrams is studying how well harvesting and herbicide injections can take the place of fire.

For Christensen, efforts like Buck Ridge bring together larger questions of restoration. If humanity created and maintained these open, Eastern forests in the first place — if these are the first forests of the Anthropocene — then shouldn’t foresters actively choose the woodland they want, rather than using an arbitrary, uncertain historical baseline?

“It puts the burden on defining a restoration target on the managers themselves,” Christensen said. “They say, ‘I get to decide what’s going to be here in the future.’ Justifiably, public agencies are really uncomfortable with that. Do they even have the social license to do that?”

Despite sounding the alarm for 25 years, Penn State’s Abrams has doubts that much can be done to get the Eastern forest back to where he’d like, especially with fire. There’s too much settlement and too much land in private hands. Liability is a huge concern for those rare escaped fires. Climate change could make it difficult for the trees to survive.

A threshold has been passed. The oak and pine forest will never be what it was.

“I would like to see increased used of burning in the East for these fire-adapted forest types,” Abrams said. “But I realize we’re never going to have the extent of burning that we [had] before European settlement.”

What will survive are pockets, traces of humanity’s original sway over nature.

Standing near the top of Buck Ridge, where the post oaks spread their limbs wide, their girth a sign of the savannah forest this was and is again, Anderson, the hustling fire coordinator, stopped to survey his team’s work. This is an ecosystem that hasn’t been seen since the American Indians hunted in Buck Ridge, since the early settlers, he said.

And yet, in the soil, the seeds waited, returning in full bloom.

“It all says, ‘Yes, yes, yes. We want more of this,'” he said.

I wonder who is saying “we want more of this”; not sure there is a Nature, nor does She speak with one voice. Back to Christensen’s point, the future will bring tough decisions about what we (people) want or don’t want. Best discussed (dare I say it?) collaboratively, IMHO.

The Power Fire, Six Years Later

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This wildfire, on the Amador Ranger District, of the Eldorado National Forest. was sparked by crews cutting hazard trees along powerlines. I was a Sale Administrator, detailed to help salvage timber and accomplish contract work over 55% of the burned area. New marking guidelines, ordered by the courts, were first used on this project. While the plans survived a lower court challenge, the infamous Ninth Circuit Court decided that the new guidelines were “confusing” and more analysis regarding the blackbacked woodpecker was needed.

Here is what one of the cutting units looks like today. Choked with deerbrush, with not much in the way of conifers established.

This picture shows the striking contrast of Forest Service, versus private timberlands. You can clearly see the property lines and the section corner. What you cannot see is the accelerated erosion that came off the private lands, impacting the road at the bottom of the picture. Between the deerbrush and the the thick bear clover, conifers have little chance to recover, and a re-burn might be in the future for this patch of Federal land. The upper tract of Federal land seems to have no standing snags left, due to blowdown. The rest of the area seems to be choked with snags that died since harvesting was completed. At least SOME of the fuels for a future wildfire have been significantly reduced.

This area has a history of Indian occupation, and the forest still shows it. The bear clover re-grew and covered the bare soil within 6 months. Today, people would be hard-pressed to find ANY logging damage, on this side of the fire area. What really amazed me is that this project has ALREADY suffered a re-burn. The fuels reduction definitely saved the remaining old growth from burning to a crisp. This forest has its resilience back, has a better species composition, and seems ready for a regular program of prescribed fire.

As you can see, the light and the weather didn’t cooperate. I’m sure I will be going back to capture some more images, and to compare them to the photos I took six years ago.