Fire and Fuels

Wildfires, Wilderness and Safety: Dollar Lake

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Ross William Hamilton, The Oregonian
Foto sent this link in to an Oregonian article with this comment.

Nowhere is the controversy so polarized over Wilderness fires. Both Bob Zybach and I were motivated to post in the comments, seemingly squelching the folks who subscribe to the idea that wildfires are always “natural and beneficial”, despite the threats to their water supply. Also interesting is the comments from an apparent smokejumper, somewhat critical of mistakes made by fire managers. The article’s content is a bit slanted, even to my enlightened knowledge. To me, one of the conundrums is trying to find a balance between Wilderness, water quality and wildfires and firefighter safety. It seems that no matter what the Feds do in this situation, they get ample criticism. It’s unfortunate that, sometimes, firefighter safety is used as an excuse to not aggressively fight the wildfires. It’s a very fine line there.

Thanks, Foto!

Association for Fire Ecology Paper on Carbon and Fire

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Foto submitted this as a comment, but I think it’s worth starting another post just on the report. What Foto said was …

“Here is the best, most balanced position paper on carbon sequestration and fire ecology I could find. While I don’t agree with every detail put forth in this position paper, I do see that site specificity is key to each micro-situation.

The paper seems to address all our forest issues without that annoying partisan politics so pervasive in other documents. Also, the paper doesn’t seem to be one of those “stand alone” write-ups that ignore other forest issues to ram home preservationist talking points. All too often, preservationist position papers make impossible comparisons while ignoring or discounting likely long term scenarios affecting public safety, natural resources and local ecosystem values.”

If you’d like to learn more about the AFE, here is a link to their website. Looks like they are having an interesting conference in November (info here).

When I read the paper, I thought something along the lines of “let’s not overthink this. We need to protect structures and communities, and fires will burn so we need to deal with different ways of managing vegetation in consideration of that fact. This is difficult (and expensive!) enough without thinking that concerns over carbon are somehow going to force us to do something drastically different. There is just not enough decision space to do much differently from a practical point of view.”

What do you think?

Lake Tahoe Angora Project Wins Appeal

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WatershedTour AngoraFire 2008

9th Circuit clears USFS logging at Lake Tahoe (here)

By SCOTT SONNER, Associated Press

A federal appeals court cleared the way Monday for the Forest Service to begin logging near Lake Tahoe, where a wildfire burned more than 250 homes four years ago.

In making its ruling, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected claims that the project violates environmental laws and will jeopardize the survival of a rare woodpecker.

The panel issued a two-page ruling denying an emergency injunction sought by two environmental groups.

The panel, including Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, gave no reason for its decision.

They said they will give the Earth Island Institute and Center for Biological Diversity until Oct. 3 to submit formal briefs so the case can be considered on a normal schedule in November.

Chad Hanson, executive director of the institute’s Sierra-based John Muir Project, said the group would continue to challenge the logging even if it is completed by November because an important precedent is at stake.

He said the argument by the Forest Service that it has no legal requirement to maintain a viable population of the black-backed woodpecker in the national forest at Lake Tahoe contradicts every previous administration’s interpretation of the National Forest Management Act dating to 1982.

“”The black-backed woodpecker is one of the rarest bird species in the entire Sierra Nevada and the Forest Service is pushing it toward extinction with its post-fire logging program,” Hanson told The Associated Press.

The Forest Service says the logging of about half of the 3,000 acres that burned in June 2007 is part of an overall restoration project that will help speed regrowth of burned stands and reduce the threat of future catastrophic fires.

The $3 million project is not intended to produce any merchantable timber, only chips and scrap wood for biomass.

The opponents counter that they have no problem with cutting trees with a diameter of less than 10 inches, but the agency’s plan to log some trees nearly 2-feet thick and to remove dead standing trees that the woodpeckers thrive on will do nothing to reduce fire threats. They say the forest should be left to regenerate on its own.

“Their own fire analysis specifically concludes that this project will actually increase the fire hazard slightly relative to doing nothing,” Hanson said. “It will not protect the community, and they did not contest that in their reply briefs because they cannot.”

He said the project amounts to a $3 million subsidy for the biomass industry.

Forest Service officials did not immediately return telephone calls or emails seeking comment on Monday.

Lawyers for the agency said in legal briefs filed last week they don’t believe the woodpecker will be harmed by the logging.

They said U.S. District Court Judge Garland Burrell Jr. made it clear that he agreed with their interpretation in his July 13 ruling in Sacramento denying a similar injunction.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/07/25/state/n125152D63.DTL#ixzz1TLwIqP62

Here’s the CBD press release. It includes a critique of the use of woody biomass.

Although I am not an expert, this appears to be the rationale for doing it the way the FS chose (from the EA here).

Reduced Removal of Snags: There were concerns that the proposed action would remove
snags that are not necessary to meet the purpose and need. The following alternative was considered: leaves all snags >16 inches in diameter except where they pose an imminent health and safety hazard to forest users and works. An analysis was conducted to compare the amounts of downed fuel that would accumulate in three time frames: immediately after project implementation, 20 years after project implementation, and 50 years1 after project implementation. These values were compared with the desired conditions that are described in Chapter 1. In summary, these desired conditions are: reducing wildland fire behavior under
high fire weather conditions (hot, dry summer days), including flame lengths of less than 4 feet at the head of a fire; reducing the rate of spread at the head of the fire; reducing hazards to firefighters by removing snags from locations likely to be used for fire suppression; and doubling fire line construction rates. To meet these desired conditions for defense zones, average fuel loading should be less than 10 tons per acre of various size and decay classes of woody debris (see discussion under Section 1.3, “Overview of the Existing Condition”). The desired conditions are responsive to the need to ensure that fuel loadings do not create potential wildfire behavior conditions such that fire severity is excessive or that fire suppression
activities are ineffective or compromised in protecting communities or wildlife and watershed values.
The analysis of residual fuel loadings if dead trees >16 inches dbh were left (Project Record Document E20) revealed that fuel loadings would not meet the desired conditions over time as all of the remaining dead trees fall after project implementation (36 tons per acre, weighted) and hence would not meet the desired conditions (10‐15 tons per acre) nor would this alternative meet the purpose and need of reducing long‐term fuel loadings (see discussion under Section 1.5.1, “Fire, Fuels, Vegetation, and Forest Health”). In addition, leaving dead trees
>16 inches dbh would leave approximately 31 downed logs per acre, which would reduce
fireline construction rates. This condition also would not meet the purpose and need. A study by Brown et al. (Project Record Document E179) acknowledges that leaving high amounts of coarse woody debris leads to high or even severe resistance‐to‐control. The predicted fuel loading if all trees >16 inches dbh were left at 36 tons per acre would lead to high or even extreme resistance‐to‐control, which would mean slow work for line construction by dozers and hand crews and difficulty in holding control lines. These conditions would not meet the desired conditions for defense zones immediately adjacent to communities.

Here’s a previous post on this project from this blog.

For those of you curious about black-backed woodpeckers, here is an interesting write-up from Region 1. It seems like it thrives on post-fire trees, which it seems like there should be plenty of in the Sierra other than this 1400 acres, just based on reports of fires in the Sierra. Also notice the range of the species here in a South Dakota entry.

Based on reports of climate change effects and more frequent fires, and bug attacks, seems like their habitat should be increasing across the west. But I’m not a bird person; am I missing something?

Wildfires and Soil Carbon- Grasslands Study

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I had thought I had reposted this from Bob Berwyn’s blog here but couldn’t find it- the last two weeks have been a blur..

Climate-fire feedback loop likely to accelerate global warming

Wildfires can spur increased releases of nitrous oxide from the soil, adding significantly to greenhouse gas concentrations.

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY — An accidental grassfire during a series of climate change experiments showed that increased nitrogen deposits in soils, combined with wildfires, can significantly increase the release of nitrous oxide from the soil, which in turn can accelerate global warming.

“Soils are the major source of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere,” said Jamie Brown, graduate student in biological sciences at Northern Arizona University and co-author of the study. “So increased soil emissions of nitrous oxide will accelerate global warming.”

Brown worked with colleagues from NAU, Stanford University, the University of Paris and the University of Lyon. The study used an experimental grassland at Stanford, where researchers exposed the grassland to simulated environmental changes — heat, extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, more rain, more nitrogen deposition, and, when part of the experiment accidentally burned, wildfire.

The study is significant because it measured the impact of several factors simultaneously, unlike previous studies that examined the impact of one element at a time.

“Alone, the treatments had little influence on nitrous oxide emissions, but what was really surprising was the interaction with wildfire, causing a huge burst of nitrous oxide production,” said NAU professor Bruce Hungate, Brown’s thesis adviser and co-author on the study.

Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas, Hungate explained. In some parts of the world, like the western United States, wildfires also are becoming more frequent and more intense.

“Increasing wildfire frequency and the changing climate could cause these soil micro-organisms to release more nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming,” Brown said.

The experiment examined the complexity to simulate a realistic situation, where all factors are changing together. “The design is complex, with each treatment by itself in every possible combination with the other treatments,” Brown said.

With such a complex design, researchers can see if the effects of two or more global changes together can be predicted from their effects in isolation.

Clean Air and Prescribed Burning

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Last week I spent a day on a field trip with some conservation NGO interns. The ranger had asked them to think about a question:

On the watershed for an important Colorado water supply, prescribed burning would lead to a better situation to protect from wildfires that degrade water quality. Yet air quality requirements make it difficult to do prescribed burning. Mechanical treatments would not release particulates, but without a timber industry we can’t afford mechanical treatments. We know there is a trade-off between prescribed fire particulates and, ultimately, wildfire particulates (greater in quantity). Wildfires can have greater negative effects on both watersheds and soil and vegetation carbon, compared to prescribed burns. So how do we negotiate the apparently contradictory requirements of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act?

It was a great question, and I was very impressed with the thoughtfulness and expertise of our FS employees (as I usually am :)), as I think were the interns.

So here are my additional wonkish questions. Is that tension between air quality and prescribed burning an equal problem in all the western states? Why can southern states have so much (comparatively) prescribed burning- are the reasons environmental or social or some combination?

Talledega Forest Anniversary

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Some of us are not as aware as we might be of the southern national forests and their history; here’s a story from Jason Bacaj of the Anniston Star.

Seventy-five years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared a swath of government landholdings spread over the Talladega Mountain chain a national forest.

It grew from an act of Congress in 1935 allowing the federal government to approach private landowners within a defined “purchase unit” area to see if they’d be interested in selling land, said Bob Pasquill, historian and archaeologist with the U.S. Forest Service.

Living in the Great Depression, many small farmers and property owners were relocating already or able to be persuaded to sell their property to the government, Pasquill said, dismissing the idea that the government took land from people with delinquent taxes.

That’s a common misconception, he said, as is the thought that the land was clear-cut when it was declared a national forest. It was rough land and the more remote areas were nearly inaccessible, let alone suitable for large-scale logging, Pasquill said. There was a small degree of logging, though, and even turpentining, but that meant developing wagon roads to collect the pine pitch and logs — not an easy task, as anyone who has ridden a bicycle along the Skyway Motorway can appreciate.

“(The) big section of mountain called ‘Horseblock,’ one has to wonder how it got that name,” Pasquill said. “There was secondary growth across the area. It wasn’t a total wasted clear-cut.”

From the time the government began purchasing land in 1935 to create the Talladega National Forest, two crews from the Civilian Conservation Corps did the legwork involved in turning it into a national park. The men built the Skyway Motorway along the spine of the mountain chain, built dams, lodges, picnic grounds, bridges and fire towers connected by phone lines, Pasquill said.

The forest came into its own in the 1940s and 1950s, as tourist traffic increased and areas of second growth filled out. Forest Service employees carried out the department’s policy of suppressing fire throughout those years, unknowingly damaging the natural habitat and reducing the range of Alabama’s state tree, the once-ubiquitous mountain longleaf pine, Pasquill said.

In the 1970s and ‘80s the Forest Service began performing prescribed burns on a small scale, said Jonathan Stober, USFS wildlife biologist. It wasn’t until 2001 that the prescribed burn program was developed fully as an initiative to restore the historic range of mountain longleaf pines, which was a global critically imperiled habitat at that point. Covering a mere 3 percent of its historic range, mountain longleaf pine habitats remain a critically imperiled, but the Forest Service is making noticeable improvements to longleaf stands.

“We have a certain set of tools: one being an axe and one being a match. With those two tools we’re trying to restore this landscape,” Stober said. “It’ll take another 75 years to do that.”

Restoring mountain longleaf pines is a difficult task and an impossible one without understanding the role of fire in its development, said Dan Spaulding, chief curator for the Anniston Museum of Natural History. A baby longleaf pine looks like a clump of grass. Then it grows into what looks like a palm tree — no branches, just pine needles atop the stump protecting the bud of the tree which eventually shoots up through the palm, Spaulding said. It grows slowly and needs fire to survive because otherwise, that slow growth allows fast-growing, weedier plant and tree species to overtake it.

A period of about 75 years is needed for a mountain longleaf pine to reach maturity, said Rob Carter, biology professor at Jacksonville State University who did his Ph.D. dissertation on longleaf pines. The trees reach a height between 80 and 100 feet at that point, depending on the soil, he said. They can continue to live for another 125 years or more.

Restoring the mountain longleaf pine’s habitat is essential to the forest’s health, Stober said. The tree provides a livable environment to a number of endangered species, such as the red-cockaded woodpecker, an “umbrella species” for the Talladega National Forest. Umbrella species, such as the woodpeckers and bobwhite quails, require a certain type of habitat that’s also conducive to the survival and viability of many other native species, Stober said. The forest is home to about 25 species that are endangered or candidates for becoming endangered, he said.

The small woodpeckers nest in the heartwood of mature mountain longleaf pines afflicted with redheart disease, a fungus that rots out the center of the tree. Open canopy without much scrub or midlevel brush is needed for the birds to scout around for food, Stober said.

The Shoal Creek Ranger District, based just outside Heflin, has gone from 1998 when there were one or two clusters — a set of four separate woodpecker nests for one pair of breeding birds — to having 16 breeding groups producing 26 fledglings this year.

“That ecosystem … is a rare, endemic community to this part of the world and is also a crossroads between Appalachia and the coastal (area),” Stober said.

Although the founding date for Talladega National Forest is given as July 17, 1936, no celebrations or events are planned today to mark the tract’s diamond anniversary — so anyone who’s ever felt inclined to hug a tree might find this the ideal day to do it.

I am a fan of longleaf pine.. for those of you who have never made the acquaintance of one, here is a photo of the grass stage.
and a link to the Longleaf Alliance website for those who want to know more about this tree and efforts to restore it.

Paul Gosar on Forests, Fire and Litigation

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Congressman Paul Gosar, a member of the House Natural Resources Committee, represents Arizona’s First Congressional District.

Column: Forest policy must be proactive, sustainable
By U.S. REP PAUL GOSAR
Special to the Courier

This year, our communities have been victims of the largest forest fires in recorded history. The Wallow fire on the Apache-Sitgreaves Forest grew to over half a million acres, charring in its wake some of the most treasured parts of ponderosa pine country. In total, over a million acres of Forest Service lands, as well as another 600,000 acres of federal, state, and private lands have burned across the American Southwest.

The frequency of fires, and the magnitude of the acreage burned, has exponentially increased since 1990. It is time for us to be honest about the problem as well as the solution. We must re-evaluate our forest management policies at all levels of government because the status quo is detrimental to our safety, Arizona’s ecological health, and the local and national economy.

The current federal system continues to give funding priority to suppression. Although the need to suppress fires is never going to go away, it is clear we must shift priority toward pro-active forest restoration management. It is estimated that long-term restoration and rehabilitation generally amount to two to 30 times the reported suppression costs.

There is roughly 80 million acres of forests across the West that are overgrown and ripe for catastrophic wildfire, according to the Landfire multiagency database. We simply cannot afford to use taxpayer dollars for 100 percent of the large-scale restoration work necessary to prevent unnatural fires like Wallow, Rodeo-Chediski, or Schultz. Empowering private industry is going to be the key to the future of forest management.

The Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4-FRI) is a proposal that will restore 2.5 million acres of ponderosa pine forests on the Apache-Sitgreaves, Coconino, Kaibab, and Tonto national forests and revitalizes the Arizona logging industry. Instead of relying on the Forest Service to pay all of the costs for restoration thinning, 4-FRI recognizes the fiscal reality and puts forth a proposal that calls for the Forest Service to partner with private industry to restore proper forest health.

This first of its kind large-scale treatment will reduce damaging wildfire impacts, as well as provide forest jobs, markets for wood products, and ecological restoration. It has garnered my support, as well as colleagues in the Arizona Congressional Delegation, Gov. Jan Brewer, leaders in the state Legislature, the affected counties and cities, and an unprecedented range of environmental groups and industry partners.

When the federal government partners with local government, stakeholder groups, and private industry, together we can create much needed jobs and a safer environment for our citizens. Landscape-scale, fiscally responsible forest restoration treatments are the only way our state and the country is going to make real progress toward proper forest health.

I am also looking at a wide variety of legislative initiatives that will improve federal law affecting natural resources management. I am reviewing environmental laws in need of reform to make the process more streamlined, efficient and fair. Compliance has become muddled and overly bureaucratic, leading to project-killing delays. The goal is not to dismantle important environmental protections, but to ensure they are working with us, not against us.

I am also looking at reforming the Equal Access to Justice Act, a law that is frequently misused to obstruct important conservation and economic development initiatives. While some lawsuits are important to ensuring our environmental laws are upheld, some groups sue federal agencies excessively, tie up the process for years, and then submit a bill to the taxpayers via EAJA.

I am a cosponsor of HR1996 the Government Litigation Savings Act, which will put a halt to these abuses by reinstating tracking and reporting requirements and instituting reforms that will reduce the taxpayer’s burden to pay for the attorney’s fees. These reforms will return the law to its original intent – to help individuals and small businesses during a once-in-a-lifetime need to battle the federal government in court.

Our forest and natural resources are a way of life in Arizona. I remain saddened by what has happened to my constituents who have been adversely affected by this fire. I think if we look forward and work collaboratively in stewardship, we can address the desperate forest maintenance crisis and other natural resources-related issues facing our state.

Here is the link to HR 1996

Fire Bringing Communities Together

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Another Fine Photo by Bob Berwyn

Link here.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – As homes and cities expand closer to forests and wildlands across the American West, increasing wildfire threats have created an unlikely new phenomena – confidence in government.

Recent studies show that people in neighborhoods adjacent to public forest lands can and do trust natural resource managers to a surprising degree, in part because the risks they face are so severe.

Thousands of acres burn every year, threatening homes, lives and property, and in many groups and areas, the phrase “I’m from the government – trust me” is no longer being used as a joke or punch line.

In a survey done in seven states, researchers from Oregon State University and other institutions found that a large majority of people rated agency management of public forest lands as good or excellent.

Additionally, more than 80 percent of those surveyed – and up to 90 percent at some sites – showed support for mechanical thinning or mowing to reduce fire risks. Only such approaches as use of herbicides found lower degrees of support. The findings have been published in the International Journal of Wildland Fire.

“Declining forest health and wildfire are such serious and increasing threats that we are beginning to see partnerships forming among mill owners, logging contractors, residents and environmental groups,” said Bruce Shindler, an OSU professor in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society. “The stakes are just too high for everyone.”

The studies found that local, personal relationships were what mattered most in coming to agreement on natural resource plans and policies, topics that have often been contentious among various interest groups in the West. Positive interactions between homeowner associations, local leaders and individual land managers make the difference, scientists say. Teachers and retirees, for example, are now organizing programs to create defensible space in their neighborhoods and learning steps that can be taken to protect their homes.

“People may still not trust big business or big government, but they trust Joe, the local Forest Service district ranger,” Shindler said. “In forest communities there’s a growing understanding that threats from wildfire are everyone’s concern. It helps get these groups past that us-versus-them mentality. And this rings true in diverse places we surveyed in Utah, Colorado, Oregon, and Arizona.”

Surveys were done in 2002 and 2008 – with the same individuals over time – analyzing the status and changes in people’s attitudes towards fire and land management policies. The greatest progress was made where local residents had become involved, Shindler said, and worked closely with government and community groups to develop enlightened management approaches that help protect property and improve forest health.

“I was at a judicial hearing a few years ago in Sisters, Ore., where a large crowd of residents spoke in support of local Forest Service policies,” Shindler said. “It was pretty incredible. It’s just not something you see all the time.”

One study of forest communities was recently published. Among its findings:

The average annual area burned in the U.S. has more than doubled from that of the 1990s, and 38 percent of all the nation’s housing units are now located in the wildland-urban interface.
Thousands of homes and structures have burned in massive fires in California, Colorado, Arizona and other areas, despite record federal expenditures on fire suppression.
Residents in forest interface areas generally agree that agency use of prescribed fire and mechanized thinning along with property owners reducing fuels around their homes offer some of the best options to reduce losses.
The USDA Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and state management agencies all enjoyed “full” or “moderate” support by a majority of residents who trusted them to make good decisions about wildfires and fire prevention.
Citizen trust in agency managers is particularly influential in public acceptance of fire management strategies. Dedicating resources that build and maintain citizen trust will be important to long-term success.
“Nearly all participants indicated a good relationship existed between local managers and community members,” the researchers wrote in their report. “Such results may be surprising given the often contentious debate surrounding many forest management decisions in recent years.”

This study was supported by the Joint Fire Science Program of the USDA Forest Service. Other collaborators were from The Ohio State University and Northern Research Station of the USDA Forest Service.

“Fire is probably the easiest issue to build agreement around, because no one wants our homes or forests to burn up,” Shindler said. “However, this also shows the power of building relationships and trust among community members. These approaches may lead the way to resolving other natural resource conflicts.”

Guest Post from Foto

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Thanks to Foto for this post and these photos.

Two years after the Park Service burned up 16,000 acres (trying to burn only 95 acres during near-record heat) of Yosemite National Park and spending $17,000,000, this is what has grown back. What used to be majestic old growth pines that has survived countless pre-historic fires, is now lupines and deerbrush, with no conifers and few oaks. These pictures shows that deerbrush will dominate the next several decades, if not an entire century. There simply is no seed source for pines to get re-established. The Park Service fire folks still arrogantly cling to the idea that prescribed fires during the heat of the summer is the way to go.

The Forest Service fire folks seem to also think they can “re-introduce” fire into fuels-choked forests without pre-treating fuels with thinning and selective logging. The Yosemite picture shows the future of our ponderosa pine forests, if we exclude commercial fuels projects. How long can we continue to embrace whatever grows back from catastrophic wildfires?


Note from Sharon- I think most people agree that trees sequester more carbon that shrubs.. therefore conceivably the sooner you start ’em growing again, the better for the environment. Just another example of how climate change forces us to question that concept “”natural” is best.”