Fire and Fuels

Here’s the whole story from the Payson Roundup. Below is an excerpt.

With Arizona’s worst fire season in history still roaring, oft-delayed plans to use a resurrected timber industry to thin millions of acres of badly overgrown Arizona forests have suddenly gained broad support.

In a flurry of developments last week, the Department Agriculture announced $3.5 million in new funding for the 4-Forests Restoration Initiative, the Forest Service released ground rules for contractors and assorted politicians promised their support.

Environmentalists, scientists, loggers and forest managers have worked for years to create The 4-Forests Restoration Initiative (4-FRI), which hopes to convince a revived logging industry to spend millions on new sawmills and power plants that could turn a profit on the small trees now choking millions of acres of forests.

The group that proposed the effort agreed on a plan to thin millions of acres by leaving most of the remaining big trees and focusing on the trees smaller than 16 inches in diameter, which now form tree thickets across millions of acres.

The Forest Service now supports the plan and last week put out requests for proposals for timber companies interested in bidding on 10-year contracts to thin 300,000 acres in the Kaibab, Coconino, Tonto and Apache-Sitgreaves forests.

Ultimately, the project will encompass perhaps a million acres — which is only twice as much as the Wallow Fire consumed. However, by concentrating on areas near forested communities, backers hope that the massive thinning project will provide much greater fire protection for those settlements.

The release of photos from the Wallow Fire effectively underscored the value of that strategy. Some of the photos show that thinned areas stopped the fire in many places.

See this press release from Center for Biological Diversity.

Collaborative Forest Restoration Project Has Lessened Damage, Severity of Arizona’s Massive Wallow Fire

SPRINGERVILLE, Ariz.— U.S. Forest Service officials say forest restoration work implemented under the White Mountains Stewardship Contract — part of a cooperative project among conservationists, local communities and government agencies — has lessened the severity of the Wallow fire and helped firefighters save towns threatened by the flames. Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest Supervisor Chris Knopp told the Associated Press on Thursday that he credited treatments with helping to save Alpine, Nutrioso and Springerville. A district ranger from the same forest told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday that restoration treatments aided firefighters’ ability to save homes in the White Mountains.

“Ever since Arizona’s last mega-fire — the Rodeo-Chediski in 2002 — communities, environmentalists, local industry and forest officials have been pouring their hearts and souls into community protection and landscape-scale restoration of the degraded pine forests in the White Mountains,” said Todd Schulke of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups involved with the project. “That work began next to towns where the fire danger was high, and it looks like those years of cooperation are paying big dividends in the Wallow fire.”

After the Rodeo-Chediski fire, the Forest Service initiated the White Mountains Stewardship Contract to facilitate forest restoration in White Mountains east of that fire’s boundary in a swath of forest that includes the area being affected by Wallow. Its objective is to restore up to 150,000 acres of degraded forest over 10 years by strategically thinning small trees in overgrown ponderosa forests to safely reintroduce beneficial fires.

As of April 2010, 49,719 acres of degraded forest had been approved for treatment. Work had been completed on 35,166 of those acres, and the rest were in progress. Most of the acres are located in the wildland urban interface — lands abutting towns — and are intended to reduce fire hazards to communities including Alpine, Nutrioso, Eager and Greer that are now threatened by the Wallow fire.

The Center for Biological Diversity publicly supported the White Mountain Stewardship Contract creation in 2004. Since then the Center has actively worked with communities, the Forest Service and businesses that thin small-diameter trees to ensure the project’s success. That work included lobbying Congress for adequate funding. Because of broad agreement around the project — which resulted in forest recovery and local jobs — it has been hailed as a model for collaborative forest restoration.

“Without the success and cooperation of the stewardship contract, damage from the Wallow fire would have been much worse,” said Schulke. “Our forests need more of this kind of cooperation if we are to have any hope of restoring them.”

The Center and other organizations have been also working together to expand the success of the White Mountains Stewardship Contract to the rest of the Mogollon Rim. The 2.4-million-acre Four Forests Restoration Initiative (4FRI) seeks to restore the ponderosa pine forest from Flagstaff to New Mexico, focusing on strategic thinning of small trees on 1 million acres over the next 20 years in order to protect communities and safely restore beneficial fires to forested landscapes. 4FRI includes a plan to develop a restoration wood industry designed specifically to thin and utilize small-diameter trees in order to eliminate costs to taxpayers and rapidly expand the amount of forest work being done.

My cousin sent me these photos of a plane using fire retardant in Texas near Palo Duro Canyon- there is no USFS land near there at all.

This is relevant to the previous post here and this quote from Andy Stahl:

He added that state firefighting agencies, like those in Florida and Texas, don’t use retardant on wildfires and there’s no significant difference. In the West, though, he said it’s often used on fires on federal lands.

“In Florida and Texas, where forest fires are ubiquitous, retardant isn’t used because the federal government isn’t paying for it because they don’t have federal national forests,” Stahl said. “This is a federal boondoggle. State firefighting agencies without the federal treasury behind them never found retardant to be cost effective, and that the benefits outweigh the costs.”

The ground observations and this quote don’t seem to fit together, can anyone help explain?

A while back, I had asked Andy Stahl for a description of the desired condition he hoped to achieve by the fire retardant litigation. I am still curious and I got more information from this news story from the Helena Independent Record. Now I don’t know much about the details of this controversy, but this story was very helpful at understanding the different points of view. Any feedback from blog readers on the accuracy? Kudos to Eve Byron, the writer!

The only question I have on the information in the story that does not match my personal experience is with regards to the Indian Gulch Fire (the one I refer to as “in back of my house”). That fire was not on Forest Service land and it wasn’t an FS managed fire, so I was thinking that at least the State of Colorado must use fire retardant. An internet search yielded this link to California which apparently also uses retardant. Perhaps someone in the fire biz could give a more complete view of which states do and don’t use it.

The U.S. Forest Service is proposing a few changes, but wants to continue using retardant to slow the spread of wildfires, according to a draft environmental impact statement released for public comment Friday.

Glen Stein, who put together the 370-page draft EIS, said they’re already working with individual forests where retardant is used to map areas where threatened or endangered plants, fish and animals are present and they will try to avoid those areas.

They’re also proposing to limit the use of retardant in waterways unless it’s needed for the protection of human life; previously, it also could be applied when the potential damage to natural resources outweighed the possible loss of aquatic life and when alternative fire line construction tactics aren’t available. Already, the Forest Service tries to avoid using retardant within 300 feet of waterways.

The Forest Service also said it would start to annually monitor 5 percent of fires on less than 300 acres where retardant has been applied to determine whether any adverse effects occurred, and if so, what to do in the future. In addition, they’ve laid out steps to take in case of misapplications.

“We feel this does a better job of protecting sensitive resources while allowing us to meet our obligations to protect people and property, and do so safely,” Stein said on Friday, adding that their preferred alternative now is different than what they initially proposed, based on initial public comments. “Now we’re waiting to see what the public thinks.”

The draft EIS is the result of a July 2010 decision by U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy, who directed the Forest Service to follow national environmental policies and prepare an EIS to outline the impacts on plants, animals and fish after dropping the retardant. The Forest Employees for Environmental Ethics had filed a lawsuit in 2008, alleging the retardant, which includes ammonia-based fertilizer, is toxic to fish and threatens rare plants.

Molloy ruled in July 2010 that it “is probable that substantial questions are raised hereas to the environmental impact of the annual dumping of millions of gallons of chemical retardant on national forests.” Last month, he ordered the federal government to pay $95,000 to FEEE for court costs and attorney’s fees.

In a press release, Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell defended the use of the retardant, and noted that from 2000 through 2010 it was applied only on about 8 percent of wildfires on National Forest lands. In addition, during the past decade, on lands managed by the Forest Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, and the states, only one of every 5,000 retardant drops has impacted waterways.

“The use of fire retardant, in concert with firefighters on the ground, allows the Forest Service to safely protect landscapes, resources and, most importantly, people’s lives,” Tidwell said. “Research and experience demonstrate that aerially applied fire retardant, used in an appropriate manner, reduces wildfire intensity and the rate of spread, which increases the effectiveness of our fire suppression efforts on the ground.”

But Andy Stahl, FEEE executive director, argues that the Forest Service’s research in laboratories can’t be applied to real wildfire conditions, where heavy winds often created by the fire can make it rapidly spread. After a quick read of the draft EIS, Stahl said what was important to him was what the document didn’t include.

“The Forest Service makes no effort to show that fire retardant use changes the outcome of wildfires in terms of houses destroyed, lives threatened or acres burned,” Stahl said. “Tables in the draft EIS show scores of national forests use no retardant — never did — and they don’t show any different outcomes. They don’t suffer from lack of that.”

He added that while acknowledging the environmental harm, the document also doesn’t calculate any significant benefits.

“I think they’re going to be compelled to do somewhat better than this,” Stahl said. “If they’re proposing to build a dam or highway, or log a forest, there are some environmental downsides but also some kind of economic pluses. What the Forest Service has not done is told us what the pluses are when using the retardant.”

He added that state firefighting agencies, like those in Florida and Texas, don’t use retardant on wildfires and there’s no significant difference. In the West, though, he said it’s often used on fires on federal lands.

“In Florida and Texas, where forest fires are ubiquitous, retardant isn’t used because the federal government isn’t paying for it because they don’t have federal national forests,” Stahl said. “This is a federal boondoggle. State firefighting agencies without the federal treasury behind them never found retardant to be cost effective, and that the benefits outweigh the costs.”

Stein said they plan to continue to use retardant on wildfires this summer, and Tidwell will decide what course to follow after the final EIS is completed. The EIS must be completed by 2011, under Molloy’s ruling.

“We don’t know what will happen next year,” Stein said. “It depends on how this is received by the court.”

The release of the draft environmental impact statement begins a 45-day public comment period, and it can be found in this story online at helenair.com.

Because the Denver Post is one of the larger newspapers in Elk Country (the interior West), you see different kinds of stories here than in places where neighbors are not evacuated due to wildfires. I thought the above diagram with what to do to prepare your home and yourself deserved wider circulation that just Post readers. You can read it more clearly by looking at this link and clicking on the image to make it larger.

As Jim Fenwood has suggested perhaps the whole “living with wildfire” deal needs to be rethought. But for this fire season (I was close to being evacuated, although I live in town), we are dealing with what is, and not what might be in the future.

Finally, I was working at home one weekend while the Indian Gulch fire was in back of my house. Smoke was in the air and the whirring of helicopters coming by to get water at a pond in back of the neighbor’s house. I think sometimes some people outside of our fire-prone country think there are “good people” who live in town, and “bad people” who live in the woods and who are fragmenting the landscape. Where I live the distinctions are not so clear. Plus in my hometown (Golden) many people who live in the canyons come down to restaurants, stores, or to the library. They are all members of our community. Any policy provisions to be debated need to recognize the communities as we experience them.

Here’s a photo of the Indian Gulch fire by Jeff Warner, a local photographer. Other of his photos, including more on the fire, can be found at his blog here.

I know, I know. What you have long observed in your fireplace or woodstove turns out to be more generally true..

New study shows beetle-killed trees ignite faster

(AP) – 7 hours ago

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The red needles of a tree killed in a mountain pine beetle attack can ignite up to three times faster than the green needles of a healthy tree, new research into the pine beetle epidemic has found.

The findings by U.S. Forest Service ecologist Matt Jolly are being used by fellow ecologist Russ Parsons to develop a new model that will eventually aid firefighters who battle blazes in the tens of millions of acres from Canada to Colorado where forest canopies have turned from green to red from the beetle outbreak.

The new model incorporates a level of detail and physics that doesn’t exist in current models, and it is much more advanced in predicting how a wildfire in a beetle-ravaged region will behave, Parsons said.

“It gives you so much more information about what to expect,” he said. “Are these people safe here or should they run away? If we put a crew on the ground here, can they make it to the top of the ridge in ample time?”

Many communities in the Rocky Mountain West have beetle kill forests in some proximity.

And the new research dispels the notion that beetle-killed trees present no greater fire danger than live ones, a theory that had gained traction after a couple of wet, cool summers tamped down fire activity in the region, Jolly said.

On the contrary, beetle-killed trees can hold 10 times less moisture than live trees, Jolly found. That means they not only ignite more quickly than live trees, but they burn more intensely and carry embers farther than live trees, Jolly said.

He found that it takes less heat for wildfires to spread from the ground to the crowns of beetle-killed trees, making a wildfire in a forest with beetle-killed trees potentially much more difficult to contain.

Mountain pine beetles also start losing their moisture before the needles change to that tell-tale red, Jolly said, meaning even a healthy-looking pine tree could pose an increased fire threat to an unsuspecting firefighter.

Jolly took more than 1,000 tree moisture content measurements and conducted hundreds of ignition tests last year in four states, using foliage from trees with red, yellow, orange and green needles.

Jolly and Parsons will present their research Wednesday in Helena at a seminar on wildfires and the mountain pine beetle held by the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. The seminar will also host researchers from the University of Idaho and British Columbia, where the beetle infestation covers an estimated 43 million acres, which is more than 67,000 square miles.

“I think this is a first step,” DNRC director Mary Sexton said of the new research. “I think overall this has been an area where folks are just beginning to have guidance or definite information.”

In Montana, beetles are estimated to have attacked about 4 million acres of forest over the past decade. A survey taken last year shows the beetle activity may be declining in some of the most ravaged parts of the state between Helena and Butte.

But that may be because the beetles are simply running out of trees, Sexton said. Meanwhile, beetle activity in the central and northwestern part of the state is still increasing, she said.

South of Montana, the beetle epidemic has spread to about 4 million acres in Colorado and southern Wyoming, according to forestry officials.

Research hasn’t been able to keep up with the fast spread of the mountain pine beetle infestation over the past decade, Parsons and Jolly said. Even now, much of the research is dedicated to the long-term ecological effects of the outbreak, something of little use to firefighters, Jolly said.

“They’re not concerned with 10 years from now. They’re concerned with how a fire is going to behave now,” he said.

The new model isn’t ready to be used by fire managers in the field, so the old models shouldn’t be thrown out yet, Parson said. Only a few people in the Forest Service and collaborating institutions are using the new one, he said.

“Our hope is that this kind of modeling will increasingly become an important part of the decision-making and it will provide the science that feeds into fire management decisions,” Parsons said.

This quote:

Research hasn’t been able to keep up with the fast spread of the mountain pine beetle infestation over the past decade, Parsons and Jolly said. Even now, much of the research is dedicated to the long-term ecological effects of the outbreak, something of little use to firefighters, Jolly said.

“They’re not concerned with 10 years from now. They’re concerned with how a fire is going to behave now,” he said.

makes me wonder if we could improve the connection between people who need questions answered and the way research questions are framed.

Below is a position statement from the National Association of Forest Service Retirees.

Here’s a link to their website.

What do you think?

Position Statement on Forest Health and Fire, April 27, 2011

To achieve forest health, protection of adjacent communities from catastrophic fire, other forest management goals and to maintain National Forest lands in an ecologically sustainable condition, the NAFSR advocates use of proven silvicultural practices and prescribed fire to achieve these goals.

The National Forests are capable of providing the many values and benefits that people expect from their forests, but they need proper management in order to provide these values. NAFSR supports prescribed fire, commercial timber harvest, and noncommercial treatments on National Forest lands allocated for such uses through appropriate land and resource management planning processes. Further, we believe the commercial utilization payments can be a big part of financing the total treatment needs of the forests.

NAFSR believes that current treatment levels on National Forest lands are insufficient to maintain forest health, meet the goals for hazardous fuel reduction to reduce wildfire risk, provide resilient forests capable of withstanding future shifts in climate conditions, or provide protection from wildfire as well as economic and other community benefits.

Fire control should be aggressive while prescribed fire use should also be increased and appropriately managed. Natural fires should only be allowed to burn when approved plans are clearly indicated under weather, time of year, and fuel conditions encountered, and under the direct supervision of fully qualified fire supervisors.

Planning and treatment must be at an annual scale of millions of acres over the next half century. We must recognize that the environmental costs to wildlife habitat, domestic and industrial water supplies, soils, and viewsheds of inaction, or inadequate levels of action, will be with us for decades to centuries. There will also be serious financial and economic costs to local communities and businesses as well as the taxpayers if action is not taken.

The National Forests have a Congressionally mandated mission, and management goals are determined through comprehensive land management planning processes with extensive public participation, and include not only healthy forest ecosystems but also protection and well being of adjacent communities and other values. Forest managers are then responsible for selecting appropriate, site-specific practices, which may include commercial thinning and harvest, pre-commercial thinning, and use of prescribed fire to accomplish desired forest health, watershed, wildlife and fishery habitat objectives. Consideration must be given to maintenance of a diversity of tree species and age classes, diverse structure and function, and thus treatments should not be limited to any particular size of trees or other vegetation. Focus should always be on the remaining conditions following thinning instead of what is removed. Skillful use of silvicultural practices can achieve desired resource conditions including appropriate forest densities, reduced fuel loads, and mimic natural levels of forest openings and understory vegetation. Healthy forest ecosystems are the key to how disturbance events such as fire or pest outbreaks perform. Removal of excess biomass is critical for allowing fire use to return without detrimental effects.

Forest Service leaders should take advantage of collaborative planning processes with interest groups and communities, while providing focused leadership in order to minimize problems with gridlock resulting from public disagreements with choices made to restore the forests. Building coalitions at national, regional and local levels to support science informed decisions can greatly reduce conflicts that have led to delays in the past.

Appropriately scaled forest industries should be encouraged to utilize and sequester carbon from thinning and harvest products as well as helping the economy of communities.

Furthermore, NAFSR believes that current laws and regulations offer ample protection to sustain the full range of forest values on public lands. We believe that timber harvesting is a legitimate use of the national forests as the multiple-use Sustained Yield Act of 1960 calls for, and that it will promote wildlife and fishery habitat as well as recreation opportunities.

ISSUE

For almost a century, through forest fire protection efforts, wildfire on National Forest lands has been purposely suppressed in many areas that are naturally adapted to periodic low intensity wildfires. We now know from science and experience this policy has had some unintended and undesirable consequences, including altered tree species composition and increased density of trees per acre. This increased stand density, or overstocking, increases fire hazard in most forest types. Because of lack of vigor, dense forests are highly susceptible to insects and diseases and, consequently, increased tree mortality. Excess tree density as well as mortality increases fuel loading, resulting in hazardous forest fire conditions that can put watersheds, wildlife habitat, and other forest values at risk. These conditions also increase fire suppression costs and make wildfire control more dangerous and difficult. Unnatural fires resulting from extremely dense stands create artificial and unnatural conditions for soil erosion, flooding, plant invasion, type conversion and altered viewsheds. The dominant factor affecting forest fires, health, and vigor is stand density.

For nearly four decades, National Forest Managers have recognized the fact that overcrowded forests are not sustainable without some form of treatment. The public as well has seen vast areas succumb to insects, disease and wildfire.

BACKGROUND

Fires in Western ecosystems are problematic with uncharacteristic fire becoming more destructive and costly. Forests on National Forests of the West are most often far too dense. There is a huge increase in woody biomass, mostly in the overstory, above natural levels in almost every forest ecosystem. This excess forest density has contributed to a serious decline in herbaceous vegetation in the forest understory.

Certain circumstances can exert uncommon stress on forests and predispose them to extraordinary insect outbreaks and damage. In stands that are unmanaged by either silviculture, natural or prescribed fire, trees often grow too close together and develop small crowns and root systems. These stands have low vigor, leading to susceptibility to drought, insects, diseases, and catastrophic wildfire. Under these stressful conditions, tree mortality can be extremely high. Large areas of aging forests are also susceptible to insects and diseases. During the past decade, several of these forest health problems have arisen simultaneously, causing extensive tree mortality.

Because of widespread forest health problems, many of our forests would benefit from thinning or other measures to control stand density, reduce vulnerability to insect-caused mortality, increase diversity of tree sizes, and accomplish regeneration of desired tree species. However, National Forest managers often find themselves engaged in debate about the relative benefits and perceived detrimental effects of using active intervention to affect the future condition of national forest lands.

Some environmental concerns are misguided and lead to inaction or wrong action.

Unnatural and destructive wildfires are increasing in size faster than management is addressing the problems. Human developments on forest in-holdings of private land create both fire suppression and forest management problems.

Costs of forest management can be partially, if not completely, recovered from scientifically designed treatments based on soundly developed plans