Fire and Fuels

New USDA Plan Sets Forest Restoration, Climate, Water, Fire Objectives

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National Forests and “private working lands” are prominently featured in the new U.S. Department of Agriculture five-year strategic plan released last week.  The plan contains strategic objectives for National Forests to restore ecosystems and watersheds on both private and public lands.  It also contains objectives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase carbon sequestration, and develop climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies for National Forests. 

One of the four strategic goals for the Department of Agriculture (besides assistance to rural communities, promoting agriculture production, and nutritious food for kids) is goal #2: “Ensure our National Forests and private working lands are conserved, restored, and made more resilient to climate change, while enhancing our water resources.” 

The plan calls for a collaborative “all lands” approach to bring public and private owners together across landscapes and ecosystems.  “Private working lands” are defined to include farms, ranches, grasslands, private forest lands, and retired cropland.  The plan is intended to coordinate National Forest System programs with other USDA programs for private lands. 

Restoration of watershed and forest health is intended to be a core management objective of the National Forests and Grasslands.  Objective 2.1 is to “restore and conserve the Nation’s forests, farms, ranches and grasslands.”  The plan calls for a 13% increase in forest lands that are restored or enhanced each year.

Objective 2.2 calls for efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.  It sets an 8% increase in carbon sequestration on U.S. lands and an 8% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the agricultural sector.  All National Forests must have a climate change adaptation and mitigation strategy.

Objective 2.3 calls for protection and enhancement of water resources.  It calls for an increase in National Forest System (NFS) watersheds at or near natural conditions from 58 million acres (30 percent of NFS lands) to 62 million acres (32 percent of NFS lands).   Acres of restored wetlands would increase from 2.1 million acres per year to 2.3 million acres per year.  There would be an $0.5 billion increase in flood prevention and water supply projects.  Nine million acres of high impact targeted practices would be implemented to accelerate the protection of clean, abundant water resources.

Objective 2.4 calls for a reduction of the risk of catastropic wildfire and restoring fire to its appropriate place on the landscape.  It sets a desired condition within the natural (historical) range of variability of vegetation characteristics, increasing the cumulative number of acres from 58.5 million to 61.5 million acres.  It calls for an increase from 10,000 to 18,000 communities with reduced risk from catastropic wildfire, and an increase from 41 percent to 55 percent of acres in Wildland-Urban Interface that have been treated.

Different Ways of Knowing about Fire and Fuel Treatments

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Last week, some scientists and practitioners met to discuss the utility of fuels treatments in creating defensibly space around communities. Even on a fairly simple question (what stages of dead trees have what kinds of fire behavior?) there are a variety of approaches to think about the question.

One is practitioner observation. For example, one practitioner had spoken to suppression people in BC who said that fire can move through dead trees with needles like a “tall grass fire.” Another piece of evidence (called “the science”) was based on looking at the past, that when there were many dead trees, there was not more fire. But if we believe the climate is changing, what do studies of the past really tell us in terms of relevance to the future?

I ran across this set of photos by Derek Weidensee on observed fire behavior (granted, not entirely about dead trees). His piece is worth a read- he rounds up both some research and empirical evidence. He also has some latitudes and longitudes you can plug into Google Earth and see the changes through time for yourself. Here’s a quote I found interesting:

I’ve read dozens of USFS EIS’s and EA’s, and frankly the litigation-driven reliance on published “best available science” means the public doesn’t have a clue what the EIS authors are talking about. Nothing makes the public’s eyes glaze over faster than fuel models, fire groups, fire regime condition class, canopy bulk density, etc. etc. Local experience carries a lot of weight with the local public. And pictures are worth more to the public than the thousands of words in the fires and fuels section of an EIS. It’s unfortunate local experience doesn’t seem to carry much weight with a judge.

It made me wonder to what extent local collaboratives may come to different answers than national groups, not based on “caving to pressure” but based on empirical ways of knowing.

Last week there was a piece in New West by George Wuerthner.

Here are some quotes:

the Forest Service exploits the public’s misconceptions about wildfire and forest ecology to further its logging agenda

Research by the FS own scientists suggests that thinning any greater distance than a hundred or so feet from a home provides little additional reduction in fire risk. In other words, this timber sale will do little to safeguard Elliston from wildfire—indeed; most of the town is in no jeopardy what so ever from a direct fire front

Furthermore, if the County Commissioners were truly concerned about fire hazards, they would not permit house construction in the fire plain. Zoning is the best way to protect homes and safe lives rather than expect taxpayer to fix the problem they created by allowing home construction in inappropriate sites. Building in a fire plain is just as foolish as building in a river floodplain.

It may be desirable, in the view of some, to move everyone out of treed and (chaparraled) western landscapes. However, in my view this is not practically feasible.
And once again the “timber wars filter” is part of the story..

Instead of using the Elliston Face to counter misconceptions about wildfire and who is actually responsible for protecting property, the FS exploits the fears of misinformed citizens. One can only conclude the agency is still the handmaiden to the timber industry rather than a public servant working on behalf of all citizens of the country.

and

The Elliston sale is…is yet another example of how the Forest Service exploits the public’s misconceptions about wildfire and forest ecology to further its logging agenda.

Based on looking at press stories, fuel treatments in Southern California don’t seem to be all that controversial. I wonder if that is because in the Interior West the specter of the timber industry still lives in the imagination.

Derek said in his post

In the ongoing debate, the public and policy makers need more unbiased research and a one stop database to see for themselves what fuels treatments can do.

I think we need a central place to show the results of different ways of knowing, and have an ongoing conversation about what they each tell us about the reality of fuel treatments and fires.

Science vs. Advocacy in Natural Resource Management

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Photo of a scoured stream channel in a roadless area that resulted from a flash flood in a burn area in 2009 in South Fork Salmon River drainage, west central Idaho.

A guest post by Michael Dixon.

I believe the line between science and advocacy is often blurred in natural resource management. I am convinced that often the people doing the science and the advocacy do not know the difference. The public and special interest groups often cite their favorite “science” that supports their point of view, and down play the other views, or worse yet, actively discredit other points of view. To me this is advocacy and politics, using selected science to support your position. This is common and obviously your or my science is better than the opposing positions.
This has been taken a step further by advocacy groups who fund their own science, I’m starting to see more of this or maybe I’m just more aware of it.

Locally where I live the Wilderness Society has their own report on how to deal with fire dependent Ponderosa Pine Ecosystems. They presented this to the FS as science a nice little booklet with glossy photos and citations. I think The Wilderness Society believed that this was state of the art science, and the FS should adopt their recommendations. I skimmed through it and got the impression that the “science” was pretty much what the FS had known for years concerning Ponderosa Pine ecosystems, with the WS’s recommendations on how to manage it was what you would expect from them with the slight admission that thinning stands by logging might be acceptable in some limited cases. I am sure there are cases where the Forest Products Commission does something similar but recommends much more logging as the proper course of management. To me this is just political advocacy with a sprinkling of selected science that the advocates tout as science.

What is more disturbing to me is when researchers and scientists do not appear to know the difference between science and advocacy. An example that I know is as follows: The local Forest Fisheries biologist hired a college professor with a doctorate in fisheries to monitor macro invertebrates in recently burned and unburned drainages to see what effects fire had. Sounds reasonable, he found that the macro invertebrates in the wilderness streams he sampled were more numerous in the burnt drainages. More sunlight and nutrients in the water in the burned drainages, makes sense. Then he sampled some steep gradient streams outside the wilderness. This was the year after the 1997 flood and many of these drainages experienced channel scouring debris torrents. He sampled two of the channel scoured drainages; one had a road in it and was salvaged logged by helicopter after the 1994 fires. The other was in a roadless area. He found only two species of macro invertebrates instead of the five or six species he had found in the other streams. His conclusion was the stream in the roadless area was an anomaly, where as the lack of species in the other stream was due to salvage logging. A better conclusion might have been channel scouring debris torrents remove macro invertebrates. This particular scientist was one of the authors of a widely circulated science paper that sharply criticized salvage logging after fires.

Fisheries biologists, as do many biologists, tend to favor natural conditions as that’s where the species evolved. Roadless and wilderness areas tend to be favored for their pristine/natural conditions. The science report for the ICBEMP (Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Plan?) did a study comparing fish habitat to road density, and they found a correlation between road density and fish habitat, generally the higher the road density the poorer the fish habitat. I can believe this is generally true, the higher road densities probably also correspond to higher levels of development. I believe there were a few drainage basins in the ICBEMP study area with higher road densities and good fish habitat. The fish biologist for the science report was concerned that the high road density/good fish habitat areas are threatened by the road density. A better response may have been to ask why they are different from the other areas. Is there something to be learned in areas where good fish habitat exists in areas with a high road density? I think this would be important to ask when the big emphasis is restoration.

The study has been taken forward into Forest Planning as a watershed condition indicator. This is considered by some as a direct cause and effect. I would tend to favor more stream based indicators such as; stream temperatures, pool riffle ratios, man made fish barriers, bank stability, riparian conditions and large woody debris. The Boise, Payette, and Sawtooth Forests in Idaho adopted road density as one of the watershed condition indicators, however the ESA consultation process with Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries went a step further and added the following descriptions to road densities: less than 0.7 miles per section is functioning properly, 0.7 to 1.7 miles per section as functioning at risk and anything over 1.7 miles per section as functioning at an unacceptable risk. This categorization basically calls all areas that have been developed for timber management in the past an unacceptable risk to listed fish species due to road density.

This all seems rather ironic in west central Idaho where wildfire, especially in 2007, primarily in roadless and wilderness areas have had a considerable impact, on both old forest structure and stream channel condition. Hundreds of stream channels have been scoured by flash floods and debris torrents in the burn areas, leaving raw and unstable banks. Hundreds of thousands of acres of old forest have been lost to wildfire. Is ecologic integrity assured in roadless and wilderness areas? Not from what I have seen.

About the Author
Michael Dixon has over 30 years of Forest Service employment, including over 25 years as a member of project level NEPA teams. He has worked on two Forest Plans as well as post plan project level implementation and monitoring. He has been a member on Burn Area Emergency Recovery (BAER) teams on 6 major wildfires.

When to Let Nature Take its Course

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A guest post from Foto.

I keep hoping that your blog stays focused on “using the best science”. I use an alias because I hope to work for the Forest Service again. I could be “blacklisted” if I am too visible with my real name. The Forest Service doesn’t like having its dirty laundry displayed for all to see!

One of the biggest and most confusing issues is that groups send out blanket appeals/litigation against the cutting of old growth when, at the same time, they claim that there is so very little old growth left. The non-Healthy Forests projects are all targeted. If there is sooooo little old growth left, how come it is, apparently, being cut on every thinning project being litigated?!? The enviros have their own definitions of “old growth”, usually based on diameter. For example, I measured a tree in the Coast Range of Oregon and it was 32″ dbh. Of course, the enviros are going to claim that tree is “old growth”, despite it being only 61 years old! Here in California, enviros consider any tree above 20″ dbh to be “old growth”.

Another big litigation issue is salvage logging. People like Chad Hanson have tunnelvision is his quest to save the snags. He even litigates to stop roadside hazard tree projects. Clearly, salvage logging can accelerate the re-establishment of forests where bark beetles and catastrophic wildfires have decimated them. Currently, academia is also on a quest to eliminate ALL salvage logging. The A-Rock Fire example I provided is a perfect illustration of how a lack of salvage has resulted in a devastating re-burn. It will now take decades for pine to get seeded into the interior of last year’s re-burn.

In this new Planning Rule process, I’m hoping that the efforts are not to “re-invent” forests into “re-wilded” landscapes that utilize “unstewardship”. Some people want to lock up dead and dying forests to “let nature take its course”. “Natural ignitions” in “unnatural” forests always results in “unnatural” wildfires. Also, the spread of pure lodgepole forests in the Rockies has resulted in the loss of the ponderosa pine component that was fire resistant and resilient. The suppression of wildfires has encouraged lodgepoles to be more dominant and unstewardship will lock in their domination. The legal gridlock will ensure that future forests will be pure lodgepoles. The eco-community will not allow humans to intervene and restore the ponderosa pine forests where lodgepoles now are dead.

Warm Lake Fire Study Excerpts- and Science Policy Situations that Shout Watch Out #6 and #7

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The WISE blog here has some interesting excerpts from this paper by Graham, Jain and Loseke on the Warm Lake Fire. It also has a link to the complete paper. This paper was mentioned yesterday in testimony before the House Agriculture Committee at a Wyoming Field Hearing.

Interestingly, in this blog, Ted Zukowski reasserts the knowledge claim that 150 feet is the “science” of protecting homes. Sorry, Ted, people want to protect communities, not homes, and they want firefighters to work around those communities, as I said on this blog here. Perhaps that should be Science-policy Situation that shouts Watch Out #6 – when advocacy groups assert what “the science” says, and number 7- when anyone claims “the science is settled.”