Role of science

Payson Roundup: 4FRI Contract Bombshell

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This blog has had numerous posts, debates and discussions about the Four Forest Restoration (4FRI) in Arizona, including this article, “Is the US Forest Service killing the last best chance to save the Southwest’s forests?”

Well, the latest development via the in-depth reporting of Pete Aleshire with the Payson Roundup in an article yesterday titled, “Forest Contract Bombshell.” Below are extensive snips from that article:  [Note: emphasis added – mk]

Amid fresh furor, the U.S. Forest Service is considering letting a troubled timber company transfer the biggest forest restoration project in history.

The Forest Service announced on Monday that it has received a request from Pioneer Forest Products to transfer the 10-year, Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI) contract to thin 300,000 acres in Northern Arizona to another, unnamed company.

“We are in the process of reviewing the application,” said Cathie Schmidtlin, media officer for the Southwest Region of the U.S. Forest Service, “to determine whether the transfer of assets is in the best interest of the government. If we determine it is not, the contract would stay with Pioneer. If it is determined to be in the best interest of the government, then the contract liability would transfer to the new owner, who would be contractually obligated to carry out the terms and conditions of the 4FRI contract.”….

At least one of the key groups that helped develop the 4FRI plan immediately responded to the announcement by calling for an inspector general’s investigation of the “potential irregularities” in the award of the contract.

“Many of us saw this one coming right from the start. Pioneer’s business plan read like a fantasy novel,” said Todd Schulke, with the Center for Biological Diversity, which helped develop 4FRI in collaboration with representatives of the timber industry, forest health researchers and local officials like Gila County Supervisor Tommie Martin. “But the Forest Service chose Pioneer despite having more realistic options. Either Pioneer misled the agency about its financial viability or the Forest Service chose to look the other way when there were serious questions. Why?”

Gila County Supervisor Tommie Martin said, “this could be the best thing that has happened to 4FRI — or it could be abysmal business as usual. Anyone who has the financial backing to buy this contract, the willingness to ‘take on’ the whole social functioning/disfunctioning that has grown around it and the desire to fulfill it definitely has my attention … and my respect if they can actually pull it off.”….

The Forest Service awarded the contract to Pioneer more than a year ago. The contract originally required Pioneer to thin about 15,000 acres in 2013 and 30,000 acres annually after that. The plan called for feeding those small-diameter trees into new mills in Winslow to produce biodiesel fuel and a type of “finger-jointed” furniture.

Several months ago, the Forest Service modified the terms the contract so that Pioneer only had to thin 1,000 acres in the next 18 months, amid reports that the company was having trouble getting financing for its proposed mills in Winslow.

The Forest Service statement released on Monday said “we cannot disclose the names of the potential new owner as this information is confidential while the proposed agreement is under review. The first task order of the contract, the Ranch task order located on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests is progressing satisfactorily and expected to be completed ahead of schedule.”…..

The stakeholders generally expected Berlioux Arizona Forest Restoration Products (AZFRP) to win the bid for the contract, since he had helped develop the approach behind 4FRI.

Instead, the Forest Service’s contract review office in Albuquerque awarded the contract to Pioneer Forest Products. One of the principals in the company was Marlin Johnston, who was a longtime Forest Service official who formerly ran the agency’s regional timber harvest office. In that post, he battled demands of environmentalists that the Forest Service quit cutting the remaining old-growth, fire-resistant trees.

Supporters of the 4FRI approach, like Supervisor Martin, questioned the award of the contract to Pioneer. She noted that Berlioux had not only offered to pay more money to the Forest Service for the contract, but had also agreed to monitor whether the thinning projects had the intended effects on tree growth, fire patterns and wildlife.

Moreover, Martin and others questioned Pioneer’s plan to compete with overseas markets in making finger-jointed furniture and use branches and slash to make diesel fuel, although previous efforts had failed.

By contrast, Berlioux proposed using the trees to make Oriented Strand Board — a sort of high-tech plywood that currently represents a $2 billion industry. Berlioux ran Europe’s first OSB factory.

Moreover, Pioneer principal owner Herman Hauck, 84, hasn’t operated a timber company or mill since Hauck Mill Work Company went bankrupt in 1969, according to an investigation by freelance writer and radio reporter Claudine LoMonaco, published in The Santa Fe Reporter, an alternative weekly. She had prepared a story on Pioneer’s dubious background for the public radio station in Flagstaff, but station officials killed the story.

The Forest Service contracting office declined to release many key details of Pioneer’s proposal and has never explained why it awarded the contract to the company that offered to pay the least.

Forest Service officials on Monday remained tight-lipped. In an e-mail to the Roundup accompanying the release Schmidlin said “this is all the information I’m able to provide at this time. The Forest Service will gladly share additional information in the near future, when the review process is completed. I don’t know how long the process will take.”

The swirl of questions about the contracts have forced the very people who developed the 4FRI approach to become increasingly vocal critics of the Forest Service’s implementation.

Martin, in an e-mail exchange on Monday, said she hopes the Forest Service will now seek expert, outside help. “The FS track record on the business side of this contract conversation has been so poor that unless they get ‘outside’ help evaluating the situation, the proposal and bringing business science to bear  — I’m skeptical of the outcome … even knowing that a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while!”

Moreover, she said “for me there is still the whole social agreement concerning big tree/old tree retention that was agreed upon by the counties, enviros, industry and others that the FS have completely thrown out the window and claim that us wanting to leave them all ‘is not good science.’ Nonsense!”

She said old-growth trees constitute just 3 percent of the trees in the ponderosa pine forest of Northern Arizona, even though the Forest Service management plan calls for increasing that tally to 20 percent. “For instance, the 33,000-acre Rim Lakes thinning portion of the 4FRI proposal by Heber has only an average less than one old tree per acre to start with!”

She said she hopes the Forest Service will now agree to leave virtually all of the trees larger than 16 inches in diameter. “We’re asking that they leave ALL the big/old trees (with few exceptions) — get rid of all the dog hair thickets and get ahead of the fire danger curve — and then go back to the drawing board and see if there needs to be more mosaic, more age/structure classifications, etc. within the treated area. They claim their science shows restoration occurs faster/better with some of the old growth gone — again I say nonsense! First let them show me where they have restored a forest — ANYWHERE — and then we’ll talk about it.”

Schulke made the same point. The Center for Biological Diversity has battled the Forest Service for years attempting to prevent the harvest of old-growth trees in an effort to save endangered, old-growth dependent species like the Mexican spotted owl and the Northern goshawk. But the group promised to go to court to support 4FRI if the Forest Service agreed to leave the remaining old-growth trees.

“Ignoring the collaborative agreement was an outright breach of the social license that enabled 4FRI in the first place,” said Schulke. “Large trees are not only critically important to the survival of an array of endangered and threatened species, they’re also more fire resistant — they help to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires. We fully support 4FRI. But the Forest Service bungling has put communities at risk from the fire unnecessarily. It’s time to demand action.”

Potpourri of Recent Wildfire & Fuel Reduction Studies

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(The following information was written and provided to me by George Wuerthner, author of Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy. – mk)

This study, Wildfire and Fuel Treatment Effects on Forest Carbon Dynamics in the Western United States, while focused on carbon losses and storage in forests, makes the point about probability – i.e. what is the likelihood of any fire actually interacting with fuel reductions? We can’t treat entire forests or even a significant portion of them due to cost and the undesirable impacts associated with logging, so it’s reasonable to ask the question as to whether there is a good chance as to whether a fire will actually burn through fuel reduction treated areas.

In other words since we can’t predict where a fire will occur, we can’t effectively treat forests with fuel reductions – even if they worked well – which they often don’t for a host of reasons including the fact that fuel reductions lose effectiveness over time.

We are spending a lot of federal dollars trying to treat forests to reduce fire spread and severity when the chances or probability that a high severity fire will actually interact with a treated forest is low. This, of course, again makes the case that treatments, if they are done at all, should be strategic and focused on lands near communities and other targeted areas of importance.

Abstract
Sequestration of carbon (C) in forests has the potential to mitigate the effects of climate change by offsetting future emissions of greenhouse gases. However, in dry temperate forests, wildfire is a natural disturbance agent with the potential to release large fluxes of C into the atmosphere. Climate-driven increases in wildfire extent and severity are expected to increase the risks of reversal to C stores and affect the potential of dry forests to sequester C. In the western United States, fuel treatments that successfully reduce surface fuels in dry forests can mitigate the spread and severity of wildfire, while reducing both tree mortality and emissions from wildfire. However, heterogeneous burn environments, site-specific variability in post-fire ecosystem response, and uncertainty in future fire frequency and extent complicate assessments of long-term (decades to centuries) C dynamics across large landscapes. Results of studies on the effects of fuel treatments and wildfires on long-term C retention across large landscapes are limited and equivocal. Stand-scale studies, empirical and modeled, describe a wide range of total treatment costs (12–116 Mg C ha−1) and reductions in wildfire emissions between treated and untreated stands (1–40 Mg C ha−1). Conclusions suggest the direction (source, sink) and magnitude of net C effects from fuel treatments are similarly variable (−33 Mg C ha−1 to +3 Mg C ha−1). Studies at large spatial and temporal scales suggest that there is a low likelihood of high-severity wildfire events interacting with treated forests, negating any expected C benefit from fuels reduction. The frequency, extent, and severity of wildfire are expected to increase as a result of changing climate, and additional information on C response to management and disturbance scenarios is needed improve the accuracy and usefulness of assessments of fuel treatment and wildfire effects on C dynamics.

Another long term study – this one in the Siskiyou Mountains of Oregon – demonstrates that fires are episodic and tightly bound with climate. It also points out that sediment loads increased dramatically after logging began–that has no previous analogue in history.

This paper documents how changing climatic conditions impact fire regimes and frequency. There were long periods without fires as reported in other recent studies and then periodic fire decades as well. In general this paper would support the notion that juniper and pinyon woodlands were not characterized by  “frequent fire/low intensity” fire regimes.

Wuerthner: Revisiting Fire History Studies

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(The following piece was written by George Wuerthner, an ecologist, professional photographer and writer who has published over 30 books, including Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy. – mk)

One of the cornerstones of current forest policy is the assumption that western forests are outside of their “normal” density and appearance or what is termed “historic variability” due a hundred years of mismanagement that included logging of old growth, fire suppression, and livestock grazing. This idea has been used to justify logging public lands to “restore” forests to their pre-management era appearance and resiliency. Due to this past mismanagement we are told that forests are “overgrown” “decadent” and ready to burn.

Not to dismiss effects of the kind of management that largely continues unabated today, including on-going logging, grazing and fire suppression, but whether the current forest stand condition is that far from conditions that have occurred infrequently in the past is a matter of increasing debate.  This is especially important because public land management agencies feel the pressure to DO something beyond waiting for nature to do what it always does to “restore” forest conditions.

Timber harvesting is no longer done just to provide timber companies with profits or consumers with wood. Now lumber companies are involved in a much more noble enterprise—they are logging the trees to “restore” the presumed forest “health.”

The scientific basis for “restoration” is based to a large extent on fire scar studies. These studies suggest that the drier forests composed of lower elevation ponderosa pine and Douglas fir burned frequently and thus kept density low with “park-like” open stands of mostly larger trees. Keep in mind the discussion is focused on lower elevation forests since higher elevation forests like lodgepole pine, fir and spruce are characterized by much longer fire intervals, which have not experienced fuel buildups to any significant degree due to fire suppression, grazing, or timber harvesting.

So we often hear how such low elevation dry forests burned regularly at frequent intervals in “light, cool” blazes that removed the litter and killed the small trees, but did little harm to the larger trees.

Like a lot of myths, there is some truth to this generalization, and no doubt in some areas this characterization is accurate. But more recent studies using different methods have started to question this well-established story-line. These studies are finding that the intervals between fires is much longer than previously suspected, and that stand-replacement blazes (where most of the trees are killed) were likely common even in the lower elevation dry forests.

PROBLEMS WITH FIRE SCAR METHODS
The major method for determining the fire history of an area is to find trees with scars created by fires. If the tree is not killed by the blaze, it will develop a scar that can be counted in the tree rings. This record of past fires is then used to determine the “fire rotation” or the time it takes to burn an area equivalent to one’s study area.

There are four major flaws associated with traditional fire scar studies. These methodological flaws contribute to a bias toward shorter fire rotations—in other words, they tend to overstate the effect of fire suppression on forests because it appears that we are seeing more years between successive fires than we did in the past. If the fire rotation were judged to be longer, however, then much of what is being characterized as unhealthy forest may actually be perfectly normal and healthy.

The first flaw is targeted sampling. A researcher walks through the forest looking for areas with an abundance of fire scarred trees. The trees in this area are then sampled and used to determine the fire history for the area.  In the 1930s the bank robber Willy Sutton was asked why he robbed banks. Sutton is reputed to have replied with the self evident “because that is where the money is.” In a sense that is how fire researchers have gathered their data on fires—they sample in places with a lot of fire scars.

The problem with targeted sampling is that it’s non random. It’s like going into a brewery to poll people about whether they like beer. Places with an abundance of fire scars tend to have naturally low fuel loadings and frequent fires. But these sites may not be representative of the surrounding landscape such as north facing slopes or valley bottoms which may be wetter or have higher productivity and, thus, longer intervals between blazes. In fact, the reason non-sampled areas lack significant numbers of fire scarred trees is often because all trees were killed in a stand-replacement fire, but the omission of such areas from fire history studies leads to the false conclusion that stand-replacement blazes are unusual in dry low-elevation forests.

The second flaw is composite fire scars. Most fire studies add up all the fire scars recorded into a “composite” timeline. The problem with this technique is that the more scars you find and count over bigger and bigger areas, the shorter the fire interval becomes and the more risky your assumption that any fire recorded by one tree burned throughout the entire study area, even though some trees didn’t scar in the fire event. Some fire researchers now try to support this assumption by only including fire scars recorded the same year on 3 or more trees, but the trees do not have to be positioned throughout the study area, so even this will not eliminate the upward bias in frequency of fire in a given study area.

In other words, your composite may suggest a fire burned within your study area once every 5 years or whatever, but if most of these blazes burned only a few trees, then it is not accurate to say that the fire burned the entire area.  How frequent are fires that burn most or all of a large study area? These larger blazes may be far less frequent and take 100 years to burn most or all of the study area. Since the critical issue for the forest is the occurrence of the occasional blaze that burns most, if not all, of the entire study area, the fire rotation for those fires in such an area may be closer to 100 years, not the 5 years you get if you include even the tiny 1-acre fires.

The third flaw is an emphasis on the AVERAGE fire interval rather than the DISTRIBUTION of fire intervals. If you read fire studies carefully they will usually note the longest interval without any recorded fire. Often this is a significant period of many decades. Why is this important? Because the average person hears that there were fires, ON AVERAGE, every 5 years and assumes that fires operate like clocks on a regular schedule. In reality, fires burn in episodic groups usually dictated by periodic droughts that are controlled by shifts in offshore currents like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, thus tend to be grouped together in certain drought prone decades.  The DISTRIBUTION of a fire interval shows clearly that there are always relatively long periods with little fire, even though the AVERAGE fire return interval might be 5 years.

Why is it important that we consider historic distributions of fire intervals rather than average fire intervals? Because the common assumption is that if the fire interval averages 5 years, fires would keep tree density low and reduce fuel build up. However, if it is also typical that there are also extremely long fire intervals of 80 years or more associated with the DISTRIBUTION of fire intervals, then there may not be an “abnormal” build up of fuel or increase in tree density, and nothing is out of the ordinary at all.

Finally the fourth major flaw is that traditional fire-scar studies have not been map based.  Why is a map of the distribution of trees with scars important?  It is only through such mapping that one can determine whether a scarred tree was in the middle of an extensive low-severity fire or at the edge of a high-severity patch.  One must look at the age distribution of the surrounding trees to gain real insight into the kind of fire that the scarred tree recorded.  This is what the more progressive fire ecologists are beginning to do, and they are finding that many fires in dry forest types are severe fires that burn relatively small areas within a larger fire perimeter, just like ALL fire we see burning in the same forest locations today.

Due to these flaws and errors in interpretation, many fire scar histories (but not all) misrepresent the fire regime associated with an area. If the period between fires was occasionally very long, then our forests may not be far out of their historic variability and may be well within that range of variation. If so, they do not require “restoration” because they are not out of balance.

The other major justification for logging is to reduce the chance that a community might be threatened but, as embarrassing as the facts are, there is no evidence that logging conducted miles from a town has anything at all to do with the probability that the nearest houses burn.

The fact that we are seeing more and larger fires fits perfectly with the pattern that is expected under current climatic conditions. In other words, if you have drier weather conditions, with high temperatures, low humidity and high winds, you will get more fires. You will get larger fires.

The prevailing climatic conditions are driving most of the apparent change in fire frequency and severity. For instance, the Southwest is in the grips of a drought that hasn’t been seen in five hundred years. Not surprisingly, there are fires now burning across the region bigger and more intense than any seen in the past.  However, Paleo fire studies confirm that such large fires may not be abnormal when compared to the fires that burned similar severe droughts occurred in the past centuries.

MANAGE FOR ECOLOGICAL PROCESS NOT SOME HISTORIC STAND STRUCTURE
Finally there is too much emphasis on “restoring” stand structure (in other words the presumed appearance) of forests rather than allowing natural ecological processes to occur on the landscape. It is more critical to accept and promote natural processes like beetle outbreaks, wildfires (including stand replacement blazes), and other natural ecological agents than to try to create some presumed historic forest structure that never existed in a steady state (and at taxpayer expense)! If natural ecological processes are allowed to occur on our public lands, then the forest will sort out the kind of appearance and structure that is appropriate for current climatic conditions. Critics will claim that a do-nothing approach outside the WUI will only lead to conversions of our forests to some other vegetation type, but the evidence for widespread type conversions is entirely absent.  Severe fires will restore forest conditions just fine.

All this is not to suggest that all historical reconstructions from fire scar studies are wrong—but it does suggest that most outside the pure ponderosa pine forests of the Southwest (and that’s most conifer forests in the West) are probably biased to some degree. Many of the logging proposals in the West are likely based on flawed assumptions about fire ecology and historic conditions.  And before any “restoration” logging is accepted as necessarily, the underlying assumptions should be carefully evaluated to make sure they are not skewed towards fire rotations that do not characterize the area accurately.

The Moon and the Nautilus Shell: Read This Book!

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moon

If anyone had been observing me as I was reading this book, they would have been highly amused. For one thing, it was the first book I’ve ever read on my IPad. Which wouldn’t have been so difficult except Botkin had many sentences I wanted to highlight. Which wouldn’t have been so difficult except highlighting involved 1) tapping the sentence 2) watching the IPad scroll to the next page, 3) tapping again 4) watching the IPad scroll to the previous page, 5) tapping again and watching a screen come up with pots of paint but didn’t seem to highlight, 6) tapping and tapping more earnestly when nothing happened, and so on. Occasionally, I would be surprised by some observation (along the lines of “The Emperor Has No Clothes and Here’s Why”) and I would mutter “OMG!” But the stories were so compelling I couldn’t stop reading to go look up “how to highlight.”

If you asked me why I like this book, I would say “all of us in the forest world are struggling to understand each other. We honestly try, but there’s something deeper that we just can’t get at.” For me, it’s like someone smarter and more articulate describes our world. The net result being that I can see it more clearly. Botkin has begun to explore the terrain of “something deeper”. He’s got a thesis; that a balanced and preferable past lies in our psyche (the Garden of Eden). But that doesn’t completely explain his observation (this was an OMG for me):
“If you ask ecologists whether nature is always constant, they will always say “No, of course not.” But if you ask them to write down a policy for biological conservation or any other kind of environmental management, they will almost always write down a steady-state solution.”

It’s so..obvious… once he pointed it out. Enter “ecosystem integrity” and NRV from the Planning Rule Directives. But why do scientists exhibit this dualistic behavior? Of course, rewriting all those statutes, regulations, and directives would be a lot of work; not for scientists, though. But, in my view, acknowledging the facts might dethrone some scientists from the comfortable position they have, telling the world what to do and how to be. Right now they get to do this without the mess of elections, and the hassle of going to seminary. Human nature is such that if you’re at the top of the heap, even if the foundation is cracked, you don’t want to move to a more secure foundation.

Botkin says that a common question he gets asked is “if you say one kind of change is okay, doesn’t that mean every kind of change is okay, like killing off endangered species (or whatever interests the questioner).” But even that questioner in his audience mixes “observed change” with “bad”.

I will tell one story about taking this to extremes. I once reviewed a paper about a shelterwood and changes in gene frequencies in the seedlings compared to the parents. The conclusion was, since the gene frequencies changed between the parents and the offspring, that shelterwoods were having a negative effect on the genetics. Well, the new gene frequencies could be better for this climate. They could have been a random fluctuation.. perhaps the wind was blowing from a different direction during pollination seasons. The terminal inability to distinguish what is from what should be, empirical from normative, is really scary. Insofar as philosophies can be scary. Because humans do things in the environment, and if every change is labeled bad, then humans are bad. But we know that our intrinsic goodness or badness is the realm of the philosopher, the psychologist and ultimately, the theologian. How did we get from scientific curiosity .. the conversation with nature, where scientists ask and nature answers, to an alchemy of despair? A more in-your-face version of this book might have been titled: The Alchemy of Despair: How Science Became Theology and What We Can Do to Get Science Back.

When I read the book on my IPad, it was an easy read; by showing only 2-3 paragraphs at a time, it seemed to increase the folksiness and storytelling feel of the book. Maybe the sepia background helped also. And make no mistake, Botkin is a great storyteller. And he is gentle in making his points; nonetheless, his points are very clear.

People on this blog will probably enjoy the interplay between his observations of nature and current scientific concepts. If you’ve ever wondered why the minimum population size is thought to be 30, and yet the black-footed ferret (or Best Ferret Forever) has recovered from a population of 18- this book’s for you.

Because there is so much content in this book, I’m going to suggest we have a Virtual Book Club. To give you all time to order it and read it, Book Club will start around August 12th. Then we’ll start a series of posts where we can each tell our stories, relevant to Botkin’s points or stories, and go on to hopefully have a discussion of other points of view. I encourage others to post about parts of the book that do or don’t resonate with them, and we can discuss that. Please send these posts to terraveritasatgmaildotcom.

I think what Botkin writes about is extremely important, both for environmental and forest policy, but also for people’s psychological well-being- humans are ultimately beloved children of Gaia, or sinners who have sinned against Gaia and deserve to be punished. Those of you involved in formal spiritual traditions.. does this sound familiar? And a dichotomy older, than, say Methusaleh?

Here’s a link to the book.

Alaska’s chief forester hoodwinks Congress about the Tongass

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(The following note and op-ed is from Larry Edwards, a Greenpeace forest campaigner and 36-year Sitka, Alaska resident. – mk)

I published the op-ed below today in the Juneau Empire, concerning fundamentally false testimony given at  Senator Wyden’s Senate E&NR Committee hearing on public forests (USFS and BLM) on June 25.  The particular testimony was given by the director of Alaska DNR’s Division of Forestry, Chris Maisch.

Although the topic may seem regional, concerning particulars about the Tongass National Forest, the piece should be of interest more broadly because Maisch’s testimony and the hearing in general were used to justify Senator Wyden’s approach to getting logging levels “UP” (his emphasis, repeatedly) by “streamlining” NEPA and ESA.

— Larry Edwards

——————–

Chris Maisch hoodwinks Congress about the Tongass
By Larry Edwards, Greenpeace
July 10, 2013

Alaska’s chief forester, Chris Maisch, should be fired and be held in contempt of Congress. Falsehoods were plentiful in his June 25 testimony to the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, representing the state on Tongass National Forest issues.

He called these falsehoods “grim realities.” They mislead Congress, and their negativity harms the morale and economic reputation of Southeast Alaska.

Maisch introduced the Tongass as “the largest national forest …17 million acres of land.” Correct. But in noting merely that “not all of this” can be logged, he avoided informing senators that this land area is two-thirds glaciers, ice caps, rocky peaks, muskegs and scrubby trees. That’s nothing anyone would try to log, and not the prized forest habitats embroiled in controversy.

Had he disclosed that, his main point would have been silly: “the suitable timber base available for management has declined to only 672 thousand acres — or 4 percent of the Tongass acreage.” The comparison is absurd because the overwhelming portion of other 96 percent of the Tongass is the non-forest and unloggable landforms just described. Alaska’ chief forester must know better than the vision this created for senators.

More deceptively, he said, “Despite more than 50 years of timber harvest in the Tongass, a mere 2.5 percent of the old growth forest has been harvested.” That cons the Senate into believing the Tongass timber industry has had minuscule impact on forest habitat. If the existing 440,000 acres of Tongass clearcuts are really just “2.5 percent of the old growth,” doing the math, all the 17 million acres had to be old growth. Effectively, Maisch’s vision for senators is that there are no glaciers or unloggable terrains at all on the Tongass — just uninterrupted old-growth everywhere, of comparable quality to what has been logged.

Also deceptive: “The Tongass … is bigger than West Virginia, yet [that state has] 181 sawmills and 30,000 people employed.” West Virginia has far more commercial quality forest than the Tongass, and its climate grows trees faster. West Virginia’s industry is close to markets; Alaska’s is remote. Maisch’s incomplete comparison hoodwinked senators.

Maisch did a jobs shell-game. His testimony focused entirely on the Tongass, not mentioning other forest ownerships. Yet he claimed, “logging and wood products employment remains a mere shadow of its past, falling from 4,600 jobs in 1990 to approximately 307 logging jobs and 150 wood products manufacturing jobs in 2011.” In 1990 only 4,000 such jobs existed statewide. It was the peak year of Southeast Alaska’s logging boom, employing 3450. (Alaska Department of Labor). Over half the timber came from Native corporations rapidly liquidating their forests, not the Tongass. Maisch’s inaccuracy and comparison to an unsustainable high-water mark misdirected senators.

The current 457 jobs, too, are statewide. Under 100 jobs depend on Tongass timber, making this a good time for quickly transitioning out of Tongass old-growth logging. Magnifying the Tongass industry as four-plus times its actual size, Maisch avoided being confronted with that option. He asks the opposite — the ceding of 2 million acres of old-growth from the Tongass for logging — with contrived facts.

Maisch pointed to supposed steady decline in Southeast Alaska’s population and school enrollment. Population did decline 5 percent between the 2000 and 2010 Censuses, but senators also need to know the State estimates the population has rebounded 3.8 percent since 2010.

Maisch said school enrollment has declined 15 percent, “sustained over nearly two decades” in 87 percent of communities. Broad decline lasted only from 2000 to 2006. Stability or growth have become commonplace since then. Analyzing State records, enrollment has been stable in nearly 60 percent of Southeast’s school districts for the last 3-10 years, and is increasing in nearly one-quarter.

He also claimed that since 1990 six schools closed and the Southeast Island School District’s (SISD) enrollment declined from 381 to 160 students. (Enrollment of under 10 causes closure; correspondence school is a fallback option.) Of those six, permanent closures in two tiny fishing villages (1997 and 1999) and in Hyder (2009) are irrelevant to logging issues. A fourth school closed only during 1996. The remaining two, in timber country, have cycled on/off for two decades. Maisch ignored SISD’s steady enrollment recovery since 2010, reaching 190 (not 160) this year.

Chris Maisch’s testimony was fundamentally false. If he believes what he said, he is not a competent public resources steward. If otherwise, he committed perjury. Either way he must go, and the State needs to retract his testimony!

• Larry Edwards is a Greenpeace forest campaigner and 36-year Sitka
resident.

Scientific Assertions That Muddle Ecological Policy- Bob Lackey

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lackey 2013We have posted other work by Bob Lackey here before (you can search in the box to the right).
Scientific Assertions and Ecological Policy – Keynote – Lackey is a keynote address presented at the 58th Annual Meeting of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, Montreal, Canada, May 29, 2013.

It’s all worth reading, as Bob’s work usually is. Still, I felt the need to extract something to pique your interest, and given the planning directives and rule discussion about plans needing to promote “ecosystem integrity”, I thought that this second assertion is relevant. Here’s one of a series of posts on the concept of “ecosystem integrity” and how it is used in the new planning rule and directives. (Recursive question: if you don’t use the “best science” in developing a rule about how to develop plans, then can you require it in the plans themselves? How can you do the “best science” based on a “not best science” concept? Perhaps a judge will illuminate this apparent contradiction when the time comes…

What happens is that if you think that this is a fact (“natural” is best), then you just need scientists to tell you how not to change them from what they used to be. You also need armies of scientists to study exactly how things “used to be” because even though the climate was different then, and Native Americans were impacting the landscape, somehow that will tell us .. something.. about what we “should” (normative) do in the future.

If it’s simply a values choice, then scientists can be helpful about figuring out how to get there, or reducing negative impacts, but they are not in the driver’s seat. Since I was trained by the “helpful to society” school of science and not the “we know more than the rest of people, so we should tell them what to do” school of science (this came later), it’s not a big loss to me. Because people might even listen to scientists more if they trusted us not to be following their own agendas. IMHO.

Second Scientific Assertion
Now let’s move to a second scientific assertion that needs to be hauled to the nearest landfill, and the sooner, the better:
“Natural ecosystems are superior to human altered ones.”

Who says that natural ecosystems are superior to human altered ones?
This assumption is so pervasive, so commonplace, that some scientists just take it as a self-evident fact.
Perhaps even some in this room.
Let me illustrate how this assertion actually plays out in the scientific enterprise.
From the perspective of a scientist, think about the question of whether or not to dam a river to produce electricity. There is absolutely nothing in science that implies that an undammed river is more, or less, valuable than that same river dammed to generate electricity.
Free flowing rivers, and dammed rivers, are different ecologically, most definitely different, but neither is better or worse until a policy preference is endorsed, until a value judgment is applied.
Applying value judgments, choosing between competing policy preferences, is beyond the scope of science.
But is it common for science to be biased toward the unaltered state of ecosystems, toward natural? Most scientists will answer unflinchingly “no way” — or perhaps “well, at least not my science.”
Let me counter with some data.
For many years, I have surveyed students who take my graduate level policy class. They complete a survey on the first day of the term, a survey to determine inherent policy bias. The result?

There is absolutely no question that, among these students at least, all with bachelor’s degrees and many with master’s degrees in some field of science, there is a strong feeling that natural ecosystems are inherently superior, just somehow better than human altered ones.

Further, most of these students describe unaltered ecosystems as “healthy” and highly altered ecosystems as “degraded.” The implied conclusion: a “healthy” ecosystem is clearly in better shape than a “degraded” one. And further, human alteration is a bad thing, perhaps necessary for providing food or shelter, but still not really a good thing.

Therefore, my conclusion, the term ecosystem “health” presupposes that natural is preferred to human altered. But, and we scientists need to remember this, whether society wants a fish community dominated by Chinook salmon and alewives, or one dominated by lake trout and ciscoes is a policy choice, informed by science, yes, but a policy choice nevertheless.”

Judge Halts Fleecer Mtn Logging Project: USFS shortcut lynx, griz analysis, must also supplement EA with “full and fair discussion of the impact that temporary roads will have on elk”

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According to this news article [emphasis added]:

A judge on Friday blocked [the Fleecer Mountain] logging project in Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and ordered two federal agencies to take another look at the effects on lynx, grizzly bears and elk that may be in the area….

U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen wrote in his ruling the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service used a procedural shortcut to conclude lynx habitat would not be harmed by the project.

The federal Endangered Species Act requires the government to ensure no action will harm the existence of any endangered or threatened species, or destroy or harm their habitat. But the procedure was bypassed when the Fish and Wildlife Service wrote that threatened lynx did not “occupy” the southwestern Montana forest, even though there is some evidence lynx may be present, Christensen wrote.

As a result, the Forest Service did not conduct a biological assessment on the effects of the logging project on habitat that lynx may pass through.

Christensen ordered the agencies to conduct a new analysis using the proper standard under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The Forest Service also must conduct a new biological assessment on the project’s effect on threatened grizzly bears after Christensen ruled the original assessment was “arbitrary and capricious.”

The agency also must study the effects on elk of building temporary roads for the project, Christensen said.

Here are some highlights from U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen’s order:

Summary judgment is also granted in favor of Plaintiffs on their claims under the ESA. The Court concludes that the case must be remanded to the Wildlife Service to consider whether lynx “may be present” in the Forest because the Wildlife Service improperly applied a stricter standard to that inquiry. Until the Wildlife Service conducts its analysis under the proper standard and the parties complete any consultation that might become necessary, the Project must be enjoined.

The Forest Service’s biological assessment of whether the Project “may affect” grizzly bears was also arbitrary and capricious, and a new biological assessment must be prepared.

Summary judgment is granted in favor of Plaintiffs on their claim that the Forest Plan’s and Project’s discussions of elk violate NEPA. Although the Forest Service did not act arbitrarily or capriciously in setting road density levels for the Forest, analyzing road density at the landscape and hunting unit scales, or defining secure areas for elk, the Court nevertheless finds that the Forest Service must supplement its EIS for the Forest Plan to explain or support, if possible, its decision to exclude temporary roads from the road density objectives and to correct the record to show that permitted and administrative roads are included in the objectives.

The Project EA must also be supplemented with a full and fair discussion of the impact that temporary roads will have on elk during the Project’s lifetime, an important aspect of the problem given the already high road density levels in the Project area.

I want to delve more into the specifics of Judge Christensen’s order, especially the part about impacts of temporary roads on elk, but first, careful readers of this blog may remember that we’ve had some discussion and debate about this Fleecer Mountain logging project in the past.

For example, who could forgot the almost joy-like, childish mocking of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystem Council from the editorial board of the Montana Standard newspaper in their March 4, 2012 editorial ironically titled, Abuse of enviro laws may doom them?

Last year the Montana Standard editorial board wrote:

Who knew that Fleecer Mountain had such a thriving population of grizzly bears? And who would have thought that taking out some dead and dying trees, working on stream restoration and improving sagebrush range lands might lead to the extinction of lynx?

Environmental groups do….What a surprise….

Listening to their rhetoric, one might get the impression that government employees are bent on wiping out native species and butchering forests into moonscapes. The Fleecer project is a prime example. Forest Service scientists carefully planned the project to deal with numerous dead and dying trees in the area and supply some logs to the timber industry. They looked at conifer encroachment into native grasslands and the decline of aspen groves. And they considered the health of the streams and ways to improve the movement of fish.

But Mike Garrity, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, saw the Forest Service’s real, sinister motives…and said the lawsuit was necessary “for the sake of the elk, grizzly bears, lynx and a myriad of other old growth dependent species.”

There have never been grizzlies spotted there. And Forest Service personnel say their analysis found the lodge pole pine areas where the logging is proposed is not prime lynx habitat.

Well, how silly, petty and just plain wrong does the Montana Standard’s editorial board look now, after reading U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen’s order enjoining the Fleecer Mountain timber sale because of violations of NEPA and the ESA?  Turns out the Forest Service didn’t “carefully plan” the Fleecer Mountain logging project like the Montana Standard editors would like us all to believe.  Besides, on March 7, 2012 AWR director Michael Garrity, already set the Montana Standard editorial board straight in an oped titled, ironically and correctly enough, Fleecer timber cut illegal, says group.  Garrity wrote:
The Montana Standard editorial on March 4 criticized the Alliance for the Wild Rockies for filing lawsuits to stop the Fleecer timber sale….While claiming the Alliance is “abusing environmental laws,” what the editorial didn’t mention is that we win about 87 percent of those suits.Simply put, unless the Forest Service is found to be breaking the law, we don’t win….When the Alliance was informed of the new [Fleecer Mountain logging] project, we toured the site with the forest supervisor and two district rangers, told them our concerns, and submitted detailed comments in writing.  The previous two forest supervisors worked with us on the Grasshopper, Anaconda Job Corps, Beaverhead-Deerlodge roadside salvage and the Georgetown Lake timber sales, for which they should be commended. But this time around, the agency decided to try and make giant, illegal clearcuts in prime elk habitat instead of following their own rules and laws.

Contrary to media representations, our country’s environmental laws aren’t that strict. They don’t prohibit logging on our National Forests, but do require that the Forest Service must ensure that there will be viable populations of native species after logging — and clearcuts simply do not make good wildlife habitat for elk, grizzly bears and other old-growth dependent species.

We are a nation of laws and that means federal agencies, just like citizens, must follow the law. As before, the Forest Service will either pull this proposal or, if it loses in court, blame environmentalists for once again stopping clearcutting of elk winter range.

The Standard claims it was surprised to find there are grizzly bears around Butte. But in 2010, the Standard reported that a grizzly bear was killed near Elk Park and in 2005 a hunter killed a grizzly bear within the Mount Haggin Wildlife Management Area which adjoins the Fleecer timber sale and is within the wildlife security analysis area for the project.  If grizzlies are to be recovered and removed from the Endangered Species protections, it means their habitat must be taken into account in Forest Service timber sales….

Instead of attacking citizens for participating in the management of our public lands and “abusing” environmental laws, the Standard should ask the Forest Service and its allies, like the Montana Wilderness Association, why the agency has such a hard time following the laws that ensure Butte continues to be surrounded by beautiful national forests full of native wildlife for generations yet to come.

Let’s circle back to this issue of ‘temporary’ logging roads and Judge Christensen’s Order that:
The [Fleecer Mountain Logging] Project EA must also be supplemented with a full and fair discussion of the impact that temporary roads will have on elk during the Project’s lifetime, an important aspect of the problem given the already high road density levels in the Project area.

As a backcountry elk hunter, I’m certainly keenly aware that great elk habitat and logging roads mix about as well as oil and water.  And as an elk hunter, I’m also vigilant about protecting great elk habitat and ensuring that existing elk habitat (and habitat for all wildlife species) on public land isn’t compromised by misguided “management” schemes.

As a forest activist I’ve monitored many logging projects, post-logging, and have documented evidence that even these supposedly “temporary” logging roads have impacts that last long after the logging is finished and the temporary road is supposedly “restored.”

For example, we’ve noticed that just like regular logging roads, these temporary logging roads become vectors for the spread of noxious and invasive weed species, such as knapweed and cheatgrass.  So too, these “temporary” logging roads are often quickly found by people who have less than ideal environmental ethics who use these temporary logging roads for illegal dumping and illegal ATV and motorcycle joy-riding.  It’s also worth pointing out that we’ve witnessed all of the same weed-spreading and illegal dumping and ATV use as we’ve seen with temporary logging roads on some logging “skid trails” as well.

Unfortunately, too many of these so-called “Sportsmen’s” groups have fallen hook, line and sinker for the timber industry’s rhetoric that “temporary” logging roads are a great thing and that there are no negative consequences what-so-ever to building a bunch of “temporary” logging roads in many of our already over-roaded public National Forests.

For example, “Sportsmen’s” groups such as Montana Wildlife Federation, National Wildlife Federation, Montana Trout Unlimited (as well as conservation groups like the Montana Wilderness Association) are supporting Senator Tester’s mandated logging bill, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act.  One key selling point these well-funded groups use is that the bill would largely prohibit new, permanent logging road construction, instead relying on the construction of an unlimited number of “temporary” logging roads, which these groups seem to think have zero impact on the environment.

Just like Judge Christensen ordered the Forest Service to have a “full and fair discussion of the impact that temporary roads will have on elk” I’d like to request that these “Sportsmen’s” groups be more honest about the documented negative impacts of even “temporary” logging roads have on elk, other wildlife and the over-all health of our forests and watersheds. Sportsmen’s groups should encourage, not discourage, a “full and fair discussion of the impact that temporary roads will have on elk” and other wildlife species, not simply pick and choose when they will stand up based on what appears to be game of political paddy-cake, in which politicians with a “D” after their name are lionized, while any politician with an “R” after their name is demonized.

Finally, back in March 2009 ecologist and author George Wuerthner had this piece, Permanent Damage from Temporary Logging Roads, over at Counterpunch.  Since Wuerthner’s article contains some excellent additional information and thoughts about the very real ecological impacts of “temporary” logging roads I’ll post it here in its entirety.  Wuerthner’s piece ends with some very good, and very reasonable, questions anyone supporting the construction of “temporary” logging roads should ask themselves before getting the rest of us to jump on the “temporary” road bandwagon.

The latest attempt by the Forest Service to make logging palatable is “temporary” roads.  A lot of research has found that logging roads are among the biggest impacts to forest ecosystems. (For a good review of road impacts see Trombulak and Frissell.) The Forest Service has at least 400,000 miles of roads on the lands it administers and these roads are a major environmental collateral impact associated with logging and other resource exploitation.Even the Forest Service has had to admit that logging roads have many unacceptable impacts to the forest ecosystem, so they have to come up with a new term and idea to make logging acceptable—temporary roads.  Temporary roads only have temporary impacts—or so we are led to believe.  And some conservationists have jumped on the “temporary” road band wagon just as some readers of the National Inquirer are quick to accept the hype of the latest fad promoting say the low fat ice cream diet.

Temporary roads are like low fat ice cream, they seem to taste good, but as any nutritionist can tell you, you’re are infinitely better off if you don’t consume a lot of ice cream at all—low fat or otherwise. The same is true for roads. Temporary roads are only slightly better than a regular road, and no one should be fooled into thinking they somehow eliminate the negative impacts associated with roads just because they are “temporary.

The problem is that temporary roads have most of the same environmental impacts as regular roads.  Roads compact soil.  Even three trips by logging equipment over soil can result in a significant reduction in water infiltration.  Roads, by slicing across slopes, alter downward flow of subsurface and surface water, often concentrating it on the compacted road surface, thus increasing erosive power.  Roads are a chronic source of sedimentation, and a major impact on aquatic ecosystems.Roads fragment wildlife habitat.  Roads are avoided by some sensitive wildlife species or used as a convenient travel corridor by other species. Often roads provide access for “weedy” ones that negatively impact other species—such as creating access for edge birds to invade and attack interior forest species.Roads change air flow which can affect fire spread and even the distribution of plants responding to micro-climate changes. Roads are the major vector for weeds and disease. Weeds and disease are one of the most pernicious and problematic impacts associated with roads. In the long term, the introduction of weeds and disease may do more damage to forests than the logging. For instance, a root fungus that is introduced by logging equipment along logging roads is decimating Port Orford Cedar stands in Oregon and California where the tree grows.Road beds provide access for hikers and hunters—giving more potential disturbance to wildlife. And ORVers typically find ways to get around gates and other obstacles to use the roads as roads. In short, a temporary road is mostly a mirage. It is essentially a new logging road.

Now some will argue that temporary roads are better than regular roads, especially if they are “reclaimed.” If a road is fully reclaimed, there is something to this argument. The problem is that there is no legal definition of what constitutes “reclaimed” and most roads are not fully reclaimed, in part, because it is very difficult and expensive to do reclamation.To fully reclaim a road is more than putting up a gate to block vehicle travel.  It requires ripping up the road bed to remove the compacted soil layers.  The side slope soil has to be put back on the site, and reshaped so sub surface and surface water flow is restored.  Culverts need to be removed, and stream channels fully restructured and reconstituted.  Vegetation needs to be planted—and grass seed is not enough—especially if the area once supported forest.  And logs, rocks, and other natural structures need to be put back on the slope.  And even if all these things are done, an old road does not magically disappear overnight.  It continues to have impacts for years until the vegetation has grown sufficiently to more or less emulate the pre-road condition.

I’ve seen fully reclaimed roads in Redwood National Park and a few other places, but it’s is extremely rare. And the expense often numbers in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per mile.

By contrast, I’ve seen a lot more minimally reclaimed roads.  I’ve been on forest service lands where a “temporary” road is just a road that the FS didn’t put on its travel maps as a legal road.  It was still there on the ground, but since it was not included in the official travel plan as a road, as far as the FS was concerned, the road did not exist any longer.

The FS usually does go a step further, however, to close temporary roads.  Typically the agency will put up a gate. Nevertheless, most gates, unless built extremely well, do not keep ORVers from using the road on the other side and sometimes even the agency continues to use the road for “administrative purposes.”

While such “temporary” roads may reduce road impacts somewhat, they are nowhere as good as no road at all.  And this is the rub.  I’ve had environmentalists telling me that I don’t have to worry about “new” logging roads because they are all going to be “temporary”.  For example, that is one of the claims of the Beaverhead Deerlodge Partnership proponents.  Don’t’ worry, all logging will be from existing roads and any new roads will be “temporary” and must be “removed” in five years.

For one thing, such temporary roads will effectively be a road for five years at the least, and may exist far longer as a marginally reclaimed road, especially in the arid environment found in much of Southwest Montana.  Such “temporary” roads will exhibit nearly all the problems of a regular road except that they may not be used for public vehicle travel.

So when you hear someone supporting logging because it won’t have the impacts of roads since all new roads will be “temporary” ask some hard questions about the proposal.  How long will the “temporary” road be in use?  Will it be closed to all vehicle traffic forever or will it be used again for logging in 10 or 20 years?  Will it be reclaimed?  What does reclamation mean?  Will the road bed be ripped up, slopes restored, stream channels reconstructed, and original vegetation restored?  If not, than you will have a road—and a road is still a road whether it is called “temporary” or otherwise.  Temporary roads may be better than a permanent addition to the road network, but it should never be thought of as a zero impact. Low fat ice cream is still ice cream—and you’re not likely to lose weight eating a lot of it.  Temporary roads are still roads, and typically have all of the major impacts associated with any road.

Public Employees Sue Over ‘Political Deals’ Behind Wolf Delisting

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From the Environment News Service:

WASHINGTON, DC, May 22, 2013 (ENS) – The Obama Administration’s plan to remove the gray wolf from the protections of the Endangered Species Act, as detailed in a draft Federal Register notice released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, PEER, is temporarily on hold.

The reasons for the indefinite delay announced this week were not revealed nor were the records of closed-door meetings to craft this plan that began in August 2010.

Today a federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to obtain the records from those meetings was filed by PEER, a nonprofit national alliance of local, state and federal resource professionals.

The draft Federal Register notice would strike the gray wolf from the federal list of threatened or endangered species but would keep endangered status for the Mexican wolf. No protected habitat would be delineated for the Mexican wolf, of which fewer than 100 remain in the wild.

This step is the culmination of what officials call their National Wolf Strategy, developed in a series of federal-state meetings called Structured Decision Making, SDM. Tribal representatives declined to participate.

On April 30, 2012, PEER submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for all SDM meeting notes, handouts and decision documents. More than a year later, the agency has not produced any of the requested records, despite a legal requirement that the records be produced within 20 working days.

Today, PEER filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to obtain all of the SDM documents.

Click here to read the full story.

Judge: USFS Must Consult with US FWS to Protect 10 Million Acres of Lynx Critical Habitat

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lynxOn May 16, 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Dana Christensen ruled in favor of conservation groups and found that the U.S. Forest Service violated the Endangered Species Act when it failed to consult with the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service to determine whether its region-wide management direction for the threatened Canada lynx would destroy or adversely affect 10 million acres of designated critical habitat for the elusive feline.

In the past, the Forest Service had taken a project by project approach to managing critical habitat, but recovering Canada lynx requires managing their habitat at the large landscape scale. This ruling requires the Forest Service to sit down with the Fish and Wildlife Service to ensure its big-picture management scheme is protecting the 10 million acres of designated lynx critical habitat in the northern Rockies. The judge’s ruling impacts 11 national forests containing designated critical habitat in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

The lawsuit challenged the Forest Service’s failure to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to ensure that the Northern Rockies Lynx Management Direction would not destroy lynx critical habitat. At the time the management direction was adopted, lynx critical habitat was only designated in three national parks—Glacier, North Cascades and Voyageurs. The U.S Fish and Wildlife Service subsequently designated 10 million acres of critical habitat across 11 national forests in the northern Rockies after it determined that Julie MacDonald, a high ranking political appointee in the Bush Administration, had improperly interfered with critical habitat designations for several species, including the Canada lynx. The court ruling determined that the Forest Service should have consulted with the Fish and Wildlife Service when the new critical habitat was designated.

New Study: Wildfires can burn hot without ruining soil

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Here’s a link to a short article (and video) about the new study, “Hot fire, cool soil,” with a brief excerpt below. The American Geophysical Union demanded that we remove a copy of the actual study, which they provided me earlier in the day, from our website….so I’ve done that.  Sorry folks.

When scientists torched an entire 22-acre watershed in Portugal in a recent experiment, their research yielded a counterintuitive result: Large, hot fires do not necessarily beget hot, scorched soil.

It’s well known that wildfires can leave surface soil burned and barren, which increases the risk of erosion and hinders a landscape’s ability to recover. But the scientists’ fiery test found that the hotter the fire—and the denser the vegetation feeding the flames—the less the underlying soil heated up, an inverse effect which runs contrary to previous studies and conventional wisdom.

Rather, the soil temperature was most affected by the fire’s speed, the direction of heat travel and the landscape’s initial moisture content.

And here’s the abstract:

Abstract

Wildfires greatly increase a landscape’s vulnerability to flooding and erosion events by removing vegetation and changing soils. Fire damage to soil increases with increasing soil temperature and, for fires where smoldering combustion is absent, the current understanding is that soil temperatures increase as fuel load and fire intensity increase. Here, however, we show that this understanding that is based on experiments under homogeneous conditions does not necessarily apply at the more relevant larger scale where soils, vegetation and fire characteristics are heterogeneous. In a catchment-scale fire experiment, soils were surprisingly cool where fuel load was high and fire was hot and, conversely, soils were hot where expected to be cooler. This indicates that the greatest fire damage to soil can occur where fuel load and fire intensity are low rather than high, and has important implications for management of fire-prone areas prior to, during and after fire events.