Tree diseases and insects

Engaging With Denise’s Claims About Wildfire, Beetles, Thinning, and the Forest Service

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Fuel mitigation work, including thinning, is frequent in Colorado’s Front Range county open spaces. In answer to Denise’s comment “the only reason to cut trees is for lumber.” https://www.douglas.co.us/dawson-butte-open-space-closed-weekdays-for-fire-mitigation-work/

Apologies for the previous post that might have shown up in your inboxes.. I pressed the wrong button before I was done. This post is to engage with some of Denise’s comments.

Removing trees because of beetle kill also removes the trees that are the most resistant and therefore should not be removed. There is also evidence that logging has actually spread beetles from one area to another. Regardless, beetles are nature’s way of natural thinning of the forest. It’s a natural process. Thinning dries out the forest and does not help with drought. Lush forests retain water. Nothing will stop a wildfire under the right climate conditions and we are in the midst of a warming climate. Forests survived for millinea without “management” and looked a lot better than they do today.

The Black Hills was actually fairly successful at thinning and reducing beetle kill, and this paper suggests that it was successful in mitigating tree mortality due to MPB.

Many of us remember these kinds of conditions and photos from the early teens:

Dave Mertz can tell us whether these results held up over time.

But thinning doesn’t work for all tree/beetle combos and under all conditions. For example, back in the 80’s we thinned around our selected (for cones) trees in a massive MPB outbreak thinking that the vigor would protect them (they could pitch out the bugs). As it turned out, though, at that point in the outbreak the beetles were not to be fazed. That’s why I am hesitant to generalize about bark beetle management. On the other hand, if we remove the Timber Wars context (say for Colorado private landowners, who have a timber industry deficit) we can see on the Colorado State Forest Service website:

Large outbreaks of mountain pine beetles are difficult to control. One of the best ways to mitigate the effects of beetle outbreaks is to manage for overall forest health and resiliency. Thinning overly dense stands of trees to reduce competition and promote tree age and species diversity is the most successful forest management strategy to increase tree vigor.

Maybe there’s a difference between “thinning” and “logging”? It seems to me more likely that a FS timber contract would include provisions about timing to not move bugs around, rather than Amber the Homeowner who is taking it to the county slash pile. Maybe those terms (thinning vs. logging) are not all that helpful and we could talk about “thinning and burning piles” “thinning and chipping onsite” “thinning and transport to different places, including sawmills?” Then there’s the scientific consensus in the 10 Common Questions paper we’ve discussed partially here at TSW and is summarized in this fact sheet by Pritchard. I’m always up for discussing these, and I think the FS does fairly well in responding to these kinds of statements in their “response to comments” section of CE, EA and EIS documentation.

When I worked in R-2, we’d sometimes get appeals where the appellants hadn’t changed the project name since the last one. I’m thinking that AI might be very helpful in developing generic responses to generic literature cites. It could rummage through existing project docs and do quite well (and of course be edited by FS folks).

“Thinning dries out a forest and does not help with drought”. Studies and real-world experience show otherwise. Again, it’s all about the site, the species and the conditions. I don’t really see the need to generalize to the globe (???), as these 2025 authors did- since local silviculturists know the specifics. Like what species on what soil types are likely to blow over post-thinning.

Generating broad-scale conclusions to inform forest management decisions in the face of global change is highly challenging. Although our analyses showed that negative responses may occur, in general, thinning can be expected to increase the resilience and resistance of forests to multiple stressors across North America and Europe.

And others (OK a science writer at CU Boulder) says that current MPB levels are a symptom of climate change

As the climate continues to warm, these sorts of ecological issues are going to happen more often. So we need to make sure that instead of only treating the symptoms of climate change, we are reducing the amount of carbon that is going into the atmosphere.

So according to some, beetle outbreaks have ceased to be “natural”. It seems to me people should pick a lane, natural or not? Of course, we’ve done many unnatural things like logged for railroads, the mining industry, and when trees grow back from that, suppressed fires so trees get old and maybe overstocked based on soil and climate conditions. Wouldn’t it be hard to tease apart the “natural” from the “unnatural”?

Denise also said:

Nothing will stop a wildfire under the right climate conditions

I’d say that perhaps “weather” conditions is more accurate. Like high winds. In my part of the country we get frequent wind-driven wildfires in the winter, and the strategy is rapid initial attack. So, yes, most of the time fire suppression works, and developing PODs and fuelbreaks can help with fire suppression in addition to reducing fuels in other areas and helping trees be more resilient.

The FS has butchered our National Forests and you don’t have to be any kind of natural resource expert to see it.

Last fall, my family and I visited California on a road trip. I lived there in the 80’s and worked for the Eldorado. What I noticed (coming west on US50 was major removal of trees due to… wildfire. Then drove up to the coast via 299 again massive wildfire area. Then to the redwoods, which I had forgotten (from my forestry education at Cal) are fire-adapted.

Save the Redwoods League views wildfire as a top priority in our larger effort to protect and restore California’s redwood forests. We’re moving quickly to ensure that the properties we manage are prepared for a future with more extreme wildfire, and we’re encouraging state and federal land managers to ramp up efforts to make their coast redwood and giant sequoia landscapes more fire resilient

Up through Grants Pass, to Shasta and then to Lassen and to Reno, more landscapes (not devastated but definitely de-treed) by wildfire. So no, the FS has not “butchered” the NFs. Maybe climate change causes “more extreme” fires and fuel loadings and dead trees have nothing to do with it.

It seems to me that most of us agree on what makes forests resilient. Most of us agree on the need to protect communities, because fires running even through hardened and evacuated communities is not good. Not to speak of the fact that evacuation is difficult and stressful. Some of us would like more timber or other industry using our thinned material. For example, Douglas County just opened a county-operated biochar facility.

Or the new Tahoe Forest Products sawmill in Carson City:

Reducing the risk of wildfire devastation in the Sierra Nevada is a daunting and multi-faceted task. Much of the effort is focused on reducing fuel load in the forest so that fires that do flare up don’t turn into catastrophes like the Caldor Fire of 2021.

One sticking point in this effort for the Tahoe region has been the lack of a nearby sawmill. The further away a sawmill is from the logs, the more expensive they are to transport, which can make necessary tree thinning operations prohibitively expensive.

If most of us agree on the need for fuel treatments or some kind of management for wildfire and/or climate resilience, with zones of agreement and forest collaboratives, perhaps in places like the Sierra Nevada or Colorado the Timber Wars can be declared over. And as Jack Ward Thomas said in 2001:

One of my favorite JWT observations came in 2001, five years after he’d left his Forest Service post. He was urging conservation peace and progress after environmental groups had turned the tide on overcutting on the national forests.

“Fierce in battle, many of the eco-warriors have been unable to come to grips with the consequences of victory and are now reduced to wandering about the old battlefields ‘bayoneting the wounded.’ Their counterparts from the resource extraction community, likewise, cannot come to terms with defeat and hold ‘ghost dances’ to bring back the good old days when they were the undisputed Kings of the West.”

Mountain Pine Beetle Expanding in Ponderosa in Colorado’s Front Range-Governor Creates Task Force

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It’s very difficult to read the small print under the above map. I will try to get a better version from the FS.  The basic point is that all of our ponderosas could die (or at least the old ones).

I’ve noticed some MPB in PP in my own hood.  What can you do? The article doesn’t focus on it, but here’s what Colorado State Forest Service says (and it’s probably true for other states).

Check and remove trees in the fall.

Large outbreaks of mountain pine beetles are difficult to control. One of the best ways to mitigate the effects of beetle outbreaks is to manage for overall forest health and resiliency. Thinning overly dense stands of trees to reduce competition and promote tree age and species diversity is the most successful forest management strategy to increase tree vigor.

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This is from the news story:

The map, produced by the U.S. Forest Service, shows how experts predict the beetles will spread through the forests unless a major weather event, like flooding or an extended extreme freeze, slows their expansion.

I understand the “extreme freeze” idea, but where I live on the Front Range, low precip, sandy soil, it’s hard to see what flooding would do. Maybe someone can explain? It also seems as if Colorado has a “lots of dead trees lying around is not a good thing” vibe compared to more timber-historic states.

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Here’s a story from Phys.org, that appears to have been originally in the Denver Post.

Here’s the CoPo story.

Pine beetle infestations are quickly spreading across large areas of Colorado’s ponderosa pine forests, evident from aerial surveys conducted by the U.S. Forest Service over the last year.

The USFS surveys found beetle infestations in mountainous and foothill regions from Larimer County to El Paso County have been on the rise over the last year, suggesting large areas of forests near major Colorado metro areas could look a lot different within the next five to 10 years.

To combat the pine beetle problem, Gov. Jared Polis created a Ponderosa Mountain Pine Beetle Task Force in a Dec. 15 executive order.

“Colorado has long been a leader in forest health and fire mitigation efforts, and this is no exception,” Polis said. “As the latest outbreak of pine beetles begins to take shape along the densely populated Front Range, we are taking an aggressive approach to boost tools and partnerships to help protect our communities, forests and key water sources, and equipping homeowners with the resources they need to better protect their homes.”

The governor will also submit a supplemental request to the state legislature, recommending actions aimed at reducing wildfire risk, supporting landowners and saving them money on risk mitigation investments, and strengthening Colorado’s long-term response to the pine beetle outbreak.

The Polis administration plans to appoint members of the task force by Feb. 1.

Beetle-caused mortality to forests can create public safety hazards, alter fire behavior and make fire suppression more challenging for firefighters, the USFS said.

Pockets of beetle-killed trees are already visible along the major Front Range highways like U.S. Highway 285 and Interstate 70.

Pine beetles have killed approximately 20 acres of ponderosa pine on the above mountainside next to Interstate 70 and Soda Creek Road in Jefferson County, just east of Floyd Hill, as seen Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. (Jonathan Ingraham/Denver Gazette).

According to the USFS, warming climates and drought have created optimal environmental conditions for the beetles to spread into neighboring trees.

Very low temperatures are necessary to diminish the beetles’ progress. The state has recently been experiencing prolonged dry conditions, which weaken the trees’ defenses.

“A very high level of tree mortality, especially among ponderosa pines, is likely to continue for the next decade,” the USFS said.

The Colorado State Forest Service has an online map of Colorado showing where pine beetle infestations have been prevalent and expanding from 2022-2024.

The interactive map shows ponderosa pine forests in portions of Larimer, Gilpin, Clear Creek, Boulder, Jefferson, Park and Douglas counties are experiencing elevated levels of infestation from mountain pine beetles.

In addition, lodgepole pine forests in Park and Gunnison counties that evaded prior bark beetle outbreaks are experiencing elevated mortality of trees as populations of mountain pine beetles expand.

Lastly, ponderosa pine forests on the Uncompahgre Plateau in western Colorado have also been affected by increased pine beetle activity.

A forecast map from the USFS shows that beetles could kill nearly all of the ponderosa pines along the Front Range.

The map shows how foresters predict the beetles’ spread through the forests; however, unless a major weather event like flooding or an extended freeze cycle happens to slow the expansion, the beetles will continue to find new trees and spread across the forested regions.

The mountain pine beetle is native to Colorado and ranks first in destructiveness among the tree-killing bark beetles that are native to the West, according to the U.S Department of the Interior.

Bark beetles infest pine trees by laying eggs under the bark. When the eggs hatch, the larvae mine the area beneath the bark and eventually cut off the tree’s supply of nutrients. The beetles also carry a fungus that causes dehydration and inhibits a tree’s natural defenses against beetle attacks.

From the late 1990s through 2013, mountain pine beetles affected 3.4 million acres of forests in Colorado, predominantly attacking lodgepole pines, according to the Colorado State Forest Service. The beetles killed up to 80-90% of trees in some lodgepole pine forests in Summit, Grand, Eagle and Routt counties during the epidemic.

Pine beetles attacked ponderosa pine forests along the Front Range in the early 2010s, but heavy rains and flooding, like the 2013 floods, stopped their spread.

“This is not a time to panic, it’s a time to ramp up and take action to reduce the impacts of this outbreak and ensure we never allow our forests to become this vulnerable ever again,” Matthew McCombs, state forester and director of the Colorado State Forest Service, said in a news release.

The Colorado State Forest Service said residents should look for these telltale signs and symptoms of mountain pine beetle infestation:

  • Popcorn-shaped masses of resin, called pitch tubes, on the trunk that may be brown, pink or white.

  • Boring dust in bark crevices and on the ground immediately adjacent to the tree’s base.

  • Woodpecker damage, where the birds have stripped portions of the bark in search of larvae, leaving accumulations of bark at the base of the tree.

  • Presence of live mountain pine beetles (eggs, larvae, pupae and/or adults)

  • Exit holes on the bark’s surface where adult beetles have emerged.

  • Foliage turning yellowish to reddish throughout the entire tree crown, which usually occurs eight to 10 months after a successful attack.

Limber Pine Restoration and “Ghost Forest” Story

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Interesting if true, about the Pawnee Buttes.

We’re missing many of our currently employed crew, both FS and not, due to the holidays.  So I’m saving up some topics until they return.  For now I thought I’d post about some recent forest health pieces in the Southern Rockies.

This piece in Cowboy State Daily is headlined:

Up To 35% Of Wyoming’s High Country Is Dead ‘Ghost Forest’ — And It’s Spreading

It’s estimated 25% to 35% of Wyoming’s forests are now dominated by “ghost forests” — standing dead timber from beetle epidemics and disease. Researchers say it’s time to start paying attention to limber pine before it follows the whitebark into crisis.

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The study calls for a change in strategy: “Confirmed emergence of vcr4 highlights the need to focus on quantitative disease resistance more intensely for limber pine” — basically, stacking multiple genetic defenses rather than relying on just one.

Tomback explained why the single-gene approach is risky.

“Limber and southwestern white pine have what’s called major gene resistance. A single gene confers resistance to the white pine blister rust pathogen,” she said. “The problem is, the gene is present at a fairly low frequency in populations.

You can’t depend on it to save populations. We worry that the blister rust pathogen can mutate and overcome a single gene.”

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Side note about sugar pine:

In the 90’s this was an area of disagreement with sugar pine rust resistance breeding… the researchers at the Institute of Forest Genetics were all for using a major gene, and the national forest scientists at Dorena were for developing multiple gene resistance.  Of course, in the limber case, it appears that the single gene is native to the populations.  Not many people plant limber pine, so  it might follow its cousins sugar pine and western white pine with some planted resistant and the populations otherwise dying off or developing their own genetic resistance.  In fact, as I recall, in the 90’s(?) there was an effort to say sugar pine was endangered due to WPBR and Region 5.  I couldn’t find this on the internet (maybe too old) but I did find a recent study (2024)

Fire has strong negative effects on survival, resulting in a strongly negative population trajectory on burned sites. Conversely, lower than average forest density (plot-level basal area) results in a positive population growth rate via beneficial effects on individual growth. These results highlight the value of fire hazard mitigation, particularly where it also reduces forest density, in the conservation of this important species.

Yes, being burned can be bad for SP (and many other species) and it likes growing in the open- from Silvics (1965):

Sugar pine tolerates shade better than ponderosa pine but is slightly less tolerant than incense-cedar and Douglas-fir and much less so than white fir (14). A seral species, it becomes less tolerant with age, and overtopped trees decline unless released (11). Thus, dominant sugar pines in old-growth stands were probably dominant from the start, or released by natural causes early in life.

I am not criticizing the 2024 scientists, they were asking important questions. Still there are tendencies of our current scientific institutions to not incorporate directly/rediscover mechanisms by looking at large datasets.  More on that in the next few weeks.  I mean it’s great that we can quote a peer- reviewed article, better than person experiences of many silviculturists.

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Anyway, back to limber pine.

University of Wyoming botanist Daniel Laughlin is testing whether humans can help trees outrun climate change.

His Medicine Bow Mountain Experimental Garden Array project, planted in a burn scar from the 2020 Mullen Fire, tracks how tree species perform when moved outside their normal comfort zones.

Good news for limber pine: it’s one of the survivors.

Douglas fir, lodgepole pine, ponderosa, bristlecone and limber pines, and desert juniper all showed over 50% survival when transplanted outside their typical zones in fall 2025 monitoring.

What we learned in the past was that these kinds of trends can change over time.   It seems kind of ironic that we think the climate is changing, and we also think we can do better at guessing the future of trees than when we thought it wasn’t changing.

A key finding emerging from long-term trials is that poorly adapted seed sources typically were not maladapted because they could not tolerate the average conditions of a site, but rather because they did not tolerate the rare climatic events that occurred every 10 or more years. Although this may sound long, it is only a fraction of the life of many forest trees. For example, in a Douglas-fir provenance plantation (Munger and Morris 1937) established in the Oregon Coast Range (Hebo Ranger District, Siuslaw National Forest), all seed sources performed relatively well from 1915 until 1955. In mid-November 1955, the area had an unusual and prolonged cold spell (Duffield 1956). The frost damaged off-site seed sources, killing some trees and causing serious damage to others. In contrast, the local stand suffered damage but continued to grow well (Silen 1995).

And back to the story:

We’re not at the point where there’s a mandate,” Tomback said. “I think national forests are aware that limber pine is important and that it’s being impacted, but we have a ways to go to actually devise restoration strategies like with whitebark.”

She added: “BLM is an important advocate for limber pine.”

Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado planted 1,769 limber pine seedlings in October 2024 in areas burned by the East Troublesome Fire.

About 20% of the park’s limber pines show rust resistance, according to the National Park Service.

For those of you not familiar, this is what a restoration plan looks like for whitebark.

The Park Service used BIL and IRA funding to support whitebark restoration (climate resilience).

Here’s a 2012 Forest Service range-wide restoration strategy for whitebark.

Anyway, if you are out hiking these vacation days, enjoy all your  sugar pines, western white pines, limbers and whitebarks and eastern white pines. WPBR was introduced to North America in approximately 1900 and here we are in 2026 with these species prevalent throughout the country.

From Fire Suppression to Forplan to Carbon Sequestration: The Historical Advance of Grand/White/Hybrid Firs East of the Cascades in Oregon

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https://forestpolicypub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/39073908085_83128c2cde_h.jpg

The above photo is from 2007, by R6 State and Private Forestry of western spruce budworm defoliation. It wasn’t identified to location as far as I could see.

This one is on the Deschutes.  For those interested, there is an extensive historical record of photos about various spruce budworm projects here. If you worked on any of those projects you might find a photo of yourself!

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I think we’re having a great discussion about the East-Side screens and the 21- inch diameter rule. Here I’d like to throw in an Old Person observation from my time on the Ochoco during the 80’s.  It’s an Old Person observation about what seems to have changed and what has not changed in 40 years.  I worked for four forests (the Fremont, Winema, Ochoco and Deschutes), but I’ll focus on the Ochoco.

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Historical aside: The Ochoco Supervisor’s Office at the time was a large open, cubicle puzzle space.  I sat in the silviculture zone, next to the irrepressible Duane Ecker, the forest silviculturist, Don Wood and our boss, the Timber Staff,  Chuck Downen. But thanks to the wonders of the cubicle environment, I often heard conversations of the Law Enforcement Officer (finding that particularly interesting things were said when he lowered his voice.. “the perpetrator…”).  We all had Data Generals (DG’s). Unfortunately, but sometimes entertainingly, our Public Affairs Officer, Joe Meade (who was visually impaired),  had a DG that read his email out loud .. in a tinny.. monotonous.. slow… voice.  Apparently headphones were too technically or financially difficult to procure.

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At the time, people were running Forplan, and somehow we were involved in the tree-growing part.  It could have been John Cissel, our Forplan soothsayer or Bill Anthony, his Deschutes counterpart , who told us “Forplan tells us to cut the ponderosa pine and grow grand fir, because they grow faster and ultimately produce more volume.” Or something like that.  I know there are folks here who know more about what Forplan was supposed to be doing than I do.

So we silviculture folks explained why we thought that that was not a good idea.   White fir/grand fir/ hybrid (WGH) firs aren’t fire resistant.  They have a tendency to get spruce budworm, Doug-fir tussock moth, fir engraver, and a variety of root and other diseases.

So flash forward to today.. now “growing faster” is good idea-wise due to carbon.In this story about a study that Anonymous referred to:

“This is why specifically letting large trees grow larger is so important for climate change because it maintains the carbon stores in the trees and accumulates more carbon out of the atmosphere at a very low cost.”

The study highlights the importance of protecting existing large trees and strengthening the 21-inch rule so that additional carbon is accumulated as 21-30″  trees are allowed to continue to grow to their ecological potential.

As a former silviculture worker, this feels pretty much the same as the Forplan idea of 40 years ago.  Assume- no fires, bugs, diseases, drought (conceivably made worse by climate change) and the firs will do fine by themselves! No openings for establishment of PP or WL necessary.

But silviculturists, forest pathologists and entomologists, and fuels practitioners are dealing with the same biophysical realities-  that trees don’t grow- whether to be cut as in Forplan, or to sequester carbon-  if they’re dead and /or burned. It’s interesting to see that the body of resource professionals’ knowledge  haven’t changed much over time (the interaction of trees, bugs, diseases and fire), while ideas about what practitioners should be doing from Forplan to carbon..seem to come from, and have the imprimatur of, people (however well-meaning) generally from elsewhere; places, apparently where fire, bugs, diseases and drought are not a big thing.

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If you want to see how much people already knew in 1994, there’s an excellent round-up, at least as far as the Blue Mountains go, by  by the Malheur Forest Silviculturist, David C. Powell,  in 1994- 30 years ago now.  Same old..

White fir, the favorite food of spruce budworm, has flourished in the fir stands that have encroached on ponderosa pine sites over the last 80 years. By controlling natural underburns, land managers were inadvertently swapping ponderosa pines and western larches for white firs and Douglas-firs. (p. 5)

Ponderosa pine depends on fire to clear away accumulations of needles and twigs so its seeds can find moist mineral soil, and to kill encroaching firs that prevent seedlings from getting
the unobstructed sunlight they need.

By controlling natural underburns, land managers allowed fire-resistant pines and larches to be replaced with shade-tolerant, late-successional species. Many of the replacement species are susceptible to the effects of western spruce budworm, Douglas-fir tussock moth, Indian paint fungus, Armillaria root disease, and other insects and pathogens. (p. 19)

And there’s an interesting section on Native American burning practices:

Although some of the underburns were started by lightning storms in mid or late summer (Plummer 1912), many others were ignited by native Americans (Cooper 1961, Johnston 1970, Robbins and Wolf 1994). When analyzing early journals from the western U.S., Gruell (1985) found that over 40 percent of the fires were described as being started by native Americans.

Two major factors led to conversion of pine stands with underburning to laddered stands with shade-tolerant species.  One was fire suppression:

Many land managers would agree that wildfire suppression was a policy with good intentions, but it was a policy that failed to consider the ecological implications of a major shift in species composition. White firs and Douglas-firs can get established under ponderosa pines in the absence of underburning, but they may not have enough resiliency to make it over the long run, let alone survive the next drought. This means that many of the mixed-conifer stands that have replaced ponderosa pine are destined to become weak, and weak forests are susceptible to insect and disease outbreaks (Hessburg and others 1994).

By controlling natural underburns, land managers allowed fire-resistant pines and larches to be replaced with shade-tolerant, late-successional species. Many of the replacement species are susceptible to the effects of western spruce budworm, Douglas-fir tussock moth, Indian paint fungus, Armillaria root disease, and other insects and pathogens. (p. 19)

The other reason was the attraction of cutting pine and leaving the GWH firs.  Powell provides some detailed explanations of why that seemed like a good idea at the time (mo clearcutting, no expensive tree planting)(p. 27) . And there were interactions between controlling underburns and reducing tree vigor due to competition, so then they would want to take these stressed pines.

Since old pines often have low vigor and little resistance to insect attack, they were harvested before being attacked and killed by western pine beetle or mountain pine beetle. One reason for low vigor in oldgrowth pine trees was competition from a dense understory, an understory that would not have been present if underburning had been allowed to play its natural role.

In 1994 folks were thinking about climate change:

Reestablishing ponderosa pine and western larch on sites that are suitable for their survival and growth, and a thinning or prescribed fire program to keep those stands open and vigorous, would probably do much to address global warming concerns. Using a plan like that one would not only restore much of the pine and larch that was removed by partial cutting (see fig. 21), but it could also create healthy forests with an increased resistance to a variety of insects and pathogens.

And they were also thinking about (healthy=preEuro times) (p. 34)

Perhaps an appropriate yardstick of ecosystem health is natural variation: are the changes caused by budworm consistent with the historical range of variation for similar ecosystems and vegetation conditions? For the mixed conifer forests of the southern Blue Mountains, the answer is probably “no.” It seems that 80 years of fire suppression and 50 years of selective harvesting have resulted in vegetation conditions that differ significantly from those of presettlement times (Table 3).

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If some think that the FS wants to cut larger GWH fir unnecessarily, why would they want to do that?

Foster (1907) White fir, though occasionally used for fuel when no better species are available, makes poor fuel wood, while for saw timber it is all but valueless owing to the fact that nearly all mature trees are badly rotted by a prevalent polyporus, and the wood season-checks badly. (p.30)

Forest Service employees have sometimes been called p— firs due to the “badly rotted” characteristics of white fir.

“Proforestation” It Aint What It Claims To Be

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‘Proforestation’ separates people from forests

AKA: Ignorance and Arrogance Still Reign Supreme at the Sierra Club.

I picked this up from Nick Smith’s Newsletter (sign up here)
Emphasis added by myself as follows:
1)  Brown Text for items NOT SUPPORTED by science with long term and geographically extensive validation.                                                                                                                                                        2) Bold Green Text for items SUPPORTED by science with long term and geographically extensive validation.
3) >>>Bracketed Italics for my added thoughts based on 59 years of experience and review of a vast range of literature going back to way before the internet.<<<

“Proforestation” is a relatively new term in the environmental community. The Sierra Club defines it as: “extending protections so as to allow areas of previously-logged forest to mature, removing vast amounts of atmospheric carbon and recovering their ecological and carbon storage potential.”          >>>Apparently, after 130 years of existence, the Sierra Club still doesn’t know much about plant physiology, the carbon cycle or the increased risk of calamitous wild fire spread caused by the close proximity of stems and competition driven mortality in unmanged stands (i.e. the science of plant physiology regarding competition, limited resources and fire spread physics). Nor have they thought out the real risk of permanent destruction of the desired ecosystems nor the resulting impact on climate change.<<<

Not only must we preserve untouched forests, proponents argue, but we must also walk away from previously-managed forests too. People should be entirely separate from forest ecology and succession. >>>More abject ignorance and arrogant woke policy based only on vacuous wishful thinking.<<<

Except humans have managed forests for millennia. In North America, Indigenous communities managed forests and sustained its resources for at least 8,000 years prior to European settlement. It is true people have not always managed forests sustainably. Forest practices of the late 19th century are a good example.                                                                                                                                                 >>>Yes, and the political solution pushed on us by the Sierra Club and other faux conservationists beginning with false assumptions about the Northern Spotted Owl was to throw out the continuously improving science (i.e. Continuous Process Improvement [CPI]).  The concept of using the science to create sustainable practices and laws that regulated the bad practices driven by greed and arrogance wasn’t even considered seriously.  As always, the politicians listened to the well heeled squeaky voters.  Now, their arrogant ignorance has given us National Ashtrays, destruction of soils, and an ever increasing probability that great acreages of forest ecosystems will be lost to the generations that follow who will also have to cope with the exacerbated climate change.  So here we are, in 30+/- years the Faux Conservationists have made things worse than the greedy timber barons ever could have.  And the willfully blind can’t seem to see what they have done. Talk about arrogance.<<<

Forest management provides tools to correct past mistakes and restore ecosystems. But Proforestation even seems to reject forest restoration that helps return a forest to a healthy state, including controlling invasive species, maintaining tree diversity, returning forest composition and structure to a more natural state.

Proforestation is not just a philosophical exercise. The goal is to ban active forest management on public lands. It has real policy implications for the future management (or non-management) of forests and how we deal with wildfires, climate change and other disturbances.

We’ve written before about how this concept applies to so-called “carbon reserves.” Now, powerful and well-funded anti-forestry groups are pressuring the Biden Administration to set-aside national forests and other federally-owned lands under the guise of “protecting mature and old-growth” trees.

In its recent white paper on Proforestation (read more here), the Society of American Foresters writes that “preservation can be appropriate for unique protected areas, but it has not been demonstrated as a solution for carbon storage or climate change across all forested landscapes.”

Proforestation doesn’t work when forests convert from carbon sinks into carbon sources. A United Nations report pointed out that at least 10 World Heritage sites – the places with the highest formal environmental protections on the planet – are net sources of carbon pollution. This includes the iconic Yosemite National Park.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognizes active forest management will yield the highest carbon benefits over the long term because of its ability to mitigate carbon emitting disturbance events and store carbon in harvested wood products. Beyond carbon, forest management ensures forests continue to provide assets like clean water, wildlife habitat, recreation, and economic activity.
>>>(i.e. TRUE SUSTAINABILITY)<<<

Forest management offers strategies to manage forests for carbon sequestration and long-term storage.Proforestation rejects active stewardship that can not only help cool the planet, but help meet the needs of people, wildlife and ecosystems. You can expect to see this debate intensify in 2023.

Emerald Ash Borer Sighted in Oregon: Be on the Lookout!

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Altenhoff said there are a fair number of ash trees in city parking lots and parks.
Courtesy of Oregon Department Of Forestry

I know many TSW-ites are from the Northwest so here goes:

Destructive forest pest, the emerald ash borer, arrives in Oregon; public asked to report sightings

FOREST GROVE, Ore – On June 30, Dominic Maze, an invasive species biologist for the City of Portland, was waiting outside a summer camp in Forest Grove to pick up his children when he noticed several ash trees in decline.

When he took a closer look, he recognized the distinctive D-shaped holes made by adult emerald ash borers, an invasive and destructive pest, as they exit an infested tree.

“When my kids arrived, I asked them to look for adult beetles,” said Maze. “My son promptly found one crawling on him. Knowing how many millions of ash trees across the country these beetles have killed, I felt like I was going to throw up.”

Maze’s discovery of EAB in a parking lot in Forest Grove is the first known sighting on the West Coast. Maze was familiar with EAB and signs of it in ash trees through educational materials federal and state agencies have been providing to Portland and other Oregon cities. He immediately called the Oregon Department of Forestry’s Forest Health Unit to report the EAB sighting.

ODF Forest Entomologist Christine Buhl drove to the site that same day and identified an adult EAB, known for their metallic, shiny green color. She then alerted the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Her identification was verified later by two additional invasive species specialists – Max Ragozzino with ODA and Wyatt Williams with ODF.

State officials are asking the public to learn what an emerald ash borer looks like and to report any sightings online at the Oregon Invasive Species Council hotline. This will help the state know how far and how fast this destructive insect is spreading in Oregon.

EAB is native to eastern Asia and has spread to about three dozen states since its first detection in Michigan two decades ago. EAB is now considered the most destructive forest pest in North America. Although harmless to people, pets, and animals, it has proven deadly to all ash species in North American and Europe, including the native Oregon ash (Fraxinus latifolia). EAB can also infest American fringe trees (Chionanthus virginicus) and European olive trees.

The infested ash trees in Forest Grove were cut down and chipped within 48 hours of discovery. ODF and ODA are now working closely with industry partners, including urban foresters and nursery producers, to provide information and resources as Oregon launches a response to the discovery of EAB.

Faith Campbell has an extensive blog posts on the pre-work that has been done, and is continuing, on EAB in Oregon here.

Here are some photos from her post.

nearly pure stand of Oregon ash in Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge, Oregon; photo by Wyatt Williams, Oregon Department of Forestry

Bark Beetle Epidemic in Calaveras County

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The bark beetles started their invasion when I used to live there, in Mark Twain’s famous Calaveras County. Now it looks like it has reached epidemic levels, requiring emergency action, from multiple agencies.

http://www.calaverasenterprise.com/news/article_fbc896b8-7d6f-11e9-94ea-7b4b381822a0.html

Even with recent wet winters, tree mortality will remain a pressing issue as long as bark beetle infestations and drought conditions continue, said Brady McElroy, a hazard tree specialist in the Calaveras Ranger District of the Stanislaus National Forest.

“By no means is the issue going away,” McElroy said. “What the Forest Service has to focus on are the high priority areas, the immediate hazards to homes, roads and highways.”

In the long-term, McElroy said the Forest Service hopes to increase the pace and scale of thinning projects to restore overstocked forests that have been allowed for by a century of fire suppression.

“Our forests are overstocked, which increases competition (and) stressors on the trees, (and consequently) their ability to defend against bark beetle,” McElroy said. “The ongoing goal is to thin forests to a healthy kind of pre-European settlement stand to where they’re a little more resilient. We’re focusing on high-priority areas in the wildland-urban interface … We know what happens when these overstocked forests catch fire – we lose them.”

Diana Fredlund, a public affairs officer with the Stanislaus National Forest, said that although federal budget decreases have impacted the scale of the work for the Forest Service, the agency has been able to collaborate with private, county, state and other federal agencies and contractors for tree removal projects.

“We do what we can with what we have,” Fredlund said.

The Forest Service offers its own tree mortality program for homeowners with properties adjacent to Forest Service land. Property owners can fill out a Hazard Tree Evaluation Request Form to be considered for hazard tree abatement.

Forest Management: “For a Warming World, A New Strategy for Protecting Watersheds”

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This article was prepared by Yale Environment 360. Although its focus is primarily on protecting watersheds, most of the well validated scientific principles that Sound Forest Management is based on are clearly demonstrated in a way that easily shows the value of human intervention in our federal forests for other site/situational specific prescribed purposes as well. Here are some highlights which have been the subject of many previous posts on this site.

  1. water managers are learning that careful management and restoration of watershed ecosystems, including thinning trees and conducting prescribed burns, are important tools in coping with a hotter, drier climate.
  2. New Mexico’s forests … areas that supported 40 trees per acre in the pre-European era now were blanketed with up to a hundred times as many. This profusion of trees — as many as one per square yard — weakened all of them, and rendered them defenseless against megafires.
  3. the Las Conchas Fire … consumed nearly an acre of forest per second … and left behind nearly 100 square miles so severely burned that even seeds to regenerate the forest were destroyed …
    two months later, when a thunderstorm in the Jemez Mountains washed tons of ash and debris into the Rio Grande River, the water source for half of New Mexico’s population and for a major agricultural area. Only an inch of rain fell, but the debris flows the storm generated turned the river black and dumped ash, sediment, and tree and shrub remnants into a major reservoir⁠, requiring a costly cleanup … a heavy rainstorm two years later generated enough sediment to entirely plug the Rio Grande
  4. In the last two decades, megafires in similarly dry and overgrown watersheds have ended up contaminating downstream water supplies in numerous areas throughout the western United States, including Phoenix; Denver; Flagstaff, Arizona; and Fort Collins, Colorado. Downstream water managers serving millions of urban residents have learned that the security of their water supplies is tied to the health of upland watersheds that may be hundreds of miles away.
  5. In the Western U.S., watershed restoration chiefly consists of two steps: thinning of trees and shrubs, and prescribed burns. In the Eastern U.S., it involves a bigger set of tools, including planting native trees, reducing the area of impervious surfaces, and slowing the speed of stormwater so that more water percolates into soil and aquifers. All these measures are designed to improve water quality.
  6. numerous pilot projects have shown the efficacy of restoration, agencies rarely have enough money to treat entire watersheds
  7. after the Las Conchas fire, residents in the Rio Grande watershed … in 2014 they launched a public-private partnership, the Rio Grande Water Fund, whose 73 contributing members⁠ include government agencies at all levels, foundations and other NGOs, local water utilities, and local businesses and residents. Together they raised enough money for a 20-year program to restore 600,000 forest acres — enough to support the resilience of the entire central and northern New Mexico portion of the Rio Grande watershed. They have already restored 108,000 acres, and are racing to complete the job before another megafire occurs.
  8. The Rio Grande Water Fund’s public-private partnership model has become official federal policy. Last August, the U.S. Forest Service published a landmark report called “Toward Shared Stewardship Across Landscapes” that outlined the agency’s intention to convene watershed stakeholders of all kinds to plan and fund watershed restoration. “Because fire crosses back and forth across land ownership boundaries, the risk is shared,” the report said. “Accordingly, land managers cannot achieve the fire-related outcomes people want… without shared stewardship of the wildland fire environment.”
  • The benefits of watershed restoration extend far beyond water security. Most obviously, healthy forests deter megafires. Laura McCarthy, the Rio Grande Water Fund’s executive director, says that in three instances since restoration work began in New Mexico, wildfires that ran up against restored zones immediately died down. Healthy forests can tolerate low-intensity fires: they possess diverse understories of grasses, sedges, and forbs and rich, microbe-laden soil, all of which supports wildlife, from insects to mammals. Watershed restoration can double the amount of carbon stored in the soil, which means that it’s a vital tool in fighting climate change. And watershed restoration creates jobs: In the case of the Rio Grande Water Fund, many of those jobs go to youths in traditional Hispanic and Native American communities where unemployment rates are 30 percent or higher.
  • In some regions, forest restoration even increases water supplies. Roger Bales, a hydrologist at the University of California, Merced, has shown that because watershed restoration requires the removal of vast numbers of young trees, loss of water into the atmosphere through evapotranspiration in those trees is eliminated. The water instead flows downward, into the soil, often on its way to the watershed’s rivers and reservoirs. Bales’ experiments in California’s Sierra Nevada show that restoration can increase water supplies in downstream reservoirs by 9 to 16 percent. That makes restoration a more cost effective (and vastly less destructive) water supply method in California than building dams. Restoration is also cheaper than fighting the megafires that are otherwise inevitable in the overgrown forests: last year’s Camp Fire in northern California alone caused $11 billion to $13 billion in damage.
  • unless it is followed by prescribed burns, undesirable trees and shrubs grow back. In that case, said Don Falk, a leading fire researcher at the University of Arizona, “You’re either committed to a perpetual Sisyphean cycle of thinning” every 10 or 15 years “or you’ve got to let fire back into the system.” Fire is an integral part of the functioning of many ecosystems: Blazes of less-than-megafire scale germinate seeds, keep native species in balance while warding off invasive species, and stimulate microbial activity that produces soil nutrients.

Sierra Club Comments

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I have seen a trend in postings from the Sierra Club, on their Facebook page. Online petitions have been popular with eco-groups but, those petitions really don’t do anything. They seem to be a way of riling up their followers, gathering personal information, and receiving donations. There is also a sizable amount of people commenting who do not side with the Sierra Club.

The particular posting I will be presenting regards the Giant Sequoia National Monument, and how the Trump Administration would affect it. The Sierra Club implies (and their public believes) that Trump would cut down the Giant Sequoia National Monument, without immediate action. With over 500 comments, there are ample examples of what people are thinking.

 

“So much of the redwoods and Giant Sequoias have already been cut down… the lumber trucks involved had signs which read ” Trees… America’s renewable resource”… and just exactly how to you “renew” a 2 thousand year old tree??? When a job becomes even remotely scarce, one must find a new occupation. Having cut down the redwoods,(RIP Pacific Lumber and the “Redwood Highway”) and when they’ve cut down the national forests (public lands), are “they” going to insist on the right to come onto my land and cut down my trees as well… to provide jobs for the lumber industry? The National forests and Monuments are public lands, and no one has the right to turn them over to private interests for money making purposes. When are they going to see that there is a higher calling here? The forests provide for much of the fresh air we enjoy… they take in the carbon monoxide we exhale, and they exhale the oxygen so necessary to us. They each also take up 300 gallons of water, so provide for erosion control, and I could go on forever with the benefits of trees… but there will still be short sighted detractors who are only able to see the dollar signs in this issue. If providing jobs is the object… bring back our manufacturing jobs from overseas, all you big companies… your bottom line profit will be less, but you will have brought back the jobs to the USA, and you claim that is the object…???? Investing in the big companies in order to get rich does not make the investing noble or honorable when it is condoning taking jobs off-shore to enrich the few. … at the cost of the lost jobs for our people. Love your neighbor..”

I think that statement speaks for itself. Well-meaning but, misinformed.

 

“Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. Keep loggers out of National Giant Sequoia Forests. Forest rangers and the National Parks already do controlled burning when needed to protect forest ecosystem health. The idea that commerical logging companies can be trusted with that task is preposterous.”

I wonder if he had noticed all those dead trees inside the Monument. Another example of not knowing who is taking care of the Monument.

 

“No such thing as controlled logging look at the clear cut coast. Once you let them in they will take it all and say Oops. A long time ago Pacific lumber clear cut thousands of acres illegally and Department of forestry did nothing. Things have not changed.”

Yes, things have changed. Logging IS controlled in Sierra Nevada National Forests… for the last 26 years.

 

“Destroying over 200k acres of sequoias and leaving ONLY 90k acres is NOT “CONTROLLED LOGGING “. OUR planet needs trees to produce oxygen and just how long do you think those jobs will last?”

Someone thinks there is a HUGE chunk of pristine pure Giant Sequoia groves. Thinning forests is not destruction, folks.

 

“I went to sign this and put my address and what not but then I skipped over my phone number and it won’t let me sign it! Unless you give your phone number it’s not going to San. I will not give out my phone number. Is there another way to sign for this?”

There were many comments like this one.

 

“They are both classified under same genisus of Sequoia, It’s their enviroment that makes them different. The Redwood trees (Sequoia sempervirens) along N Cal coastline and then the Sequoias trees (Sequoiadendron giganteum) found in the Sierra Nevadas mountain regions are the same yet very different trees because of the chactoristics. Both trees share their unique and acceptional height and massive girth size, they share the same red wood tones.”

Someone thinks they are an authority in tree Taxonomy.

 

“As someone who works in timber, don’t blame it on us! Many foresters care about sustainable forestry. I hate Donald Trump just as much as anyone who cares about the environment”

Well, that is sure saying something, eh?

 

“The forests are being burned down by all these un-natural wild fires that are created by the powers that be to carry out agenda 21/30. It’s not a secret but most people don’t want to see it & the common mentality is if we don’t see it, or address it, it will go away. Right?”

There’s more and more loonies out there saying this stuff, and blaming “Directed Energy Weapons” for starting all the wildfires.

 

“There will be no more forest in America, it will be a big cacino and golf courses.”

And there’s other conspiracy theories out there, too!

 

“The most deushiest thing ever! Poor Trees “

People do believe that Trump would clearcut the Giant Sequoias.

 

“Oh yes look what tree hungers did to Oregon”

I love a well-mispelled insult!

 

“No More RAPE AND MURDER OF OUR TREES”

I wonder what real violent crime victims think of this comparison. Should we let those trees be horribly burned alive, or eaten by insects, resulting in a long and slow starvation death? *smirk*

 

“Wth…. He truely is satin”

Soooo smoooooth!

 

“Drop big rocks on their heads. Something like Ewoks from Return of the Jedi all those years ago. Ewoks were “original” monkey wrenchers.”

That’s a lovely solution! Violence will fix everything!

 

“I think you could stand to be a bit less adversarial in your comments. Oil has nothing to do with this subject and devalues your argument. There is no reason why the land cannot be managed without giving it away to unregulated for-profit companies. That is the right answer.”

Yep, there just might be oil underneath those giant trees. Yep, gotta cut em all down to make sure! Misguided but, kinda, sorta, on the right path.

 

“The devil could burn it all down there because most of the state is so ungodly. Trump isn’t your problem. Godlessness and son keeps your minds and state in a state of anarchy. Poor people. I will keep praying you will find out that you all need to pray to the living God.”

Yep, because…. ummm, …. God recognizes where California’s boundaries are???!!??

 

“Try direct energy weapons”

Certainly, the Reptilians and Nibiru are to blame, fer sure, fer sure.

 

“Because of Monoculture”

Blame the old clearcuts!

 

“Anyone cutting a tree should be SHOT!!!!”

And another violent solution.

 

“The lumbar goes to China and else where, not used used in USA, great loose loose thing.the logs get shipped out of country destroys old growth forest well some one will make $$$$$ of it but it won’t be you”

Dumb, dumb!

 

“Its not about forest management its about trumps business buddies being allowed to buy the land and develop it”

And even another conspiracy theory. People love to say “I wouldn’t put it past him” when promoting such stuff.

This American mindset, on a world stage, is troubling. People proudly display their ignorance and stupidity to fight a non-existent issue. America doesn’t believe the truth anymore, and the Sierra Club, and others, are spreading misinformation through phony petitions.

 

 

Validated Science versus Unproven Scientific Hypothesis – Which One Should We Choose?

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In a 6/13/18 article, David Atkins provides a critique of the assumptions behind the Law et al article titled: “Land use strategies to mitigate climate change in carbon dense temperate forests” and shows how hypothetical science can and has been used, without any caveat, to provide some groups with slogans that meet their messaging needs instead of waiting for validation of the hypothesis and thereby considering the holistic needs of the world.

I) BACKGROUND

The noble goal of Law et. al. is to determine the “effectiveness of forest strategies to mitigate climate change”. They state that their methodology “should integrate observations and mechanistic ecosystem process models with future climate, CO2, disturbances from fire, and management.”

A) The generally (ignoring any debate over the size of the percentage increase) UNCONTESTED points regarding locking up more carbon in the Law et. al. article are as follows:
1) Reforestation on appropriate sites – ‘Potential 5% improvement in carbon storage by 2100’
2) Afforestation on appropriate sites – ‘Potential 1.4% improvement in carbon storage by 2100′

B) The CONTESTED points regarding locking up 17% more carbon by 2100 in the Law et. al. article are as follows:
1) Lengthened harvest cycles on private lands
2) Restricting harvest on public lands

C) Atkins, at the 2018 International Mass Timber Conference protested by Oregon Wild, notes that: “Oregon Wild (OW) is advocating that storing more carbon in forests is better than using wood in buildings as a strategy to mitigate climate change.” OW’s first reference from Law et. al. states: “Increasing forest carbon on public lands reduced emissions compared with storage in wood products” (see Law et. al. abstract). Another reference quoted by OW from Law et. al. goes so far as to claim that: “Recent analysis suggests substitution benefits of using wood versus more fossil fuel-intensive materials have been overestimated by at least an order of magnitude.”

II) Law et. al. CAVEATS ignored by OW

A) They clearly acknowledge that their conclusions are based on computer simulations (modeling various scenarios using a specific set of assumptions subject to debate by other scientists).

B) In some instances, they use words like “probably”, “likely” and “appears” when describing some assumptions and outcomes rather than blindly declaring certainty.

III) Atkins’ CRITIQUE

Knowing that the modeling used in the Law et. al. study involves significant assumptions about each of the extremely complex components and their interactions, Atkins proceeds to investigate the assumptions which were used to integrate said models with the limited variables mentioned and shows how they overestimate the carbon cost of using wood, underestimate the carbon cost of storing carbon on the stump and underestimate the carbon cost of substituting non-renewable resources for wood. This allows Oregon Wild to tout unproven statements as quoted in item “I-C” above and treat them as fact and justification for policy changes instead of as an interesting but unproven hypothesis that needs to be validated in order to complete the scientific process.

Quotes from Atkins Critique:

A) Wood Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) Versus Non-renewable substitutes.
1) “The calculation used to justify doubling forest rotations assumes no leakage. Leakage is a carbon accounting term referring to the potential that if you delay cutting trees in one area, others might be cut somewhere else to replace the gap in wood production, reducing the supposed carbon benefit.”
2) “It assumes a 50-year half-life for buildings instead of the minimum 75 years the ASTM standard calls for, which reduces the researchers’ estimate of the carbon stored in buildings.”
3) “It assumes a decline of substitution benefits, which other LCA scientists consider as permanent.”
4) “analysis chooses to account for a form of fossil fuel leakage, but chooses not to model any wood harvest leakage.”
5) “A report published by the Athena Institute in 2004, looked at actual building demolition over a three-plus-year period in St. Paul, Minn. It indicated 51 percent of the buildings were older than 75 years. Only 2 percent were demolished in the first 25 years and only 12 percent in the first 50 years.”
6) “The Law paper assumes that the life of buildings will get shorter in the future rather than longer. In reality, architects and engineers are advocating the principle of designing and building for longer time spans – with eventual deconstruction and reuse of materials rather than disposal. Mass timber buildings substantially enhance this capacity. There are Chinese Pagoda temples made from wood that are 800 to 1,300 years old. Norwegian churches are over 800 years old. I visited at cathedral in Scotland with a roof truss system from the 1400s. Buildings made of wood can last for many centuries. If we follow the principle of designing and building for the long run, the carbon can be stored for hundreds of years.”
7) “The OSU scientists assumed wood energy production is for electricity production only. However, the most common energy systems in the wood products manufacturing sector are combined heat and power (CHP) or straight heat energy production (drying lumber or heat for processing energy) where the efficiency is often two to three times as great and thus provides much larger fossil fuel offsets than the modeling allows.”
8) “The peer reviewers did not include an LCA expert.”
9) The Dean of the OSU College of Forestry was asked how he reconciles the differences between two Doctorate faculty members when the LCA Specialist (who is also the director of CORRIM which is a non-profit that conducts and manages research on the environmental impacts of production, use, and disposal of forest products). The Dean’s answer was “It isn’t the role of the dean to resolve these differences, … Researchers often explore extremes of a subject on purpose, to help define the edges of our understanding … It is important to look at the whole array of research results around a subject rather than using those of a single study or publication as a conclusion to a field of study.”
10) Alan Organschi, a practicing architect, a professor at Yale stated his thought process as “There is a huge net carbon benefit [from using wood] and enormous variability in the specific calculations of substitution benefits … a ton of wood (which is half carbon) goes a lot farther than a ton of concrete, which releases significant amounts of carbon during a building’s construction”. He then paraphrased a NASA climate scientistfrom the late 1980’s who said ‘Quit using high fossil fuel materials and start using materials that sink carbon, that should be the principle for our decisions.’
11) The European Union, in 2017, based on “current literature”, called “for changes to almost double the mitigation effects by EU forests through Climate Smart Forestry (CSF). … It is derived from a more holistic and effective approach than one based solely on the goals of storing carbon in forest ecosystems”
12) Various CORRIM members stated:
a) “Law et al. does not meet the minimum elements of a Life Cycle Assessment: system boundary, inventory analysis, impact assessment and interpretation. All four are required by the international standards (ISO 14040 and 14044); therefore, Law et al. does not qualify as an LCA.”
b) “What little is shared in the article regarding inputs to the simulation model ignores the latest developments in wood life cycle assessment and sustainable building design, rendering the results at best inaccurate and most likely incorrect.”
c) “The PNAS paper, which asserts that growing our PNW forests indefinitely would reduce the global carbon footprint, ignores that at best there would 100 percent leakage to other areas with lower productivity … which will result in 2 to 3.5 times more acres harvested for the same amount of building materials. Alternatively, all those buildings will be built from materials with a higher carbon footprint, so the substitution impact of using fossil-intensive products in place of renewable low carbon would result in >100 percent leakage.”
d) More on leakage: “In 2001, seven years after implementation, Jack Ward Thomas, one of the architects of the plan and former chief of the U.S. Forest Service, said: “The drop in the cut in the Pacific Northwest was essentially replaced by imports from Canada, Scandinavia and Chile … but we haven’t reduced our per-capita consumption of wood. We have only shifted the source.”
e) “Bruce Lippke, professor emeritus at the University of Washington and former executive director of CORRIM said, “The substitution benefits of wood in place of steel or concrete are immediate, permanent and cumulative.””

B) Risks Resulting from High Densities of Standing Timber
1) “The paper underestimates the amount of wildfire in the past and chose not to model increases in the amount of fire in the future driven by climate change.”
2) “The authors chose to treat the largest fire in their 25-year calibration period, the Biscuit Fire (2003), as an anomaly. Yet 2017 provided a similar number of acres burned. … the model also significantly underestimated five of the six other larger fire years ”
3) “The paper also assumed no increase in fires in the future”
4) Atkins comments/quotes support what some of us here on the NCFP blog have been saying for years regarding storing more timber on the stump. There is certainty that a highly significant increase in carbon loss to fire, insects and disease will result from increased stand densities as a result of storing more carbon on the stump on federal lands. Well documented, validated and fundamental plant physiology and fire science can only lead us to that conclusion. Increases in drought caused by global warming will only increase the stress on already stressed, overly dense forests and thereby further decrease their viability/health by decreasing the availability of already limited resources such as access to minerals, moisture and sunlight while providing closer proximity between trees to ease the ability and rate of spread of fire, insects and disease between adjacent trees.

Footnote:
In their conclusion, Law et. al. state that“GHG reduction must happen quickly to avoid surpassing a 2°C increase in temperature since preindustrial times.” This emphasis leads them to focus on strategies which, IMHO, will only exacerbate the long-term problem.
→ For perspective, consider the “Failed Prognostications of Climate Alarm”