When Trees Die, People Die (from the Atlantic)

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AshRangeMap

The curious connection between an invasive beetle that has destroyed over 100 million trees, and subsequent heart disease and pneumonia in the human populations nearby

Again, scientists are discovering things that mystics and poets have sensed for thousands of years.

From the Atlantic here, excerpt below.

Something else, less readily apparent, may have happened as well. When the U.S. Forest Service looked at mortality rates in counties affected by the emerald ash borer, they found increased mortality rates. Specifically, more people were dying of cardiovascular and lower respiratory tract illness — the first and third most common causes of death in the U.S. As the infestation took over in each of these places, the connection to poor health strengthened.

The “relationship between trees and human health,” as they put it, is convincingly strong. They controlled for as many other demographic factors as possible. And yet, they are unable to satisfactorily explain why this might be so.

In a literal sense, of course, the absence of trees would mean the near absence of oxygen — on the most basic level, we cannot survive without them. We know, too, that trees act as a natural filter, cleaning the air from pollutants, with measurable effects in urban areas. The Forest Service put a 3.8 billion dollar value on the air pollution annually removed by urban trees. In Washington D.C., trees remove nitrogen dioxide to an extent equivalent to taking 274,000 cars off the traffic-packed beltway, saving an estimated $51 million in annual pollution-related health care costs.
trees.JPG©Science

But a line of modern thought suggests that trees and other elements of natural environments might affect our health in more nuanced ways as well. Roger Ulrich demonstrated the power of having a connection with nature, however tenous, in his classic 1984 study with patients recovering from gall bladder removal surgery in a suburban Pennsylvania hospital. He manipulated the view from the convalescents’ windows so that half were able to gaze at nature while the others saw only a brick wall. Those with trees outside their window recovered faster, and requested fewer pain medications, than those with a “built” view. They even had slightly fewer surgical complications.

Logging Is For The Birds… Vermont Version

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Can it be that I thought of a more appropriate headline than a professional? What is the world coming to?
For those of you who have grown tired of pine beetles and fire, here is a Vermont story. Thanks to Derek for the link.

Here’s the link and below is an excerpt. There is a beautiful photo of a stand in the story, but the NCFP budget ($0, for the curious) would not allow posting it here.

Logging takes wing
Audubon Center, foresters consider sustainable timber harvesting – with birds in mind

HUNTINGTON — The call of a chain saw in a widely revered wooded bird sanctuary begs more than a just few questions. • What happened to good-old benign neglect? Aren’t the healthiest wildlife habitats those to which humans have given the widest berth? • For many outsiders, the three-year logging project at the Green Mountain Audubon Center in Huntington runs counter to that intuition. • Kim Guertin, the center’s director, considered herself among the skeptics — until she and her colleagues discovered that at least a dozen migratory songbirds (like purple finch, yellow-bellied sapsucker and the scarlet tanager) actually fared much better when they have access to low- to-mid-level perches, where small clearings punctuate the forest canopy. •

Standing in such a clearing Thursday morning, Guertin surveyed a landscape of stumps, trimmed limbs and brush, and knee-high saplings.

This is not an urgent rescue mission for endangered species, she said. To the contrary: Timbering in the sanctuary might henceforth be considered a prudent, routine investment in stewardship.

Too Big to Bite Off at One Time: Beetles and Fire

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table of types 2
The above is an attempt to show ( a small portion of) the variety of conditions that might be included under “bark beetles and fire” in the western US. Types are Ponderosa Pine, Lodgepole Pine, Mixed Conifer and Spruce-Fir. Beetles are Western Pine, Mountain Pine and Spruce. I apologize for the low quality of the table, especially the graphics but also including that I don’t know what beetles are in which types in which regions for sure.

This discussion of bark beetles and fire has been fascinating! Clearly, a given fuel treatment project might occur under a variety of conditions (including WUI and not). But if you look at the variety of types (I tried to make some generalities about the locations of people on this blog), it’s pretty easy to determine that a simple question like Bob asked about fungal breakdown, can vary by slope and aspect, species and a variety of other conditions within one of these larger regions. So this table is not a finished product (obviously) but I think most people might think “bark beetle fuel loadings” might be a very different thing with spruce beetle in spruce fir on the Rio Grande, mountain pine beetle in lodgepole in Central Oregon, etc.

Perhaps we could try referring to a specific region, type and species when we talk about bark beetles and fire?

I know this discussion started with the NASA study, but really. 1. NASA has satellites, 2. Used them at a scale that works for their tool, 3. Had bucks to study stuff, 4.some imply say that a correlative analysis at that scale is relevant to fuels management that occurs on a local scale. It’s 3 that’s the real value judgment.

Suppose folks on this blog were funded to design research that would answer the question “what is the best use of federal bucks in promoting fire-resilient communities?” Or even the simpler, “how should fuel treatment dollars be prioritized?”

Reply from Cal Wettstein on Bark Beetles and Fire

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cal wettstein

Cal is retiring fro the Forest Service; currently his is the Acting Deputy Forest Supervisor on the White River, so you might want to send your greetings to him.. Here’s an article about him, when he was bark beetle incident commander (you may have to answer some strange questions to get to the content).

Below is his answer to the question Andy Stahl raised here, regarding a quote from Cal in this story.

On the BB fire thing, first, I won’t miss the political arguments over it….. but really, I looked at the NASA clip and the naysayers (ie Veblen, Kulakowski, etal) continue to miss the big picture. We’ve been very clear that in pure lodgepole pine, during the red-needle stage ignition is easier and we can get flashy crown fires, but they only last one burn period—there’re no heavy fuels to carry fire for very long. The BB fire connection is several decades out. The dead trees fall over 15-20 years (hopefully they’re not disputing the effects of gravity), creating a heavy fuelbed of 60-80 tons per acre. The next forest grows up through that fuelbed and the combination of heavy down fuels, residual mature trees that weren’t killed by bugs, and regeneration that will serve as ladder fuels, set the stage for intense large scale fires—not over the next few months or years as implied by the NASA piece, but over decades—40-50 years. I know the intent of these ongoing arguments is to keep management in check in the short term—so we don’t overdo the knee-jerk reaction to red trees, but the work we’ve been focusing on in the WUI is aimed at much longer term. Andy needs to look at the longer term. Bottom line is, despite high-priced NASA landsat analyses or convoluted GIS exercises, we know from real-life fire experience that a fuel model with 60-80 tons of heavy fuel per acre is going to be problematic when it eventually burns—especially in and around homes and infrastructure.

Well, I could go on and on but I’d be wasting breath…. So I’ll just say that I would never assert that BB’s cause large scale intense fires—BB’s are just one integral part of numerous extremely complex systems that also include fire.

Note: what Cal says is not very different from what I’ve been saying and what we told the local Colorado scientists at various meetings. So possibly some folks didn’t listen to what we said, or they didn’t believe us, or other places are very different from Colorado. Each possibility raises a variety of intriguing questions, IMHO.

How Climate Change Could Wipe Out the Western Forests

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In The Atlantic.

So what I think it interesting about this is that we don’t actually know if conditions will suit trees in the future, just logically some tree genotypes and species might be replaced by others. Do you want to give up on trees at all, say in New Mexico and Arizona, or do you want to try planting? Do you trust climate models to tell you what the climate is going to be like in 2050, or do you want to figure out strategies that might work under a variety of climate scenarios? If, as the last paragraph says, we “haven’t had landscapes like this,” will we have to change our expectations of where associated wildlife species can live?

Here’s the link and here is an excerpt.

Climate change can’t take all the blame for the severity of the fires or the other problems forests are facing in the U.S. and around the world. But here at least, much of the blame can be pegged to other kinds of human activity. A bad year for fires in 1879 laid waste to huge swaths of American forest — thanks to a drought, but also to the ongoing efforts of settlers burning off forest to make way for homes and agriculture. As Teddy Roosevelt put it several years later, when he was pushing for better conservation of the nation’s natural resources, “The time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone.”

The trees grew back, but the destruction led to extensive areas predominated by same-age trees, which are now just the right size for a beetle attack, according to Sibold. In the 1900s, Americans swung in the opposite direction. They became overprotective of their forests and suppressed many fires, which allowed fuel to build up and made conditions ripe for more extreme burns now.

The scientists don’t like to characterize the changes to the Western scenery as “bad.” Many prefer to stay neutral with words like “different” and “unique.” But when pressed, they sound concerned, and gloomy. “We haven’t had landscapes like this,” Sibold said. “You have all of these things interacting, and it’s generally not good news if you’re a tree in Colorado.”

Do Bark Beetle Outbreaks Increase Wildfire Risks in the Central U.S. Rocky Mountains? Implications from Recent Research

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From the Natural Areas Journal. Abstract snipped below:

Appropriate response to recent, widespread bark beetle (Dendroctonus spp.) outbreaks in the western United States has been the subject of much debate in scientific and policy circles. Among the proposed responses have been landscape-level mechanical treatments to prevent the further spread of outbreaks and to reduce the fire risk that is believed to be associated with insect-killed trees. We review the literature on the efficacy of silvicutural practices to control outbreaks and on fire risk following bark beetle outbreaks in several forest types. While research is ongoing and important questions remain unresolved, to date most available evidence indicates that bark beetle outbreaks do not substantially increase the risk of active crown fire in lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) and spruce (Picea engelmannii)-fir (Abies spp.) forests under most conditions. Instead, active crown fires in these forest types are primarily contingent on dry conditions rather than variations in stand structure, such as those brought about by outbreaks. Preemptive thinning may reduce susceptibility to small outbreaks but is unlikely to reduce susceptibility to large, landscape-scale epidemics. Once beetle populations reach widespread epidemic levels, silvicultural strategies aimed at stopping them are not likely to reduce forest susceptibility to outbreaks. Furthermore, such silvicultural treatments could have substantial, unintended short- and long-term ecological costs associated with road access and an overall degradation of natural areas.

New Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation

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US President Obama receives a standing ovation as he addresses a Joint Session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington

Previously we had stayed away from Congress, and partisan politics on this blog because of its tendency to promote, and my personal low tolerance for, dishonesty and mean-spiritedness. However, I am beginning to think that we may be called, in some, perhaps minor, way to help with those tendencies in our own little corner of the world. And through the years, I think we have proven that we can talk about contentious topics without demonizing people who disagree. Hopefully we can share our opinions about the ideas and legislation, but leave off the nasty asides about the people and parties. So,to that end, we might watch together here the progress of the Congress dealing with public lands issues. So I’m starting a new blog category called “Congress”.

This story is from E&E News:

“The Natural Resources Committee, along with its five subcommittees, is ready to get to work this Congress with a continued focus on job creation,” Hastings said in a statement. “Through oversight and legislative proposals, we’ll continue to show how the smart, responsible use and protection of our natural resources and public lands can be one of the greatest ways to grow our economy.”

Leadership atop the five subcommittees has not changed, although Hastings last month announced that Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) will be leading a newly named Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation, which will take jurisdiction over federal lands and the National Environmental Policy Act, among other issues.

Bishop chaired the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands in the last Congress and was widely expected to take the full committee gavel before Hastings was passed up for chairman of the Rules Committee and stayed put. Bishop told E&E Daily last week that he expects to shine a spotlight on NEPA and the president’s use of the Antiquities Act as chairman of his new subcommittee (E&E Daily, Jan. 16).

Republicans, who are losing one seat on the panel, are welcoming five freshmen: Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Doug LaMalfa of California, Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, Steve Daines of Montana and Chris Stewart of Utah.

Check out who is on what subcommittees here: they may be your Representative.

It sounds like the topic we often discuss here “is there a better way?” will become the topic of this new subcommittee.

“Paid Gladiators” or Unpaid Peacemakers:There Must Be a Better Way

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gladiator

OR

quilt-club

But, the fighting goes on and accelerates infrequency and intensity. The people, our sense of community, and the forest are bruised and battered in the process. The gladiators never tire of the fight – it is what they do. The fight itself provides their sustenance. I detect, however, that many concerned about forests we collectively own have long since approached exhaustion.

That may be good news, for with exhaustion, there may come a willingness to seek an answer to the statement made earlier, “There must be a better way.”

That better way can be built on new knowledge and past experiences and on changes in personal and societal concepts. And, that better way can be embraced because the old way has led us to a place where we cannot stand for long.

Shakespeare said (Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2) “…the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…”

If the fault lies within us, the solution also resides in us as well.

Jack Ward Thomas, (1992, in Forest Management Approaches on the the Public’s Lands: Turmoil and Transition) here.

I was reflecting on Dr. Martin Luther King and what he might think of our natural resource situation. I was also thinking of the dangers of partisanizing these issues and what happens when we consider people with different views “the other”; not to be spoken to, but to have their moral character questioned. I hope in some small way this blog helps have a safe discussion about some of these issues.

At the same time, I was speaking to an associate who was going to DC this week. I asked him about the objections rule and where it was. He said to me something along the lines of “why don’t you write your elected officials and ask them to ask the Chief where it is?”

This was a bit of a shock to me. After 32 years of federal service, including a year working for Congresswoman Carrie Meek of Florida, I realized that I had adapted to my role in the understory of policy. Now I had been released (to put it into silvicultural parlance, as this definition here) but was I responding to the freedom and the nutrients and light? Not really.

From my time with Congresswoman Meek, I remember how seriously constituents were taken. So I went on the web and wrote two notes to my two senators, basically asking where the objections rule is (given that Congress asked for it in the Approps Bill last year). It probably took me all of 15 minutes to write it. I made the discovery that one of my senators has a category for natural resources/public lands and the other did not, I had to file it under “environment”..which I found interesting (I am saving my Representative for working with OPM should I run into problems with my annuity, so that’s why I didn’t contact his office).

What my associate opened my eyes to is that I don’t need to have or be an organization, I just need to be an active constituent. When I worked with the Forest Service, I often had to answer questions posed by various Congressional staffs either at the behest of industries (ski or energy, generally) or environmental NGO’s. But this is open to regular people as well. And groups of regular people with ideas. I don’t think we’ve had as much of that as we could, and if we depend on our elected officials to reach across the aisle, well, let’s just say that we might not have the desired results as expeditiously as we might otherwise. That, to me, would be the power of local collaborative groups, but also the power of each one of us.

“Unpaid peacemakers” arise! And through kindness and understanding, let us make beat the swords into some riparian remediation implement.

District of the Week- Powell Ranger District- Dixie National Forest, Utah

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dixie national forest

We have lots of discussions about the kinds of projects the FS does, what environmental documentation is appropriate, what CE’s are used for, why the projects that do get litigated do, and why the ones that don’t don’t. In the spirit of mutual learning, every week I plan to post all the projects on a random district from a random forest. This will help us all get an idea of what’s really happening out there and maybe we’ll be able to make out some interesting patterns. Districts of the week can be reader-suggested as well.

Here’s a link to the website and below a summary of projects on the Powell District.

Powell Ranger District

South Central Red Canyon Fiber Optic Amendment (CE)

Enhance the reliability of an existing fiber optic line under special use permit to South Central Utah Telephone Association, Inc. by amending the permit to allow them to relocate and maintain the fiber optic line outside of Red Canyon Wash.

Status: Under Analysis

Management Unit: Powell Ranger District

Purpose: Special use management

Johns Valley Vegetation Project (EA)

The Dixie National Forest proposes to remove Pinyon and Juniper (PJ) from sage-steppe and riparian areas within Johns Valley to benefit wildlife and improve the environmental health of the area. A variety of treatments would be utilized.

Status: Under Analysis

Management Unit: Powell Ranger District

Purpose: Wildlife, Fish, Rare plants, Watershed management, Vegetation management (other than forest products)

Blue Fly Vegetation Management Project (EA)

The Powell Ranger District of the Dixie National Forest proposes a vegetation management project on the Paunsaugunt Plateau in southern Utah.

Status: Analysis Completed

Management Unit: Powell Ranger District

Purpose: Vegetation management (other than forest products)

Paunsaugunt Vegetation Management (EA)

The Powell Ranger District proposes a project on the Paunsaugunt Plateau to perform the following vegetation treatments: commercially harvest 866 acres of mixed conifer forest, regenerate 413 acres of aspen, reforest 194 acres of wildfire impacted lands, and pre-commercially thin 285 acres of mixed conifer forest.

Status: Analysis Completed

Management Unit: Powell Ranger District

Purpose: Forest products, Vegetation management (other than forest products), Wildlife, Fish, Rare plants

Tropic to Hatch 138kV Transmission Line (EIS)

Construction of upgraded transmission line from Tropic, UT to Hatch, UT. This project crosses multiple jurisdictions. The Dixie NF is the project lead.

Status: Analysis Completed

Management Unit: Powell Ranger District

Purpose: Special use management

Turns out the Dixie does an annual report linked here (2011):

DIXIE NATIONAL FOREST – BY THE NUMBERS
$1.2 million in projects funded by the Dixie National Forest RAC.
Implemented motorized recreation management on 152,529 acres improving 18 miles of stream and lake habitat and over 500 acres of soil and watershed improvement.
83,468 people served in the recreation areas and developed campgrounds.
Approximately $5 million of multi-year funding used to reconstruct the Pine Valley Rec-reation Area.
Received $780,000 from the Regional Office (Ogden, Utah) to initiate the Escalante Headwaters Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Project in 2012.
$400,000 and 1,400 acres stewardship agreement with the National Wild Turkey Federation. This is the largest stewardship project to date between the NWTF and the USFS.
244 volunteers contributed 19,121 hours, representing $363,300 of labor commitment to the forest.
The Fuels program treated 3,217 acres of prescribed fire, 2,681 acres of mechanical treatment, 311 acres of managed wildfire, and 4,235 acres of contract treatment, making a total of 10,444 acres.
13.2 miles of new transmission lines permitted by the Garkane Tropic to Hatch Record of Decision.
Improved recreation facilities and campground ADA compliant sites across the forest from 18% to 38%.
35,000 ccf of timber sold an increase of 250% from 2010.
$250,000 was contributed to 2,500 acres of habitat improvement and a program to translocation of nuisance Utah Prairie Dogs from private land to public land.
91% of forest was found suitable (with stipulations) for Oil and Gas leasing.
The Federal Highways Emergency Relief for Federally Owned Roads (ERFO) pro-gram awarded the forest over $600,000 to repair the Veyo-Shoal Creek Road.
Implemented Motorized Travel Plan in 3 Implementation Areas: Oak Grove, North Paunsaugunt, and Middle Mammoth.
$33,000 More Kids in the Woods grant was awarded to the forest for the Color Country Outdoor Youth Initiative.
100,000 seedlings planted in areas for fire restoration and impacts from the spruce beetle epidemic.
Over 6,500 log outs across the forest using both chainsaw and crosscut saws.