Southwest blazes this year less severe than initially thought — study

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Photo from USGS

Thanks to Matthew Koehler for suggesting this for the blog.

WILDFIRE: Southwest blazes this year less severe than initially thought — study

April Reese, E&E reporter/Published: Thursday, September 29, 2011

While much of the public saw the record-setting wildfires that burned through Arizona and New Mexico last summer as disastrous, the fires were actually less severe than many thought and are likely to bring significant ecological benefits over the long term, according to a new study from an environmental group.

But Forest Service officials say it is too early to draw broad conclusions about how the fires affected tens of thousands of acres scorched by the Wallow, Horseshoe II, Las Conchas and Pacheco conflagrations.

Wallow fire map

A new study issued by WildEarth Guardians asserts that fire damage caused four major blazes across the Southwest last summer, including the Wallow Fire (mapped above), was not as extensive as initially thought. Map courtesy of WildEarth Guardians.

Bryan Bird, public lands program director for WildEarth Guardians, who co-authored the report with Kurt Menke of Bird’s Eye View GIS LLC, an Albuquerque-based company specializing in geographic information systems, said his group felt there was a need to educate people about the true impacts of the blazes.

“There was just such a wide perception out there that these fires were just completely destructive, we wanted to make clear that these fires were in some areas beneficial,” Bird said.

By examining satellite data measuring vegetation characteristics before and after the fires, Bird and Menke concluded that lands within the four fire zones burned in a mosaic pattern, with fire severity ranging from high to low.

For example, within the perimeter of the Wallow fire, which burned 538,000 acres on the Arizona-New Mexico border, more than 64 percent of the lands burned at low intensity or not at all, while 16 percent burned at high severity and 20 percent burned at moderate severity.

For the Las Conchas fire, which scorched 156,600 acres in northern New Mexico, including parts of Bandelier National Monument and the Valles Caldera National Preserve, about 20 percent of the area was severely burned, while most of the lands burned either at low severity (39 percent) or moderate severity (about 29 percent).

How the fire behaved in a given area depended on a range of factors, including forest type, dryness and whether fuel treatments had been done in the area.

“These four fires exhibited very different characteristics and consequences because of the wide variety of ecosystems in which they burned as well as the variable conditions,” according to the report, which notes that the findings need to be verified with field surveys. “Not all of the acreage within the fire perimeters burned severely, and in fact much was unburned or burned only at low and moderate severity.”
Inconclusive results?

But Penny Luehring, leader of the Forest Service’s national Burned Area Emergency Response program, which is based in the Southwest regional office in Albuquerque, N.M., said Bird and Menke based their assessment on soil burn severity data, not vegetation burn severity data, and therefore it cannot be considered conclusive.

“The information that they have in their report aligns quite well with what the Forest Service has collected in terms of soil burn severity, but it’s a measurement of the severity on the soil itself, not a measurement of the effect on vegetation,” she said. “You could you have a lot of burned trees, for example, and you wouldn’t notice them on a soil burn severity map.”

Luehring said the Forest Service plans to conduct field assessments of the effects of the fires on trees and other vegetation over the next several months.

While the report’s conclusions may well turn out to be true, Luehring suggested the data are not yet there to support them.

But Bird said he stands by the report, explaining that the datasets he and Menke used, which were from the Forest Service’s “Burned Area Reflectance Classifications,” did include information on vegetation changes as well as effects on bare soil.

Melissa Savage, an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico and director of the Four Corners Institute, a Santa Fe-based organization that provides scientific expertise to communities undertaking ecological restoration projects, said she believes the report’s conclusions are likely to be borne out with field studies.

“It will probably be largely verified when we get on the ground,” Savage said.

The report makes several recommendations, including using prescribed burns or naturally ignited fires every five to 20 years to maintain the fuel-clearing benefits of fire and keeping development out of forested areas.

New Mexico still has about 600 square miles of undeveloped private lands adjacent to fire-prone public lands, and Arizona has 400 square miles of such lands, the report notes.

Click here to read the study.
Reese writes from Santa Fe, N.M.

Beetle-kill pine, other wood pushed as power source — and way to aid ailing Colorado forests

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Another fine photo by Bob Berwyn
From the Denver Post last Thursday..

CARBONDALE — The Roaring Fork Valley lies close to abundant coal and gas fuel sources. But wood is the fuel that has a local consortium — and a state senator — fired up as an energy source that also would aid Colorado’s ailing forests.

A Roaring Fork Valley consortium found through a two-year study that there is plenty of wood in the form of drought- and beetle-killed pine, fire-stoking brush, aged aspen and construction scraps to make it a feasible adjunct to traditional fossil-fuel energy sources. Burning wood for fuel also is viewed as a potentially important part of saving the state from a conflagration like the one that ravaged Arizona forests this summer.

The Roaring Fork Biomass Consortium took the lead on the issue this week by releasing its study, which included trips to Europe to inspect biomass heating systems there and detailed analysis of the carbon footprint of trucks that would be needed to haul wood from forests in the valley.

The consortium also held a bio-mass “summit” Wednesday that brought together experts from across the state and from the East Coast, where a biomass project at Middlebury College in Vermont is looked at as an example for what might be done in Colorado.

State Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, said using wood to generate heat is more than an environmental dream. “This is not just another nice renewable thing to do. Colorado needs this,” she said.

Schwartz sponsored forest-health legislation in the last legislative session that created a working group to look at Colorado’s ailing forests and at solutions, such as reducing the amount of dead or diseased wood by using it as a fuel source.

She said that, so far, the forest problem has been looked at piecemeal on a statewide level — not comprehensively as the Roaring Fork consortium is doing.

White River National Forest supervisor Scott Fitzwilliams told Wednesday’s gathering that his agency has plenty of forest available for the collection of woody biomass but noted it would be a byproduct of forest restoration — not the object of such a project.

Like Schwartz, Fitzwilliams stressed the importance of promoting biomass now.

“I think we have a moral obligation to do this,” he said.

One biomass project already is in the planning stages for nearby Eagle County. Eagle Valley Clean Energy LLC is focusing on Gypsum as the site for a $46 million biomass plant that annually would consume 1,200 acres of wood — mainly waste such as branches, thinnings and dead trees. The Forest Service routinely stacks such materials in slash piles and then burns them.

Holy Cross Energy is on board with this project, which is projected to be operational in 2013. The company has committed to buying power for customers who are demanding that some of their power come from renewable sources, said Holy Cross chief executive Del Worley.

Consortium speakers did point out that Colorado faces some drawbacks in moving into woody biomass power. The timber in Colorado is dry because of the climate and thus burns faster. And energy costs are lower in an oil- and gas-rich state, so the savings from using biomass would not be as large as in other places.

Schwartz said she will be working on further legislation that will remove governmental obstacles to creating biomass facilities.

Green Building with Wood: USDA Report

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photo by Derek Weidensee


Forest Service Report Documents Environmental Benefits of Wood as a Green Building Material
Agriculture Secretary Vilsack urges US builders to prioritize wood in green buildings

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29, 2011 – The findings of a new U.S. Forest Service study indicate that wood should factor as a primary building material in green building, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced today.

The authors of Science Supporting the Economic and Environmental Benefits of Using Wood and Wood Products in Green Building Construction reviewed the scientific literature and found that using wood in building products yields fewer greenhouse gases than using other common materials.

“This study confirms what many environmental scientists have been saying for years,” said Vilsack. “Wood should be a major component of American building and energy design. The use of wood provides substantial environmental benefits, provides incentives for private landowners to maintain forest land, and provides a critical source of jobs in rural America.”

The Forest Service report also points out that greater use of life cycle analysis in building codes and standards would improve the scientific underpinning of building codes and standards and thereby benefit the environment. A combination of scientific advancement in the areas of life cycle analysis and the development of new technologies for improved and extended wood utilization are needed to continue to advance wood as a green construction material. Sustainability of forest products can be verified using any credible third-party rating system, such as Sustainable Forestry Initiative, Forest Stewardship Council or American Tree Farm System certification.

“The argument that somehow non-wood construction materials are ultimately better for carbon emissions than wood products is not supported by our research,” said David Cleaves, the U.S. Forest Service Climate Change Advisor. “Trees removed in an environmentally responsible way allow forests to continue to sequester carbon through new forest growth. Wood products continue to benefit the environment by storing carbon long after the building has been constructed.”

The use of forest products in the United States currently supports more than one million direct jobs, particularly in rural areas, and contributes more than $100 billion to the country’s gross domestic product.

“In the Rockies alone, we have hundreds of thousands of dead trees killed by bark beetles that could find their way into the building supply chain for all types of buildings,” said Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. “Taking a harder look at wood as a green building source could reduce the damages posed by future fires, maintain overall forest health and provide much-needed jobs in local communities.”

The U.S. Forest Service report identifies several areas where peer-reviewed science can contribute to sustainable green building design and decisions. These recommendations address the following needs for use of wood as a green building material:
• Information on environmental impacts across the lifecycle of wood and alternative construction materials needs to be updated and revised;
• Green buildings codes and standards should include adequate provisions to recognize the benefit of a lifecycle environmental analysis to guide selection of building materials; and
• A lack of educational, technology transfer, and demonstration projects hinder the acceptance of wood as a green building material.

Research recently initiated by the wood products industry in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory will enable greater use and valuation of smaller diameter trees and insect and disease-killed trees. Research on new products and technologies has been initiated including improved cross-lamination techniques and the increased use of nanotechnology.

These developments are especially important amidst a changing climate because forest managers will need to increasingly thin densely forested areas in the coming years to reduce the impacts from longer and more severe wildfire seasons. Continued research of wood-based products and technologies will contribute to more environmentally responsible building materials and increased energy efficiency.

The mission of the U.S. Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. Recreational activities on our lands contribute $14.5 billion annually to the U.S. economy. The agency manages 193 million acres of public land, provides assistance to state and private landowners, and maintains the largest forestry research organization in the world.

To view the full Green Building report please click here.

Colorado cougars routinely traverse urban areas, study finds

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I thought this was an interesting story about wildlife not behaving exactly the way scientists predicted nor we thought. There is a pattern this week which I’ll follow up on with a few more posts. Humility, for all of us, when talking about what we know about biology, is always a good thing. Here’s the link in the Denver Post.

BOULDER — AF69, a 90-pound female cougar, makes a healthy living on human habitat — stalking, eating and hiding deer around houses — usually when people aren’t looking.

But one day, while she was dragging a dead doe past a front door west of Boulder, homeowner Ian Morris caught AF69 on his camera — first as he peered through his screen door, then over two days as she cached her kill under grass clippings and periodically gorged.

“I wondered what she could see,” Morris said. “Could she see me? Would that be a good thing? We’re told that we should avoid any contact, which will make the animal more confident in approaching humans.”

He notified the Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife, and wildlife researcher Mat Alldredge came and darted the cougar. Now AF69 is being tracked, along with 61 others, as part of a study that finds cougars may be living much closer to people than previously believed.

State researchers say AF69’s adaptive lifestyle, including regular night forays into the western edge of Boulder, reflects an emerging pattern for many of Colorado’s estimated 3,500 cougars. GPS tracking shows cougars at hundreds of locations near Front Range​ neighborhoods.

For example, during one week last month, AF69 was located at three spots near Broadway in Boulder between dusk and 2 a.m.

Tracking data also detail AF69’s move that week from foothills north of Boulder Canyon to a neighborhood where she killed a young buck, which she cached under a conifer tree near a house, covering it with landscaping mulch and pine needles.

“The interesting thing is that she’s living in these neighborhoods but she is rarely seen,” Alldredge said. “By and large, this cat is making a living in the urban-exurban environment. She’s killing deer. She’s doing the best she can in this area where she was born and raised. Part of the city is her home range.”

Buy Local… Wood? Blue-stain, Bark Beetle and Colorado

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The curse that is beetle-killed wood is being framed as a possible blessing for a Denver homebuilder. (John Prieto, The Denver Post)

Here’s a story in the Denver Post Business section today, including the link with a video, on using blue-stained wood in home construction.

Colorado imports 95 percent of its lumber, which doesn’t make sense in a state with so many dead trees available to harvest, Cadman said.

New Town, which expects to build about 80 homes this year, will spend about $2,000 per home on the Colorado wood, which is comparable in cost to imported lumber.

Given the smaller size of Colorado’s lodgepole pines, the homebuilder will limit its use to vertical supports.

“We hope the example will encourage and facilitate others to use this wood,” said Bruce Ward, founder of recreation advocacy group Choose Outdoors in Pine.

Beetle-killed trees leave the state at risk of massive forest fires that pollute the air and water supply. Dead trees are falling in greater numbers on roads, tents and power lines, limiting recreational opportunities.

Ward is among those working to find economic uses for the dead trees, including converting them into pellets that can be burned.

The beetles infect wood with a fungus that leaves behind blue streaks, giving it some appeal for use in trim, decorative panels and furniture. Custom and log homes have been built with the material.

But New Town is trying to open up a much larger market — framing production homes. A key hurdle to clear will be convincing city buyers that “blue-stained pine” is safe to use and structurally sound.

“At first it was a little bit scary, and I thought, OK, something is going to happen with my place. Is it going to affect the structure or the strength of the wood?” said Nea Martinez, who has bought a townhome in Stapleton made with the wood.

Martinez said she did her homework and came away reassured.

“They’re turning something unfortunate into a positive,” she said.

Positives include creating jobs in rural Colorado and helping the state revive its lumber industry.

Terry Seyden’s New News Site

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Back in pre-web time, Terry Seyden used to have an email list to which he would forward all kinds of interesting Forest Service news. Then he retired, and we were bereft. Now he’s back with his new website that provides the same kind of information, www.seyden.net.

If he posts something you would like to discuss here, just send me a link ([email protected])

Multi-Objective Forest Service Projects: Does It All Get Done?

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Lisa K. Anderson; Sandy Post' A Link Belt 3900 tears its way up an old gravel logging road. At the entrance contractors will build a berm.

Matthew Koehler raised this interesting point in our previous discussion, which was a bit off the main topic, but I think worthy of its own discussion. He said:

Also, please note that many of the “Land management activities in this decision” will not be accomplished at any point in the near future due to a lack of funding. Of course, all the logging will be completed, but most of the true restoration work (decommissioning of roads, culverts, etc) will only be completed as funding becomes available, which in our experience here in the N. Rockies might take a decade, if the work ever is completed at all. The public and the media would be wise to recognize the difference between simply signing a Decision Notice vs. actual completion of the work. Unfortunately, despite repeated requests to look into this matter, the media (and the Forest Service) continues to give the public the impression that all this work gets completed within a reasonable amount of time. That’s totally not true. In fact, I bet if someone did a comprehensive look at all the Stewardship Projects in USFS Region 1 over the last decade they’d be shocked at the amount of promised, yet unfinished, restoration work.

Knowing FS people, I know that their intention is to do the all the work in the project.

So I’ll start a series of questions of everyone.
1) Do you have an observation in your area, that the “other work” doesn’t get done?
2) If so, please ask the FS why not, and report their answer.
3) If you don’t agree with their answer or have other insights to share, please do.

Discussion On Oil and Gas and Roadless

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I think this may be in the running for the single most arcane topic ever discussed on this blog (maybe discussed anywhere!). Nevertheless, I cross posted the piece below here on the High Country News Range blog here and actually got an interesting and thoughtful comment from another roadless geek. If NSO’s in roadless tickle your fancy, check it out.

Lawsuit over Seeley timber sale reveals split among environmental groups -Missoulian

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Thanks to Terry Seyden for this contribution

Lawsuit over Seeley timber sale reveals split among environmental groups

By ROB CHANEY of the Missoulian | Posted: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 6:15 am | (3) Comments

A lawsuit challenging a timber sale north of Seeley Lake shows either the U.S. Forest Service can’t follow the law or some environmental groups can’t agree to work together.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Wild Swan, Montana Ecosystem Defense Council and Native Ecosystems Council all sued the Forest Service over the Colt Summit Forest Restoration and Fuels Reduction Project on Friday.
The project would thin trees and remove roads on more than 4,000 acres between Lake Alva and Summit Lake along Montana Highway 83.

The lawsuit has angered members of several groups who support a collaborative effort to achieve both commercial logging and habitat restoration in the Seeley-Swan area. The Colt Summit was one of the tests of the Montana Forest Restoration Committee’s ability to move forward without legal challenges.

“I tend to be on the side of the coin where, if you bring a lot of people who don’t think a lot alike and take time to learn about the projects, we collectively can come up with better ideas,” said Anne Dahl of the Swan Ecosystem Center, one of the project’s supporters. “I think the Friends of the Wild Swan and others are more leery of collaboration. There’s sort of a fundamental philosophy where we’re different.”

“There’s no provision in there that says if 80 percent of the people sign off on it, they don’t have to follow the law,” responded Michael Garrity of Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “They have to show it’s benefiting wildlife.”
The project affects 4,330 acres in an area known to be a major wildlife corridor. About 740 acres would be logged and thinned, including 137 acres of old-growth forest. Another 1,216 acres would have the understory cleared and burned. In some areas, 19 acres would be clearcut to improve visitors’ views of the Swan Mountain Range and 69 acres would get “shelterwood patch cuts” that mimic forest openings.

The Forest Service would decommission 4.1 miles of road, turning a stretch of the Colt Summit Road into a snowmobile trail. Another 5.1 miles would be reconstructed and linked into the snowmobile network. After the five-year project is over, 28.4 miles of temporary and winter-haul roads would be decommissioned.
For weed control, crews would spray herbicide on 34 miles of roads in the area, as well as all logging and other work areas.
The area is also prime habitat for grizzly bear, lynx and bull trout. Dahl said in her tours of the project, she believed the changes would benefit threatened and endangered species.
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But the lawsuit alleges the Forest Service failed to take those animals’ needs into account when it planned the project.
Sara Jane Johnson was a Forest Service wildlife biologist before she became director of the Native Ecosystem Council. In a statement, she argued that removing beetle-killed trees hurt habitat more than helped it, because it took away nesting areas and cover used by everything from woodpeckers to lynx and grizzly.
The lawsuit also argues the Forest Service was supposed to perform a full environmental impact statement and evaluate how it fares under the National Forest Management Act and National Environmental Policy Act.
“Why do we win 85 percent of our lawsuits?” Garrity asked rhetorically. “We sued the Forest Service more than any other environmental group in the country and we won more than any other group. We raise the same issue every time they log on grizzly bear habitat because they have the same problem.”
University of Montana College of Forestry and Conservation Dean Jim Burchfield was part of the Lolo Restoration Committee and reviewed the Colt Summit project for inclusion in the Southwest Crown of the Continent Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Project proposal. That was one of 10 forest stewardship projects nationwide to receive funding from Congress last year.
“In my view, the Colt Summit project is about seeing how people with very different views of management priorities can come up with a project,” Burchfield said. “To fight the timber wars over every single timber sale is really counterproductive to the interests of most Montanans. There was an effort to be very careful in the development of that sale. They were looking at the most controversial areas and making sure all the laws and regulations were adhered to.”
Garrity disagrees.
“On this timber sale, we haven’t had a worse timber sale meeting,” he said. “They didn’t listen to anything we said. They just told us, ‘We’re fully funded on this and we’re pushing forward.’ ”
“There were other ones up there, and we didn’t oppose them,” Garrity continued. “One other sale was more in the urban interface, and we want them to do thinning near homes, not in critical lynx habitat. Over on the Flathead (National Forest), there’s a timber sale that adjoins this one. The boundaries touch, but they didn’t analyze for cumulative impacts. That’s one of the things they’re required to do.”

My question is with regard to this quote from Michael Garrity “There’s no provision in there that says if 80 percent of the people sign off on it, they don’t have to follow the law,” responded Michael Garrity of Alliance for the Wild Rockies. “They have to show it’s benefiting wildlife.” Does every action have to “show it’s benefiting wildlife?” is that a legal requirement?