New wildfire funding fix simmers as costs keep rising

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From E&E Daily — I think it’s open access. Steve Ellis, a Smokey Wire member, is quoted.

“Lawmakers are looking for ways to extend a wildfire funding fix that ends in 2027 to avert a return of “fire borrowing” at the Forest Service.”
Excerpt:

A push to extend — and expand — a wildfire funding deal struck five years ago is beginning to show signs of life, as the cost of fires threatens to overwhelm the measures Congress devised to tackle them.

In their debt ceiling bill that passed the House on April 26, Republicans floated an extension from 2027 to 2033 for the so-called wildfire funding fix, which established a disaster fund for the Forest Service and the Interior Department to tap when the annual cost of fire suppression exceeds the amount appropriated annually.

Before the agreement took effect in fiscal 2020, the Forest Service had to borrow money from other non-fire accounts to cover suppression costs that exceeded the budget, a practice known as “fire borrowing.”

Although the debt ceiling bill, with its budget cuts across federal agencies and policy proposals opposing the Biden administration, isn’t going anywhere, the inclusion of the wildfire provision is a sign that lawmakers are looking for a legislative route to keeping the disaster fund going. An extension could also ride on the 2023 farm bill, according to forest policy groups supporting it.

The challenge shows in the National Interagency Fire Center’s statistics on wildfire. The 10-year average cost for wildfire suppression hit $2.35 billion for the two agencies for fiscal years through 2021. Of that amount, $1.88 billion was attributed to the Forest Service.

Adopt-A-Project Volunteer Requested: South Plateau Landscape Treatment Project on Custer-Gallatin

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Volunteer(s) Requested:

One of the things I try to do is attempt to tell the Forest Service side of the story. Sometimes news stories will tell only one side. I’m not blaming reporters nor the Forest Service for that state of affairs, it’s just the way the system is. However, I’ve found by reading the response to comments and response to objections you can usually figure out most of it. Sometimes FS or BLM employees will answer your questions. So I do have a project that could use a volunteer to Adopt the Project, specifically the South Plateau Area Landscape Treatment Project. on the Custer-Gallatin. Visiting the project area could make for a nice field trip, especially before tourist season (it’s around West Yellowstone). Here’s a news story. It’s a 142 page EA, and I don’t think response to objections are posted yet.

If you read the CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY SIERRA CLUB ● WILDEARTH GUARDIANS ALLIANCE FOR THE WILD ROCKIES NATIVE ECOSYSTEMS COUNCIL objection, you’ll find that these objectors are seriously not fans of condition-based management. It’s also over 15 years, so the commercial part, around 12000 acres, is less than 1000 acres per year. So it’s got that as well.. large sounding numbers because it’s so lengthy. We’ve discussed condition-based management before many times here, but a volunteer wouldn’t have to go through that aspect of the project.

When I see “clearcuts” I generally think LPP; sure enough…

Most of the project area (91% or 36,098 acres) is forested. Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) dominates most of the forested area, covering 33,000 acres. About 80% of the lodgepole pine (over 26,000 acres) is rated as highly susceptible to mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae)1. Mountain pine beetles often girdle and kill trees; large scale outbreaks result in high levels of host tree death. Currently, the South Plateau area is not only highly susceptible to a beetle outbreak, but also highly likely to experience (93% probability) a severe pine beetle outbreak.
…

The proposed treatment actions are estimated to increase stand resistance to insects by reducing the area rated as highly susceptible to pine beetle from over 26,000 acres to under 16,000 acres, and reduce the likelihood of a high severity outbreak from 93% to 61% or less. The proposed treatments will also reduce the rate of spread and impacts of dwarf mistletoe 1 . Landscape resilience in the context of forest management means that an ecosystem and its component parts can absorb or recover from the effects of disturbances. Silvicultural treatments designed to create age, size, and species mosaics will increase landscape heterogeneity. At the landscape level, a heterogeneous landscape is thought to be more resistant and resilient to insect damage than a homogenous landscape (Larson, Stover and Keyes 2012).

Then purpose and need 3 is treating hazardous fuels according to the EA -51% of the project area is within the 2020 Gallatin County Wildfire Protection Plan3 defined Wildland Urban Interface.

It seems to me that there are all kinds of interesting questions about this project. If you have mature LPP old enough to be beetle fodder, should you wait until it gets killed (we all know what that looks like). Or do we want to get some new LPP stands started so there is age diversity at the landscape scale? Wouldn’t that be good for carbon? But for now, the LPP are not dead, so how preemptive should the FS be?

Anyway, I think there are many interesting aspects to this project from the non-legal side that might be worth exploring. If you are interested, please contact me. Email is on the donate widget to the right of this post.

CEs in the Spotlight: Holland Lake proposal reignites debate over environmental reviews

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This Montana Public Radio article does more than look at one proposed project. “Those familiar with NEPA say categorical exclusions are an essential tool in any federal agency’s kit. But, some environmental advocates say they’re concerned that tool is being used too often and out of proportion with its original purpose.”

The story features comment from our own Sharon Friedman, plus mention of The Smokey Wire, and from TSW contributor Susan Jane Brown.

USFS Webinar: Planning for Forests of the Future

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The SCIENCEx webinar series (register here) brings together scientists and land management experts from across U.S. Forest Service research stations and beyond to explore the latest science and best practices for addressing large natural resource challenges across the country.

Monday, May 15, SCIENCE x Planning for Forests of the Future: Resources Planning Act – Forest Resources and Disturbance (moderator: Sarah Hines)
•    RPA Overview, presented by Claire O’Dea (recorded session)
•    Forest Resources, Current and Future, presented by John Coulston
•    Recent and future trends in disturbances to forests and rangelands across the conterminous U.S., presented by Jennifer Costanza

Tuesday, May 16, SCIENCE x Planning for Forests of the Future: Resources Planning Act – Forest Products and Water Resources (moderator: Sarah Hines)
•    RPA Overview, presented by Claire O’Dea (recorded session)
•    Forest Products Markets, presented by Jeff Prestemon
•    Current and future projections of water use and supply in the United States, presented by Travis Warziniack

Wednesday, May 17 SCIENCE x Planning for Forests of the Future: Resources Planning Act – Rangeland Resources and Biodiversity (moderator: Sarah Hines)
•    RPA Overview, presented by Claire O’Dea (recorded session)
•    The 2020 Rangeland Assessment, presented by Matt Reeves
•    Patterns and threats to biological diversity across the United States: Focusing on land use and climate change, presented by Becky Flitcroft

Thursday, May 18 SCIENCE x Planning for Forests of the Future: Resources Planning Act – Land Resources and Outdoor Recreation (moderator: Andrea Brandon)
•    RPA Overview, presented by Claire O’Dea (recorded session)
•    The past and future of land resources: foundations for the 2020 RPA Assessment, presented by Kurt Riitters
•    Outdoor recreation participation in in the U.S. in 2040 and 2070, presented by Eric White

Friday, May 19 SCIENCE x Planning for Forests of the Future: National Report on Sustainable Forests (moderator: Margaret Gregory)
•    USDA Forest Service National Reporting on Forest Sustainability: Observations and Program Overview, presented by Guy Robertson
•    Key Findings from the 2020 National Report on Sustainable Forests, presented by Lara Murray
•    The Montréal Process: a voluntary international agreement to measure, monitor and make progress on forest conservation and sustainable management, presented by Kathleen McGinley

 

New Book: The Making of the Northwest Forest Plan

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New from Oregon State University Press: “The Making of the Northwest Forest Plan: The Wild Science of Saving Old Growth Ecosystems,” by K. Norman Johnson, Jerry F. Franklin, and Gordon H. Reeves.

Looking forward to comments from anyone who reads it.

Description:

Tree sitters. Logger protests. Dying timber towns. An iconic species on the brink. The Timber Wars consumed the Pacific Northwest in the late 1980s and early 1990s and led political leaders to ask scientists for a solution. The Northwest Forest Plan was the result.

For most of the twentieth century, the central theme of federal forest management in the Pacific Northwest had been logging old-growth forests to provide a sustained yield of timber. During the 1970s and 1980s, however, studies by young scientists highlighted the destructive impact of that logging on northern spotted owls, salmon, and the old-growth ecosystem itself. Combining this new science with environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act, environmental activists obtained court injunctions to stop old-growth logging on federal land, setting off a titanic struggle to meet conservation imperatives while also enabling the timber harvests that provided employment for tens of thousands of people. That effort led to the creation of the Northwest Forest Plan, which sharply and abruptly shifted the goal of federal forest management toward conserving the species and ecosystems of old-growth forests and the streams that run through them.

In this book, three of the scientists who helped craft that change tell the story as they know it: the causes, development, adoption, and effects of the Northwest Forest Plan. The book also incorporates short commentaries and histories from key figures—including spotted owl expert Eric Forsman—and experiences from managers who implemented the plan as best they could. Legal expert Susan Jane M. Brown helped interpret court cases and Debora Johnson turned spatial data into maps. The final chapters cover the plan’s ongoing significance and recommendations for conserving forest and aquatic ecosystems in an era of megafires and climate change.

Public Lands Litigation – update through April 25, 2023

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Court decision in Central Oregon Landwatch v. Connaughton (9th Cir.)

On October 23, the circuit court upheld a special use permit granted by the Deschutes National Forest to the City of Bend to upgrade its Bridge Creek intake facility, construct a new pipeline, and operate the system for 20 years.  The court found that the permit was consistent with the forest plan’s Inland Native Fish Strategy guidelines to “avoid effects that would retard or prevent attainment of the [interim water temperature Riparian Management Objectives (RMOs) established by INFISH] and avoid adverse effect on inland native fish.”  The court also found that the EA’s failure to evaluate a “no diversion” alternative was not arbitrary or capricious, and that the analysis of climate change did not have to be quantitative because it affected streamflow in both alternatives equally.  (The link to the opinion at the end of the article works.)

Court decision in Gescheidt v. National Park Service

On February 27, the district court held that the Park Service has no statutory duty to revise its 1980 General Management Plan for the Tomales Point portion of the Point Reyes Seashore to address the fact that elk are dying from starvation and dehydration as a result of a fence that limits their movement into areas that would compete with livestock.

Court decision in Great Basin Resource Watch v. U. S. Department of the Interior (D. Nev.)

On March 31, the district court vacated the BLM’s approval of Eureka Moly’s planned molybdenum mine about 250 miles east of Reno.  The judge cited the 9th Circuit’s ruling in an Arizona case (Rosemont Mine) last year that upended the government’s long-held position that the 1872 Mining Law conveys the same rights established through a valid mining claim to adjacent land for the disposal of tailings and other waste without having to show that valuable minerals are present there.  This article provides more background and discusses proposed legislation to reverse these rulings.

New lawsuit:  Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center v. U. S. Bureau of Land Management (D. Or.)

On April 10, four environmental groups sued the BLM over its approval of the Programmatic Integrated Vegetation Management for Resilient Lands Program and the Late Mungers Project Determination of NEPA Adequacy.  The program was not specific about where logging would occur, but would include late successional reserves established in the Northwest Forest Plan which would allegedly be inconsistent with that plan.  The complaint also alleges a violation of NEPA for failure to prepare an EIS for the Program.  (The press release includes a link to the complaint.)

Court decisions in West Virginia v. EPA (E.D. N.D.), and Kentucky v. EPA (E.D. Ky., 6th Cir.)

On April 12, following the decision in February in Texas v. EPA, (which affected Texas and Idaho, noted here), the North Dakota district court issued an injunction against the Biden Administration’s Clean Water Act regulations covering 24 more states.  In addition, a March 23 opinion barring a similar challenge in the Kentucky district court was reversed by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals on April 21, which granted a stay of implementation.  (There lots of links in the article.)

In case you haven’t been keeping up, there’s a summary provided here:

  • The 2015 Obama WOTUS attempted to expand the types of waterways under federal protection. Various states successfully sued to stop its implementation.
  • The Trump Navigable Waters Protection Rule reduced the number of waterways under federal protection. It was implemented in 2020 and was repealed by a federal judge in 2021.
  • The Biden 2023 WOTUS rule (now being litigated) returned the U.S. to a definition put in place during the Reagan administration and observed until 2015.

These cases are backing up behind a pending Supreme Court decision in Sackett v. EPA, which will determine whether the 9th Circuit applied the proper test for determining whether wetlands are “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act.

Notice of intent to sue

On April 12, the Center for Biological Diversity notified the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service of its intent to sue for reducing critical habitat for two endangered snakes (the narrow-headed and northern Mexican garter snakes) by more than 90% from what it originally proposed to protect these species found in riparian areas.  The Forest Service provided substantial comments on the original proposal, including that proposed critical habitat would affect numerous livestock grazing allotments on the Tonto National Forest.  Critical habitat would be designated there and on the Gila, Apache-Sitgreaves, Prescott and Coconino national forests and BLM lands.  The news release contains a link to the notice, and additional background is provided here.

New lawsuits

On April 17, Protect the Public’s Trust, which describes itself as an unincorporated association dedicated to restoring public trust in government, filed lawsuits against the Department of the Interior and the BLM for failing to meet Freedom of Information Act requirements to provide documents involving communications between agency officials and Somah Haaland, who is the daughter of Deb Haaland, the Secretary of the Interior.  Somah Haaland has lobbied lawmakers as a media adviser for the Pueblo Action Alliance in support of a drilling moratorium around Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northwest New Mexico, and the request focuses on a movie about the protection efforts.  The FOIA request was made on January 2.

(Family ties seem to be important to some these days; Hunter Biden comes to mind.  Here’s an example of how more transparency might play out in such situations.)

Preliminary injunction granted in Center for Biological Diversity v. U. S. Forest Service (D. Mont)

On April 24, the district court enjoined the Knotty Pine Project on the Kootenai National Forest.  The project would add 3.76 miles of road to the road system, 1.2 miles of temporary road construction, 35 miles of road maintenance, and 4.04 miles of road storage, and would include commercial harvests on 2,593 acres, non-harvest fuel treatments on 4,757 acres, precommercial thinning on 2,099 acres, and 7,465 acres of prescribed burning. The court said the agencies failed to adequately account for the harm to grizzly bears in the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem Recovery Zone from illegal roads when they authorized the project.  The judge pointed out that the forest plan said any road found to have illegal use would be considered an open road for that year, so such roads should be considered in the calculation of open roads relative to compliance with forest plan road density requirements.  The article includes a link to the opinion.  Plaintiffs provide additional background here.

Court decision in Murphy Company v. Biden (9th Cir.)

On April 24, the circuit court upheld the expansion of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument made by President Obama in January 2017 against a challenge by timber interests.  The court found that the expansion did not violate the Oregon and California Lands (O&C) Act.  Cascade-Siskiyou is the only national monument in the nation specifically established to protect biodiversity.  “In rejecting Murphy’s lawsuit, the Ninth Circuit today definitively concluded that conserving O&C Lands for their ecological values is consistent with the law,” said Susan Jane Brown, senior attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center.  (The news release contains a link to the opinion.)

On April 24, the Supreme Court turned away five appeals by oil companies of lower court decisions that determined that the lawsuits seeking damages for climate change belonged in state court, a venue often seen as more favorable to plaintiffs than federal court.  The lawsuits were filed by the state of Rhode Island and municipalities or counties in Maryland, Colorado, California and Hawaii.

Notice of intent to sue

On April 25, the Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Appalachian Voices, Appalachian Mountain Advocates, Greenbrier River Watershed Association, and Kanawha Forest Coalition notified the Forest Service of their intent to sue related to the Forest Service’s approval of a road use permit authorizing SF Coal Co. to haul coal through the Monongahela National Forest, and related road reconstruction work.  They claim that the Forest Service failed to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service regarding the effects on listed species and critical habitat in the Cherry River watershed, as well as NEPA violations.  (The press release includes a link to the notice.)

New lawsuit:  Center for Biological Diversity v. Haaland (D. D.C.)

On April 25, three conservation groups sued the Department of the Interior for failing to respond to a rulemaking petition to phase out oil and gas extraction on federal public lands, and a subsequent notice of intent to sue.  The petition was submitted in January, 2022.  The Administrative Procedure Act requires federal agencies to initiate rulemaking or provide a substantive response to rulemaking petitions within a reasonable timeframe. This lawsuit alleges that the administration’s failure to respond to the petition constitutes an unreasonable delay given the urgency of the climate crisis.  (The press release includes a link to the complaint.)

How Representative of Local Communities in Race/Ethnicity Should Forest Service Employees Be? Let’s Discuss – the Locke et al. Study

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Last week I got wrapped up in reviewing all the fascinating discoveries about conifer adaptation that have been made in the last ten years. More on all this later- as I don’t have time to finish reviewing and emailing authors this week.  So now on to something completely different.. Thanks to Forrest Fleishman for suggesting this paper, Spatially Explicit Assessment of the USDA Forest Service as a Representative Bureaucracy, as a topic of discussion. Since most of the authors are FS employees, it is fortunately open access.

Some Historical Background

Now I’ve always been a fan of increasing diversity and bringing more different kinds of people into the workplace. The FS has had notable successes at recruiting. At the same time, it could be that some groups that have traditionally been kept down economically would prefer to work in jobs with more .. I guess.. what can I call it.. cachet? Career earnings? Living in certain areas? And while targets go by percentages, it could be easier to achieve some percentages than others. Suppose you asked the question “why can’t we get more Black forestry techs in the South?” versus “why aren’t there more Asian fish bios in Region 1?”.

Questions I Have

In the paper, the authors talk about the importance of matching race and ethnicity groups (REGs) to those in a 1 hour driving distance. But that’s not what the FS tries to do (unless they have changed). It was more like “we should hire to the national labor force everywhere.” Believe me, I’ve spent time observing people trying to hire Blacks in parts of Wyoming. Not impossible, but if you have 30 people on your District, and there are 1.7% Black people in the State we are looking at small numbers- 1/30 is 3% . Maybe you could look at a Forest as a unit to get the percentages more manageable, and then maybe get the target percentages from weighting each unit by the number of employees, and use the 1 hour from that unit. How should temporaries and contractors be considered, or should they?

Note- I am not saying that the FS wouldn’t be low on certain groups no matter how you count them; what I’m trying to get at is the target should be clear to everyone who is working on getting there.

Matching local areas (note that DC is 44.2% Black, so does that mean the WO should be?) is different from diversifying all units to national percentages. Following the DC logic (you should have the national labor force percentages at HQ), you would need the regional figures, not 1 hour from the RO for Regional Offices, and 1 hour from each RD for Supervisor’s Offices?

Additionally, Riccucci and Van Ryzin state, “the social origins of a bureaucrat can produce a sense of trust and legitimacy among citizens who share those social origins, thereby resulting in
cooperation from the citizens and ultimately the production of more effective policy outcomes, without any action by the bureaucrat (in other words, without active representation)” (2017, 25).

I agree with the argument that matching like to like makes some sense for representative government. But is that true only for racial and ethnic matches? What percentage of FS employees should be, say, LDS in Utah? Could other things than race and ethnicity be considered important cultural factors to match? But would you want a Forest Supe of your own race whom you frequently disagree with or one from another race you frequently agree with? And if the Supe were “too much like” the local community, wouldn’t she tend to agree with them. And that leads back to our other discussion of what is “too much” local power over decisions on everyone’s federal land.

Here’s how the researchers did it:

First, the proportion of each race/ethnicity group within the total United States (via the ACS), at Forest Service workplaces, and the seven types of drive time polygons were visually compared. Second, for each workplace and race/ethnicity group, the proportion of employees was plotted against the corresponding proportion from the surrounding 1-hour drive time. These scatter plots per race/ethnicity group depict which workplaces have higher or lower representation, aided visually with the 45-degree line to indicate parity.

Another interesting point made was that “These workplaces across the country also serve visitors who might be coming from farther away than the 1-hour drive catchment.” The formula for precise measurement of what percentages gets way more complicated. Think ski resorts.

Some findings:

When aggregated by Forest Service region, the gap between race/ethnicity make-up of the workplaces’ surrounding communities does vary. For instance, the gap between drive time percentage of white populations and workplace representation of white employees is smallest in the Northern Region and largest in the Pacific Southwest, indicating a larger overrepresentation of white employees in the latter than the former (Figure 3). Conversely, although the percentage of people identifying as Hispanic or Latino alone is relatively high at the International Institute of Tropical Forestry (IITF) in Puerto Rico, the fraction surrounding the workplaces is higher, indicating an underrepresentation of Hispanic populations in that region’s workplace. American Indian and Alaskan Natives make up ~8% of the population around Alaskan workplaces but only ~2% of the employees. Another large gap can be found in the Southern Region, where people identifying as Black/African American alone make up ~22% of the surrounding 1-hour drive time area but only ~12% of Forest Service employees.

And I agree that more work needs to be done..

National aggregate estimates show that the Forest Service has an ~20 percentage point higher white workforce than the US population as a whole. However, the proportions of the population in a given race/ethnicity group vary across the country, making the local areas potentially a more suitable reference. When comparing each workplace with its surrounding population, that 20 percentage point gap widens to ~25 to 27 percentage points depending on the chosen drive time duration (Figure 2). Hiring locally could be one opportunity to close the gap. There are exceptions, however, as shown in Figure 4; in some workplaces, members of BIPOC groups are present in proportions greater than their surrounding drive time areas. By making data from this larger project freely available (Sachdeva et al. 2022), further inquiry is invited and encouraged. The findings are ripe for additional qualitative research in particular, and we hope the pattern-based findings can provide a platform for additional process-oriented inquiry. There is a clear need to understand why the diverse communities surrounding duty stations do not work for the Forest Service. Another opportunity for future research is in-depth examination of specific workplaces and their surrounding communities via case studies. In addition to gaining more a mechanistic understanding of what may lead to these patterns, such a close look may also provide a more precise tabulation of small rural communities’ demographic composition than the national ACS can provide.

To follow through with our previous discussion, to hire locally we would need more local people to get natural resource or other degrees. So the universities that produce these folks are inextricably linked to this, and I think should be studied as well as part of the same system. Meanwhile, demographics in communities can fluctuate on shorter timeframes than employees transferring out or retiring. I guess the key question is “should the FS match or not?” “does the USG require that, or is it additional, or at odds with matching the Civilian Labor Force?”

Trouble on Four Feet

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The deer hunting season that last month of my Toiyabe National Forest fire prevention guard career didn’t end with the opening weekend rush. It went on through most of October, and so did my fire prevention patrols.

Contacts with the hunters were usually, but not always, pleasant.

One day, not long after opening weekend when Fire Control Officer Marion Hysell and I were patrolling together in Buckeye Canyon, we encountered a particularly drunk and obnoxious bunch. They had a particularly large, roaring campfire, and we stopped to do our duty. We did, but not without a barrage of foul-mouthed comments about “cops,” which Marion explained we were not. Halfway through this encounter, I began thinking seriously about the fact they were armed and we were not.

Just a few minutes later, in a nearby camp, Marion and I roused from a drunken stupor a hunter whose campfire was about to ignite the tent in which he was snoring the day away.

Trouble that hunting season came on four feet as well as two. One day, as I patrolled the Buckeye Road, I came upon a campfire burning in an apparently unoccupied camp. I stopped the patrol truck and got out to investigate. The campfire was attended only by a large German shepherd chained to a pickup bumper. I couldn’t locate anyone, so I started to put out the fire.

That got the dog’s attention. He growled.

But he was chained, so I ignored him. I shouldn’t have. Suddenly, the barking beast ran toward me. “How long is that chain, anyway?” I asked myself. But it was too late, and the chain was too long. Fangs barred, the charging dog leaped at me. As it did, I twisted to one side and kicked at it even as I tried an all-too-slow exit. We both made contact. I kicked the dog in the rib cage, and it sunk a couple teeth into my upper arm before I got out of range.

As the dog strained at the chain, barking and growling, I retreated to my truck. I took off my uniform shirt, and was surprised to see how little I was hurt. The wound was no more than a couple small punctures and some superficial scratches. Not much blood flowed. I quickly applied some disinfectant and a couple bandages, slipped back into my shirt, and set about writing the dog’s owner a citation for abandoning his campfire.

Just as I got to the point I needed the fellow’s name and address, he showed up. “What’s goin’ on?” I heard barkin’.”

“You left your campfire unattended,” I informed him. Then, somewhat sheepishly, I added “And your dog bit me.”

“I just went up the creek a ways,” he offered in weak defense.

“And your dog was watching your fire?” I commented before asking him his name and address. I handed him the citation, and advised him I would contact the authorities in Glendale, where he lived, about quarantining his dog to make sure it didn’t have rabies. When I got back to the ranger station, I did just that.

I also paid a visit to Doctor Nichols in town.

 

Adapted from the 2018 third edition of Toiyabe Patrol, the writer’s memoir of five U.S. Forest Service summers on the Toiyabe National Forest in the 1960s.

Science Friday: Can Forest Trees Adapt to Climate Change? I. Questions Raised in Recent WaPo Story

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Thanks to readers sent in this fascinating WaPo story Trees are moving north from global warming. Look up how your city could change. The graphics and mapping, as so often happens, are way better than the assumptions behind them.

There’s much to question there. For one thing, the article is talking about hardiness maps and so “people planting trees”. Beware of English in headlines! To most of us, “moving” is different from “being moved”. Active versus passive.

Modeled vs. Observed

Another obvious problem is that it’s not exactly clear that it’s all modeled changes. So not, “moving” but “being moved on the basis of models.”

In fact, modeled results are better than observed results, according to this reporter (!), who is admirably careful about being clear on modeled vs. observed.

Unlike the government’s official plant hardiness zones, which were released in 2012 and are based on temperature observations from 1976 to 2005, the projections shown here include a time range closer to the present day and allow for comparisons over time.

But my favorite topic, of course, is what the article says about tree adaptation. I’m not criticizing the reporter here. I also had trouble finding current experts; in fact it appears that forest genetics, like tree physiology, and forest entomology and pathology have become less cool over time, That’s just the way it is, universities have to keep up with trends of what’s cool or they won’t get funding. So no blame to anyone here, we are all parts of a system. But I will try to shed some light on this particular question.

Let’s think about this together and I’ll share some research.

Trees’ ranges adapt to change, but modern climate change is fast. Over the past century, the earth has warmed about 10 times faster than when it emerged from historical ice ages. With some difficulty, humans will adapt to global warming. For trees and the ecosystems that depend on them, adapting will be even harder.

Actually trees’ “ranges” don’t adapt to change, tree populations do. So let’s look at how fast climate change is happening.

How fast? I found this on an EPA website. Note that they are observed differences over the last 100 years.

Since 1901, the average surface temperature across the contiguous 48 states has risen at an average rate of 0.17°F per decade (see Figure 1). Average temperatures have risen more quickly since the late 1970s (0.32 to 0.55°F per decade since 1979).

Some parts of the United States have experienced more warming than others (see Figure 3). The North, the West, and Alaska have seen temperatures increase the most, while some parts of the Southeast have experienced little change. Not all of these regional trends are statistically significant, however.

I thought the patterns over 120 years were very interesting, especially for the Southern US.

So there are two questions.  First is “will the rate of change increase in the future?”  .. I’ll ask some climate folks about that.

But the question that presents itself now is “are the observed differences too fast for tree species to adapt?”

We have historical evidence, and our own lived experience (of the elders among us) that there are many trees over 100 years old.  In fact, the FS and BLM just mapped them for the MOG initiative!  Which seems like evidence that not only populations of trees, but individual trees, have been able to survive the current rate of temperature change.

Caveat- average temperature is not particularly helpful to understand how tough trees find it to survive.  The timing of frosts, cold extremes, season of drought and moisture, soil type, aspect, mycorrhizae, pathogens, competitors and so on..

The comments on the WaPo story point this out; also that more people seem to have problems with invasive pests and diseases than climate change. So what does looking at average temperature tell us? Probably not much.

I’ve seen them burn up. I’ve also seen them have tough times due to age (not a problem unique to trees- how do I know this?). For example, according to the Rocky Mountain LPP averages 150-200 years, thanks to this handy Fire Effects Information System (2003)  compendium of info.

Silvics of North America also has good information.  Biology hasn’t really changed.

Which reminds me of this box.

Time alone won’t kill a tree, but climate change might.
Unlike most living things, many trees can live indefinitely. There are trees among us today that took root before European settlers first arrived here. They have avoided fire, pestilence, drought and infestation, but some will not survive global warming.

Here’s what the cited paper says:

A preponderance of evidence has suggested that trees do not die because of genetically programmed senescence in their meristems (Mencuccini et al., 2014), and rather are killed by an external agent, either biotic or abiotic.

In the last 50 years, I’m not sure that I’ve observed climate change killing a tree, but certainly observed fires and bugs killing trees.  And so, yes the 1980’s outbreak in Central Oregon may have been influenced by climate change (although at the time it was thought that was part of a natural disturbance cycle). Perhaps not so much bb outbreaks in the 20s and earlier.

I found this fascinating paper on The Battle for Old-Growth Ponderosa Pine in Northeastern California: Efforts to Control the Western Pine Beetle in Remnant Old-Growth Stands During the 1920s 

Fig. 2. Personnel of a forest insect control camp, Shasta National Forest. The crew of an average-sized beetle control camp consists of the foreman, cooks and flunkey, spotting crew, treating crews, and truck driver. Mess and bunk tents are shown in the background. Van Brewer Wells camp. Photo by J.E. Patterson, Oct. 1920.[/caption]

With terrific photos.  Very, very cool.

The next post in this series will be on “some things we know about conifer genetics and adaptation.”