Cumulative Effects and the Five Buttes Project

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This article is provided thanks to the good folks at the Society of American Foresters (SAF) and the Forestry Source.

Here’s Five Buttes 9th Circuit Appeal – Text-1 the article.

And a quote:

Cumulative Effects
Michael Mortimer, director of the Natural Resources Program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, is working on a study of judicial deference to agency expertise in cases against the US Forest Service in US district and appeals courts. The Five Buttes case, he said, is a good example of how the court had “reset the bar” to the appropriate legal standard for deference to agencies. However, the court engaged in the same level of fine-grained analysis of scientific and procedural detail that the court addressed in Lands Council.

“I see both the majority and dissenting opinions getting into what I think is fairly high-resolution detail on many of the issues that the agency dealt with in the case,” he said. “This notion of judicial deference can be a little bit of a trap. In court cases like these you have competing expert opinions, facts that may be presented out of context, and inherently complex scientific issues, so even if the court gives a high level of deference to the agency, they are tempted to get into the details of what the agency did, wading through agency science and process.”

Such was the case with the agency’s analysis of the cumulative effects of the Five Buttes project.

“Cumulative effects is a difficult scientific concept, it’s a difficult administrative concept, and it’s a difficult legal standard to define. And yet, both the majority opinion and the dissent were focused on cumulative effects analysis,” Mortimer said. “Instead of simply determining whether or not the agency had examined cumulative effects, the court looked at exactly what the agency did, what actions it took, how many pages they devoted to it, and so on. It’s a little troubling to see a court trying to unpack the adequacy of this type of analysis, because that’s inherently a very difficult thing for a court to get its head around.”

The Forestry Source- This is my favorite SAF publication and often has articles of interest. You don’t have to be a member of SAF to subscribe. Anyone wishing to subscribe can go to this page: and click on Subscribe. Costs $42 for individuals, $79 for institutions. This page has info for all of SAF’s publications.

Shrinking the Carbon Footprint -Biomass Grants to U of M

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Here’s an article on biomass at U of M- “University of Montana officials hope to shrink the carbon footprint of campus by nearly a quarter by building a $16 million, wood-fired, biomass boiler onto the existing heating plant.”

Julie Kies coordinates the Fuels for Schools and Beyond program with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. She said the biomass plant proposal represents proven technology, as forest-products mills have used similar technology to heat their facilities for decades. In addition, 10 Montana public schools already use similar technology, as does UM-Western in Dillon and the University of Idaho in Moscow.

“What sets the UM plan apart is its scale, though it still won’t be as large as the co-generation facilities used by mills,” Kies said. “But it would be the largest such plant used at a Montana educational facility.”

Duringer said the University of South Carolina completed a similar project with mixed results that UM has learned from. Other campuses now introducing biomass plants include the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

In addition to the University of Montana, the DNRC awarded grants to two other area projects. Mineral Community Hospital in Superior received $175,000 for its biomass energy facility that will serve the hospital, elementary school, and high school. Clark Fork Valley Hospital in Plains received $104,000 for its wood pellet-based biomass energy system.

Here is another piece:

Julie Kies, DNRC Biomass Program Manager, sees the expansion of biomass utilization in Montana as a positive for both local economies and the state’s forest industry. The Montana Fuels for Schools and Beyond Program has helped to fund and implement 10 other biomass energy projects in Montana, starting with the pilot project at Darby School in 2003. We’re pleased to see woody biomass energy expanding to other facilities in the state including hospitals and university campuses, she said. Information about DNRC’s Biomass Utilization Program can be found online at http://dnrc.mt.gov/forestry/assistance/biomass

Station Fire in LA Times

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Forest Service firefighters try to keep flames from jumping Angeles Crest Highway on the critical second day of the Station fire. They did not succeed, and the six-week blaze became the largest in Los Angeles County history, scorching 250 square miles and destroying more than 200 structures. (Al Seib, Los Angeles Times / August 26, 2009)

Here’s the article.
Working in fire suppression seems like a hopeless “darned if you do darned if you don’t” in an atmosphere of intense political pressure (to save money AND put out fires), knowing there’ll be a later maelstrom of finger-pointing and Monday morning quarterbacking, with some threats of personal liability thrown in for good measure. Don’t know how they put up with it, but I’m glad they do.
Thank you, firefighters!

Travel Management on the W-W

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Richard Cockle/The Oregonian Randy James, operator of an Enterprise ATV and motorcycle shop, and ex-logger Larry Cribbs of La Grande repair a damaged sign that takes issue with a forthcoming travel management plan expected to prohibit motorized vehicles on much of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest.

This article from the Oregonian is full of interesting observations.. travel management is a big workload in the FS administrative appeals department right now and there may be more controversy as implementation of the travel management rule moves forward.  So  I added a new blog category for travel management.

Anyway, here are a couple of observations of interest.

Once in place, the plan will require forest users to consult a free map before setting off, Christensen said. Roads designated off-limits won’t be gated or marked, but straying onto a closed road could mean a $5,000 fine, she said.

“It is going to be a change in mindset for people to learn that when you are on the national forest these are the rules you’ve got to play by,” Christensen said.

The following two statements appear to be a bit in conflict

On the Wallowa-Whitman, fewer than 1 percent of visitors ride OHVs, said Randy Rasmussen of Corvallis, spokesman for the American Hiking Society. While their numbers are few, more control and management of them would help establish the Wallowa-Whitman as a preferred destination for hikers, equestrians, bird watchers and hunters — the ” so-called “quiet recreationists,” he said.

And

People widely use Wallowa-Whitman forest roads for sightseeing, cruising on ATVs, hunting deer, elk, chukar partridges and grouse, gathering winter firewood, huckleberrying and picking mushrooms.

Unless there are people, who, when taken together, compose less than 1% of total visitors, but those individuals widely use the forest roads? It seems confusing.

This one was of particular interest to me, as recently I attended a meeting with interest groups where one of the major topics was to make sure that NEPA did not form an obstacle to collaboration in landscape scale planning efforts. But we did not talk about consultation specifically at our meeting.

Early in the process, the Forest Service and public enjoyed “wide open and constant communication,” he said, but that’s changed with the entry of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Excluding the public isn’t unusual when federal agencies meet, said Judy Wing , a Forest Service spokeswoman in Baker City. “Consultation is not a public process,” she said.

That may be, but as with clearance of rules, I think agencies with opinions should document them and provide for public comment and discussion on their opinions. Speaking as a scientist, I think it would be a great opportunity for real- world science education if the dialogue among scientists and practitioners in the different agencies could be made public. I think it would be hard to achieve the kind of collaboration we all would prefer when there are periodic information blackouts.

The Community, Fuel Treatment and Industry Nexus in Colorado

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Photo by Matt Stensland

I thought it was interesting that while we were discussing the 78 acres of WUI fuel treatments in roadless on the Umpqua, the Denver Post published this article this morning.

In addition, regional foresters are planning to remove dead trees from another 33,224 acres the next year, he said.

One challenge facing contractors is getting rid of the cut trees. Timber mills in Montrose and the San Luis Valley and a pellet factory in Kremmling have been hard-pressed to pay loggers enough to make that tree-removal work profitable.

Forest Service contracting officials say they pay around $1,200 per acre for selective removal of dead trees.

As firefighters on Wednesday worked to shore up lines around the wildfire west of Fraser, Town Manager Jeff Durbin said he and other local leaders are looking to meet with Forest Service officials.

Federal land managers haven’t removed enough of the beetle-kill trees that pose threats, Durbin said.

“Wildfire mitigation is really important business,” and this week’s fire heightened concerns about intense fires spreading from federal land, he said.

“You could see, from town, the flames. It was frightening.”

Interaction of Fire Exclusion and Logging- UM Paper

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Thanks to Matthew Koehler for this find.

UM Study Finds Logged Forests More Prone To Severe Wildfires
Oct. 04, 2010

UM Press Release: http://news.umt.edu/2010/10/100110fire.aspx

Copy of Ecological Applications article: http://rintintin.colorado.edu/~cana4848/papers/Naficy_et_al_2010_Ecol_App.pdf

Contact:
Anna Sala, professor, UM Division of Biological Sciences, 406-243-6009, [email protected] .

MISSOULA – Historically logged forest sites are denser and potentially more prone to severe wildfires and insect outbreaks than unlogged, fire-excluded forests and should be considered a high priority for fuel-reduction treatments, according to a new University of Montana study.

Anna Sala and Cameron Naficy, the lead researchers in the study, published an article on these findings in the most recent issue of the journal Ecological Applications. Sala is a professor in UM’s Division of Biological Sciences, and Naficy graduated with a master’s degree from UM in 2008.

Sala and Naficy’s study compared logged, fire-excluded sites to unlogged, fire-excluded sites in forests mainly consisting of ponderosa pines. The study covered a broad region spanning the Continental Divide of the Northern Rockies, from central Montana to central Idaho.

The findings contradict much of the conventional wisdom defining current U.S. forest policy, which assumes that increases in forest density, which in turn increase the susceptibility to severe wildfires or insect outbreaks, are primarily caused by fire suppression.

“This is an important finding because it highlights that vegetation management can result in long-lasting changes to forests that are likely to affect how large-scale disturbances, such as wildfires or insect outbreaks, play out on the landscape well into the future,” Naficy said.

“Furthermore, it shows that previously harvested and unharvested forests have very different restoration needs and fire hazard potential,” Sala said. “This recognition should go a long way in helping land managers to prioritize restoration and fuel-reduction efforts where they are most likely to be successful.”

For more information, call Sala at 406-243-6009, e-mail [email protected] or e-mail Naficy at [email protected] .

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Naficy, Cameron, Anna Sala, Eric G. Keeling, Jon Graham, and Thomas H. DeLuca. 2010. Interactive effects of historical logging and fire exclusion on ponderosa pine forest structure in the northern Rockies. Ecological Applications 20:1851-1864. [doi:10.1890/09-0217.1]

Increased forest density resulting from decades of fire exclusion is often perceived as the leading cause of historically aberrant, severe, contemporary wildfires and insect outbreaks documented in some fire-prone forests of the western United States. Based on this notion, current U.S. forest policy directs managers to reduce stand density and restore historical conditions in fire-excluded forests to help minimize high-severity disturbances. Historical logging, however, has also caused widespread change in forest vegetation conditions, but its long-term effects on vegetation structure and composition have never been adequately quantified. We document that fire-excluded ponderosa pine forests of the northern Rocky Mountains logged prior to 1960 have much higher average stand density, greater homogeneity of stand structure, more standing dead trees and increased abundance of fire-intolerant trees than paired fire-excluded, unlogged counterparts. Notably, the magnitude of the interactive effect of fire exclusion and historical logging substantially exceeds the effects of fire exclusion alone. These differences suggest that historically logged sites are more prone to severe wildfires and insect outbreaks than unlogged, fire-excluded forests and should be considered a high priority for fuels reduction treatments. Furthermore, we propose that ponderosa pine forests with these distinct management histories likely require distinct restoration approaches. We also highlight potential long-term risks of mechanical stand manipulation in unlogged forests and emphasize the need for a long-term view of fuels management.

The Roaded Roadless Paradox

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This post is not really about the multifaceted and fascinating roadless controversies; it’s about clarity of communication in the press-where citizens should become informed on public policy issues.

Suppose you read this piece, “Forest Service cuts back logging in Oregon roadless area on fire safety project”

Here’s a quote:

The project scaled back commercial logging from 621 acres within roadless areas to 78 acres. It is all along a road on the western side of Diamond Lake that serves 102 private cabins on federal land, Dils said. Without the logging there is nowhere for firefighters to make a stand against a fire moving out of the roadless area toward the cabins, Dils said.

“When they designed this plan it really looked like they wanted to test the limits of the Obama administration on roadless,” said Steve Pedery, conservation director for Oregon Wild. “And from our cursory look the new plan looks like it scaled that way, way back, but it seems they still can’t resist pushing the envelope a little bit.”

People who take the English language literally might wonder how cutting trees along a road would impact “roadless” values.

I italicized the sentence about the fuelbreak for firefighters because that is a very clear statement of the objectives of fuel treatment in a WUI area, whether the trees are dead or alive.

Here’s another quote:

The two-year-old project was widely seen as a test of President Barack Obama’s campaign promise to protect the 58 million acres of backcountry that has never been commercially logged on national forests across the country.

But how can an area next to a road be considered “backcountry”? I am mystified as to why this apparent paradox does not seem to be addressed in this article.

Judith Curry on Climate Models

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In my world, seems like you can’t go to a meeting without someone telling you that you need to change your plans or management on the basis of climate models. Based on years of experience with relatively “simple” vegetation models and a healthy respect for the complexity of Nature, I tend to be a bit skeptical about spending the taxpayer’s dollars doing this, as opposed to a “no-regrets” approach to climate adaptation. The topic of models and how strongly we hold to their predictions is even related to the requirements of the new planning rule.

I ran across this piece (the first in a series) by Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech, that was thought-provoking and also at a level of detail and complexity that feels about right for me. These should be required reading for anyone who is responsible for making investments in resource management or research in the light of climate change, in my view.

Also, kudos to Curry for her blog. Blogs may well be the most powerful form of “extension” (as in research, education and extension), and science education for the public, for the 21st Century.

Here’s a quote:

Returning to the question raised in the title of this post, we have learned much from climate models about how the climate system works. But I think the climate modeling enterprise is putting the cart before the horse in terms of attempting a broad range of applications that include prediction of regional climate change, largely driven by needs of policy makers. Before attempting such applications, we need a much more thorough exploration of how we should configure climate models and test their fitness for purpose. An equally important issue is how we should design climate model experiments in the context of using climate models to test hypotheses about how the climate system works, which is a nontrivial issue particularly given the ontic uncertainties. Until we have achieved such an improved understanding, the other applications are premature and are detracting resources (computer and personnel) from focusing on these more fundamental issues.

As a person who must deal with those attempting to influence policy through linking biological and climate models, I must say I enjoyed this exchange in the comments on the post:

Jim | October 3, 2010 at 10:14 pm | Reply

I guess throwing in biological processes would be darn near impossible and just pile on the pandemonium.

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curryja | October 4, 2010 at 10:41 am | Reply

Well the good (?) news is that the community is going towards Earth Systems Models that includes human systems and biology, driven by “policy” needs. IMO this is not the optimal way to use resources to get to the heart of the climate modeling problem

More on Rec Fees and 14ers..

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Here’s a piece in New West today.
Here are some quotes:

STATE OF THE FOURTEENERS

As far as the peaks themselves are concerned, however, the USFS proposal is coming from a real place. The ecosystem at 14,000 feet is very fragile and overuse is a true problem in certain areas, particularly those summits that have easy, almost drive-up access.

“There is plenty of scientific data that shows how the effect of a human walking across the tundra is very different from someone walking across the grass in Denver or Fort Collins,” explains Ryan Hollamby, a graduate student in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, who has spent the past year climbing almost every one of Colorado’s 54 fourteeners. “The high country ecosystems are very fragile.”

In particular, Hollamby says, crowds at high elevations contribute greatly to increased erosion and overall pollution, both in the form of human waste and general hiker garbage. Beyond that is the sometimes unseen impact that use can have on animal movements.

“When we see bighorns down by campsites, people don’t think about how they’re changing the animals’ movements and their behaviors,” Hollamby says, explaining that many high country species are attracted to the salt found in human urine. “But we’re altering their patterns more than many people realize by not practicing good, ethical hiking.”

TOWARD A SOLUTION

But will a fee help solve the problem? So far, the consensus is “no.” Although something needs to be done to better protect the fourteeners, most watchers feel that a fee is not the best way to go about it.

“Any person who goes up [to the basin] on a busy weekend will understand why the Forest Service is doing what they’re doing,” says Hollamby, “It’s a mess up there. But there are better ways to combat it – making approaches longer, making trailheads less accessible.”

Is it about regulating people’s behavior or just keeping them out? A fundamental question for 21st Century public land management.