Can Prescribed Fires Mitigate Health Harm?

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Many thanks to Anonymous for linking to this paper comparing what is known about health effects from wildfire compared to prescribed fire smoke.  I think it’s interesting how this recently became popular to study; it illustrates that absence of evidence was not evidence of absence. It was just a function of who is holding the science flashlight and funding.  This study was funded by the American Lung Association.  It also points to programs of interest to those who breath wildfire and prescribed fire smoke, which can be many of us as the summer sets in. It also makes us, of course, even more concerned about wildland firefighters’ exposure.

Here’s the prescribed fire part of the summary.

 

Page 6 | Summary
Prescribed fires are implemented under planned, predictable circumstances where additional measures can be taken to minimize exposures. While there are existing regulations, guidelines and long–term land management practices in place that aim to minimize the smoke impacts from prescribed fire, expanded prescribed fire activities should be coupled with additional policies and best practices to mitigate potential harmful smoke exposure. Effective prescribed fire policies and best practices should include consideration of: fuel type and loadings; ambient air quality levels; potential for air quality standard exceedances; proximity to residential communities and vulnerable populations; the availability of advanced warning and notification systems; more comprehensive air monitoring efforts; and forecasting tools for use in fire management planning. Additionally, future policies should encourage strategies to further mitigate potentially harmful impacts from prescribed fire smoke, such as: (1) improved prescribed fire management planning by conducting more air quality monitoring during burn activities and expanding prescribed fire reporting and public notification; (2) utilization and/or further development of tools to forecast potential prescribed fire impacts; and (3) implementation of interventions and other mitigation efforts that reduce exposures, such as portable air cleaners and residential heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, among others.


Further research is needed to evaluate comparative risks of prescribed fire smoke and wildfire. Research focused on the comparative health risks of prescribed fire and wildfire is currently very limited. Future research on the air quality and health impacts of biomass smoke should include an assessment of the health impacts from prescribed fire smoke.

 

The below is about “Smoke-Ready Communities” an EPA program:

The “Smoke–Ready Community” framework also provides a comprehensive approach to prepare communities for wildfire and ultimately reduce harms to public health and safety. As defined by the U.S. EPA, a Smoke–Ready Community is a community: (1) with public buildings equipped with filtration for fire smoke; (2) whose residents understand the health risks associated with smoke exposure and can readily access tools to protect their health; and (3) with available resources aimed to help those most vulnerable to smoke exposures (McGown, 2020; U.S. EPA, 2018).


Additionally, the U.S. EPA provides a “Smoke–Ready Toolbox” to prepare fire–prone communities for wildfire smoke events (U.S. EPA, 2018). This toolbox provides information, trainings and measures the public can use to understand and reduce potential health risks and reduce health impacts before, during, and after a wildfire event occurs (U.S. EPA, 2018). These include resources such as: online training for health care providers to better understand how wildfire smoke can impact their patients’ health; health and wildfire preparedness fact sheets, which provide information on how to reduce your smoke exposure, how to protect your
children, pets, and/or large animals from smoke and ash exposure, and indoor air filtration options, among others; information related to public notification systems and the best ways to stay informed during a wildfire event; and recommended supplies to take with you in the event of an evacuation (among others) (U.S. EPA, 2018). Measures identified within this toolbox can also be applied to help mitigate the impacts from prescribed fire events as well, and have been implemented in communities across the U.S., including in California, Oregon, and Washington (McGown, 2020; Troisi, 2021).

The below is only part of the table in the report..

 

TSW Reporter Info Request: Relatively Urgent: Context for Forest Plan Objections

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One of the goals of TSW has always been to help reporters gain context for their stories, and to provide a means for doing so by using our network to find knowledgeable people on a given topic.

So… this question is about Forest plan objections.  Does anyone know who is tracking the different ways Forests are going about conducting the objection process? Does anyone know who is tracking the success of the results, and/or thinking about what metrics might be used to do so?

If we jointly don’t know any folks (including academics, of course) doing that, is there anyone out there who could talk about their own experiences of conducting or participating in the forest plan objection process?

If you don’t feel comfortable posting, just email me at terraveritas at gmail and I will forward to the reporter.

Thanks in advance!!

Judge Agrees with Forest Service and USFWS About Green River Drift Trail

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And Wyofile gets the trifecta for stories today, although I’m not a fan of the headline.

Judge tosses protest of grazing plan that threatens 72 grizzlies

I think, so far as I can tell, that the judge determined the grazing plan actually didn’t threaten them.  Seems like a critical distinction to me.  What interests me about these conflicts is that grizzlies are expanding their numbers and range, so it seems like it would be hard to argue that continuing the same kind of management is bad for them. But maybe not.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal decided May 16 that officials with the Bridger-Teton National Forest and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service followed federal environmental laws when approving the grazing plan for 8,772 cow-calf pairs and yearlings and 47 horses. Grazing on 170,643 acres at the upper end of the Green River Drift trail is unlikely to jeopardize Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzlies or the Kendall Warm Springs dace — species protected by the federal Endangered Species Act — the judge ruled.

Federal and state wildlife managers removed 35 grizzlies from the grazing allotments from 2010 to 2018 for depredating on cattle but that pace could be accelerated “in light of increased conflicts due to a growing grizzly population within the project area,” the judge’s order states. Even though grizzlies are still protected by the ESA, their comeback from the brink of extirpation has met recovery criteria since 2004, the decision states.

“This could have a beneficial effect on the [Kendall Warm Springs] dace habitat.”

JUDGE NANCY FREUDENTHAL, PARAPHRASING FEDERAL SCIENTISTS

Because of ecosystem-wide monitoring, management and limits on bear killings, the judge agreed with federal scientists that “the level of projected mortality caused by the project will not appreciably reduce the population, distribution, or reproduction of GYE grizzlies.”

Likewise, the cattle grazing at the north end of the Wind River Range in Sublette County likely won’t affect the continued existence of the dace, a species of small fish found only in 328 yards of the Kendall Warm Springs and its outflow to the Green River. Freudenthal agreed with scientists who said that driving cattle across the spring and its channel “could actually result in beneficial effects to the dace.”

Transmission Lines Complete: Wyoming Ready for Massive Wind Development: Wyofile

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Here’s another one from Wyofile; we’ve talked about the Sierra Madre Chokecherry build-out before.  Two things I’ve noticed from attending public meetings on powerlines here in Colorado.  First, no one talks about how many new wind farms are expected in acres.  That’s possibly because they don’t know, the way it works is that once the powerlines are there, companies will then develop windfarms.

A person might wonder how that might fit with goals, say of some large  foundations and others to “protect” 50% of the western US.  Also the 30 by 30 effort of the Biden Admin and others.

Another topic raised by affected communities in Colorado is “why do we need to incur environmental damage so that other states have “cleaner” electricity?  Or in Colorado, if it’s not for our own use, but for Denver?  Is that just another example of the Interior West resources being used for urban areas?

And finally our friends at CBD and others are concerned about critters who mostly care about disturbed habitat and getting killed by blades (I’m thinking that ultimately there will be a tech solution to that one); it doesn’t matter to those critters if it’s an oil and gas road or a windfarm road. So it will be interesting for us to watch how all this plays out over time.

The added transmission capacity and increased number of “on-ramps” and “off-ramps” that the transmission lines would provide to Wyoming and the western grid set the stage for a major buildout of wind turbines in the state. When completed, that extra capacity and interconnectivity would also provide PacifiCorp — and possibly others — the ability to retire coal-fired power units in the state by meeting several new state-level power delivery and reliability requirements, according to University of Wyoming energy economist Rob Godby.

PacifiCorp’s Gateway South transmission line is part of the utility’s larger Energy Gateway Transmission project. (PacifiCorp)

“When you have a more flexible system, it’s just less likely that you need coal,” Godby said. “You can rely on a more flexible set of generation alternatives, and that old fossil fuel backbone [coal-fired power] is less relevant.”

Adding interstate transmission capacity — and therefore boosting the ability to move power in and out of Wyoming as needed — is integral to PacifiCorp’s plans to meet the state’s reliability standards, according to PacifiCorp spokesperson David Eskelsen.

“The Gateway South and Segment D.1 transmission projects were modeled in the 2021 [integrated resource plan] as key to system reliability as the energy transition is expected to continue,” Eskelsen told WyoFile.

Moo calves disco up the Green River, griz and wolves not invited: from Wyofile

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Somewhere along the lines of discussing prescribed fire and slash burning, someone raised the point of “don’t our technologies allow us to monitor hot spots better?”  Which reminded me of this “cool technology to help reduce environmental conflicts.”

It’s about flashing lights that help protect livestock from predation, thanks to Wyofile.  This is not the ultimate solution, as mammals can adapt fairly readily, but perhaps will work for a while. Check out the video.

Nevertheless, even substandard prototype flashtags were effective when they were first tried out in summer 2021. One goal of that trial, attempted with a sheep herd near Stanley, Idaho, was to see if the motion-triggered flashing bothered the livestock.

“We actually would go out at sunset and sunrise and collect behavioral data on the sheep, to see if they were behaving differently than the ones that weren’t wearing the tags,” Young said. “We weren’t seeing any differences.”

At the same time, the LED lights did seem to afford some protection against predators. About 75 of the 300-member Idaho sheep herd got the flashtags, and although just 25% were lit, the whole population held up.

“Every year that same herd suffers depredation by wolves,” Young said, “and last summer there were no depredations by wolves.”

Some early results from a much more extensive trial in 2022 are equally promising. That one involved a Utah woolgrower who was experiencing “severe” coyote depredation on his small herd, Young said. All seven sheep that remained in that band got the flashtags.

“One of the sheep stuck its head through a fence and ended up ripping out the ear tag,” Young said. “And that was the only sheep that got killed by a coyote since we put the ear tags in.”

For his dissertation, Utah State University PhD student Aaron Bott, whom Young is advising, is investigating how wolves use human-dominated landscapes in order to mitigate conflicts. One chapter looks at the flashtags, 4,000 of which are being deployed in Arizona, New Mexico, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Wyoming after Amazon.com’s car rim lights were cleaned out.

Thinning increases forest resiliency

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This open-access paper provides more science that supports thinning projects. As important as the findings are, it’s common sense that thinning is a positive: Fewer trees competing for water = more water in soils and watersheds. Granted, this study looked at conditions during an unprecedented drought in 2021. The principles apply during average summers, too, in arid regions. What’s more, thinning reduces competition for light and nutrients.

Abstract

Regional droughts are now widespread and are projected to further increase. Semi-arid ponderosa pine forests across the western USA, which occupy > 56 million ha, are experiencing unprecedented levels of drought due to the currently ongoing North American megadrought. Using unpiloted aerial vehicle (UAV) thermal images and ground-based hyperspectral data, here we show that ponderosa pine forest canopy temperatures increased during the 2021 summer drought up to 34.6 °C, far above a typical canopy temperature when ponderosa pine trees no longer uptake carbon. We infer that much of the western US ponderosa pine forests likely served as a net carbon source rather than a sink during the 2021 summer drought period. We also demonstrate that regional forest restoration thinning significantly reduced the drought impacts. Thinned ponderosa pine forests had significantly lower increase in canopy temperature and canopy water stress during the drought period compared to the non-thinned forest stands. Furthermore, our extensive soil moisture network data indicate that available soil moisture in the thinned forest was significantly greater at all soil depths of 25 cm, 50 cm, and 100 cm compared to the non-thinned forest, where soil moisture dry-down in the spring started significantly earlier and stayed dry for one month longer causing critical water stress for trees. Forest restoration thinning benefits that are otherwise unappreciated during average precipitation years are significantly amplified during unprecedented drought periods.

Trust through a Smokey Wire Lens: I. Individual Aspects: Guest Post by Peter Williams

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I asked Peter to reflect on what trust means and how it can be improved. He generously contributed this series; this is the first of three parts. Thank you, Peter!

Sharon and I, along with several other folks, have been sharingideas about trust for some time here, especially recently and often around issues of wildland fire and prescribed burning. The main reason is, when it comes to public land management and natural resource management these days, many might say that trust is the coin of the realm. And, today, especially with wildland fire, stakes are getting higher and that coin is getting more valuable.

What do we mean by coin here?  Well, when you have trust, you can get things done that might not otherwise be possible, you have earned trust that is like capital you can spend.  When you don’t have it, it’s like having a deficit, a lack of capital.  Even little things can take a big investment, often of other types of power but also often of real money, real capital.  

Chief Moore recently ordered a pause on prescribed fires of USFS managed lands in part because of a loss of confidence, very related to trust (see TSW discussion HERE). Even much smaller, very local issues are often driven by trust or its absence. 

But trust is one of those words, like power.  We all think we know what it means, at least in some basic way.  The more I look at it, though, the more convinced I am that trust has more depth and nuance as a concept than many of us realize.  Perhaps more importantly, there are those pesky questions about how to build trust, how to keep it, how to work with it so it grows as part of a virtuous cycle and doesn’t become part of a viciousone. 

I’ve found it helpful to look at trust in two ways.  One is psychological because trust starts with individuals and is very personal.  The other is sociological because trust works in verysocial ways.  This article will focus on the psychological aspects and a second one will talk about the more sociological aspects.  A final third article will try to tie some of these threads together in a discussion about building, keeping, and working with trust and with the understanding of trust suggested in the first two articles.

Psychologically, trust is often understood as having three interrelated aspects: cognitive, emotional, and behavioral.  Cognitively, trust is based on what you think you know about a person or organization, a cognitive understanding of something that has happened in the past.  Cognition, then, is the thinking, rational part of trust, the perception part. 

Trust also is based on how you respond emotionally to what you think you know, like when you commit emotionally to what you believe about how a person or organization will behave in the future.  Confidence in future behavior is a form of emotional trust.  In a sense, emotion is the belief and feeling part of trust, what you feel or believe because of what you perceive. 

Lastly, trust is also based in how a person behaves in response to what they feel and think, in response to emotion and cognition. In this sense, trust doesn’t exist unless someone is willing to act or behave in a trusting manner, unless there is a manifestation. Behavior, then, is the action part of trust, how you behave in response to what you perceive and feel. 

Seeing trust as having these three psychological aspects—what you think, what you believe, and how you act—is helpful for at least two main reasons.  First, it suggests that each informs the others, so understanding and thinking about all three is important.  For example, if someone behaves like they trust you, you can assume they know or believe something good about your past behavior and are willing to believe your future behavior also will be good, however they might define good.  Similarly, whether you perceive or think someone’s behavior is trustworthy is typically informed by what you believe or feel about that person, their organization, their community. 

Second, this understanding of trust also suggests severalapproaches to building trust and an advantage to pursuing thosesimultaneously.  To build trust, for example, you can behave in trustworthy ways others can experience and, thus, establish a cognitive basis for them to trust you.  You might also appeal to someone on an emotional level, in a sense inviting them to see your behavior as trustworthy. And you can invite behavior from them that will build trust in others, that will encourage others to trust them.

Something to think about too is the relationship between trust and perceptions of risk.  To build trust, for example, behaving in trustworthy ways often means behaving in ways that allow others to feel less at risk, less exposed.  But what does that look like?  

The key, it would seem, is to have some reasonable understanding—even if just a reasonable guess—of what makesthose folks feel at risk, what makes them feel vulnerable.  For wildland fire, is it risk of property loss?  Perhaps its risk tohealth or even personal safety.  It also could be risk tocommunity, a loss of identity of some sort.  Maybe it’s a loss of control. And these possible risks are typically related to each other, meaning it’s important to think about a range of plausible perceptions of risk, as opposed to worrying about which are most shared or some measure like that.

So, this look at a way to understand trust from a psychological perspective gives us some ideas for how to build trust. Yet, trust is also very social, which is what we’ll look at next.

Interpreting the New Mexico Fires. II. Hotshot Wake Up Questions Who’s Shaping the Narrative to What Ends

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The author of the Hotshot Wake Up has some interesting observations and questions about the narrative of the Calf Canyon Fire and what groups might be using the narrative to what ends.

You can get a free 7 day trial of the Hotshot Wakeup.. some excerpts below.

  • Publications that have Government grant money and taxpayer money started to blame the environment for this fire and push a fear based narrative. This now just days before the Feds released their findings.
  • All of these widely spread articles based their stories off the fires in New Mexico. Both now known to be caused by Federal ignitions.

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  • Many political figures in the Federal Government used these fires as a launching pad for new talking points for policy change. When in actuality their employer started

    the very same fires.

Ironic, hypocritical, coincidental, inadvertent, knowingly?

The other thing we saw come out of this was the new “wildfire danger tool” that was pushed by media and politicians that inaccurately showed where housing danger areas were for wildfire. Many mainstream outlets referenced this site when they talked about the homes lost on the Calf Canyon and expressed the need for Government policy change to protect homes. As of today 761 structures have been lost from these Federally set fires.

Again, I am a huge supporter of prescribed fire. I know that mistakes can happen and unintended outcomes can have horrible consequences. What I expect to see is what I’ve seen before. A few regional level and forest level people will get thrown under the bus while DC policy makers continue on ops normal.

It’s amazing that the money being asked for in these policy agendas is a fraction of what it would take to adequately pay our firefighters fairly. Where is the push for this?! Why is this not at the forefront of these news stories? Many in the industry make the argument that the loss of long term qualified people has led to more tragic prescribed burn losses. As we all know staffing issues have plagued the agencies for the last 2-3 years. We have discussed at length why this is.

Things to think about:

  • When did the Feds know the Calf Canyon was self inflicted?
  • Were there any Government PR people giving talking points on policy change in this time period?
  • Was the narrative orchestrated?
  • Why?

My hope is that this creates conversation around how our industry is increasingly being used as a political pawn by both sides. It’s inappropriate and the manipulation of public view is becoming evident. The increased push for International oversight is also gaining media coverage. All things that need to be considered when trying to sift through the noise.

 

Interpreting the New Mexico Fires: I. Who Determines What is Reaction vs. Overreaction?

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As always, you are welcome to add other stories and what you think about them.

This NPR story intrigued me. First the title: New Mexico wildfire sparks backlash against controlled burns. That’s bad for the West.

I think it’s supposed to be a news story not an op-ed. Somewhere along the line I guess it became OK for reporters to make normative claims. The story is fairly long and has a variety of perspectives.

When do we think it’s safe to do dangerous things and why? Nuclear power plants, air travel, pipelines and so on.
How are they regulated? Why do we mostly trust the regulators?

When do we have compassion for the people displaced by accidents? And when do we think that they and their elected representatives might be overreacting? Does it vary by what people caused the accident?

I’d argue that we can hold those ideas at the same time.
1. More prescribed fire would be good
2. Bad things sometimes happen when they get out of control, as bad as “real” wildfire (which we are trying to avoid).
3. The people who have suffered have a right to their emotions (is this one policy area where they are disregarded?) even if the suffering occurs infrequently
4. Ultimately it’s on the people who want prescribed fire to develop social license. Communication, transparency, openness, accountability about what went wrong and what they are going to do to change.

Also I’d argue that if you’re going to write about people impacted by disasters, and there is a substantial body of literature on the topic by social scientists, you might want to interview one.

Forest ecologists and other experts now worry it may prompt a backlash against prescribed burns in New Mexico and across the West, throwing a monkey wrench into this vital forest management tool that experts say needs to be massively scaled-up to help reduce the number, size and intensity of catastrophic fires across the region.

Record-breaking wildfires in California and other states underscore the need to expand intentional burn programs

“There’s already a tremendous amount of backlash,” says James Biggs, who teaches wildfire ecology and fire behavior at New Mexico Highlands University whose campus in Las Vegas, N.M., is near the southern edge of the wildfire.

Biggs says ironically the scale and impact of this blaze underscores precisely why the Western U.S. needs to do more intentional burning after a century-plus policy of suppressing nearly every forest fire, which has resulted in the build up of dangerous and untenable amounts of fuel across forests.

Now I am not a fire scientist, but I think the “scale and impact of this blaze” underscores that prescribed fire/pile burning is dangerous and folks need to be careful to create social license. Trust is about openness, transparency and accountability (and other things).

The New Mexico blaze is deeply concerning, says Rebecca Miller, a scholar with the University of Southern California’s The West on Fire Project. “Because we know that we need to be treating the massive amounts of vegetation that we’ve got across the Western United States, which is a direct result of historic wildfire suppression policies of the 20th century.”

“When we see a prescribed burn, as in New Mexico, that escapes and becomes a massive wildfire that threatens communities, that prompts concerns about the safety of these prescribed burns of this very, very important tool,” Miller at USC says adding, “the vast, vast, vast majority of prescribed burns are conducted safely, do not escape, and you’ll never hear about them.”

Hard data on just how often intentional fires escape their boundaries is hard to come by. But Miller says estimates from the early 2000s show that fewer than 1% of prescribed burns might escape to become a major wildfire. “So we’re talking a really, really small percentage.”

So far, the New Mexico fire has burned more than 300,000 acres, torched hundreds of structures and displaced thousands. The fire is just over 30% contained. The blaze is closing in on 500 square miles burned.

It’s always interesting, as we’ve observed before, when people from elsewhere dismiss people’s concerns with “it doesn’t happen that often.” This is a case where something right goes wrong. Certainly nuclear accidents are rare also, as are gas pipelines blowing up, and so on. Would we dismiss concerns, say, about discrimination, if it “didn’t happen that often?” Also I think other metrics could be used.. like economic damage, health damage, and acres burned up unintentionally. For example, 300K acres is the size of some Ranger Districts.

Biggs, the forestry and fire behavior expert at New Mexico Highlands University, says he understands the angst and frustration. Many of his students and colleagues have had to evacuate or had property damaged.

“Either their homes have been lost or the families’ homes have been lost. We’ve got faculty and staff that have lost homes and it becomes very chaotic and there’s certainly periods of going through this shock,” he says, “and so it’s very difficult to cut through that.”

But Biggs and others are calling for cooler heads to prevail.

“Let’s wait for all the facts and the science” to come out in an investigation, he says. “The backlash that we’re seeing in the media and by the politicians is right now a very emotional argument. The one thing that’s for sure is these are not controlled laboratory experiments,” he says. “And so sometimes these things, you know, are just unpredictable in terms of the weather patterns, and this weather at times was unprecedented.”

Bikes vs. Bovines: Trail Planning in Rural Oregon Meets Opposition

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Nick Smith has a link in today’s newsletter to this article in Singletracks magazine.

About 35 miles from the mountain bike mecca of Bend, Oregon lies Prineville, population 10,429 (2020). Surrounded by Ochoco National Forest (ONF), it is a small town in a rural county in the west that—like so many others—is experiencing change. When the group Ochoco Trails proposed a broad suite of ideas for new trails, improvements to existing trails, horse camps, staging areas and the like over a diverse landscape within the ONF in 2018, they and their many partner organizations had good reason to be encouraged. There was horse stuff for the horse people, bike stuff for the bike people, all with a relatively light footprint on the land and wildlife habitat. What’s not to love?