Fire and Fuels

Utah’s High Elevation Mortality

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This picture is located within the Cedar Breaks National Monument, where conifer mortality is quite excessive. There is really not much that can be done with this situation, other than spending lots of money to fell, pile and burn. Within the Dixie National Forest, this mortality dominates the upper elevations. Even at this altitude of over 10,000 feet, the land is very dry for 9 months, except for seasonal lightning storms. Like some of our public lands, we need a triage system to deal with such overwhelming mortality and fuels build-ups. In this example, we are too late to employ a market-based solution, which would do more non-commercial work.

I have seen this area over many years, and have watched as forests die and rot, with catastrophic wildfire being the “end game”. Anyone venture a guess at what will grow here, in the future?

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California’s Dense Forests Present New Opportunities

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Forestry operations and bioenergy have been part of the economic and social fabric in Northern California for decades. A five-year study produced in 2009 by the USDA Forest Service modeled forest management under different scenarios across 2.7 million acres encompassing the Feather River watershed. The model’s time horizon spanned four decades, examining wildfire behavior, forest thinning operations and a range of environmental and economic impacts. It concluded that in virtually every aspect analyzed, managing forest resources and utilizing biomass for energy production provides significant advantages over the status quo.

With acres per wildfire going WAY up, thinning projects seem to be the way to go to reduce both wildfire sizes and wildfire intensities. Again, we have strict diameter limits in the Sierra Nevada, and clearcutting has been banned since 1993.

The link is here

Group Hails Forest Cooperation

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I saw a local article about our part of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program.

For the first time in many years, loggers and conservation groups are working together and the results have been stunning, according to Katherine Evatt, president of the Pine Grove-based Foothill Conservancy.

The Amador Calaveras Consensus Group has been working in the Stanislaus and Eldorado national forests on projects that are part of a larger national program called Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration.

The goal is to restore forests for people, water and wildlife, and a report released in December shows some of those goals are being met.

The ACCG Cornerstone Project is one of 23 national projects that split $40 million in 2012. According to the fiscal year-end report for the project, the two forests spent more than $658,000 in CFLRA funds this year, matched by more than $433,000 of other Forest Service funds. There was more than $67,700 in ACCG in-kind partner contributions and more than $1 million in leverage funds from ACCG members. Additional funds included a $196,000 grant from the Coca-Cola Company as well as $283,000 worth of in-service work under stewardship contracts.

The article is here

Update From the Fremont-Winema NF

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(One of my pictures from the Biscuit Fire)

From Greg Walden’s Facebook posting:

I just got off the phone with Kent Connaughton, the Forest Service’s Regional Forester for Oregon. In September, I brought Kent to Lakeview to meet with landowners who suffered horrible losses of timber and livestock during the Barry Point fire. These landowners are very concerned with how the Forest Service fought the fire and are trying to figure out how to cope with the losses they’ve suffered

.Kent gave me a status update tonight, and here is what I learned:

1) The Forest Service is conducting an independent review of its own operations during the Barry Point fire. It is still in the works, but Kent believes it raises a number of unanswered questions, and he has asked for a more formal review by the states of Oregon and California. He will share a copy of the report once it is completed next month, and I look forward to getting to the bottom of these unanswered questions.

2) Kent has sent a special team into the Fremont-Winema National Forest to ensure there is no disruption in timber supply due to the fires. The Forest Service has also announced it will make 30 million board feet of timber available for each of the next two years, double the current production.

3) Kent also gave me an update on the Forest Service’s work with affected ranchers and landowners on recovery and repair to fences and property damaged during the fire. The Forest Service is putting $100,000 into the repair of fences destroyed during firefighting, and an additional $350,000 for materials to repair fences destroyed by the fire. Additionally, the Farm Services Administration is making $196,000 available to landowners for use in repairs.

It is good news that this fire recovery work continues, but we need to see it through to the finish. I will continue to work with citizens recovering from these wildfire disasters and make sure that all levels of government are helping with recovery as quickly as possible.

“Fuel Treatments Can Address Wildfire Severity”

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The Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project (SNAMP) is a joint effort by the University of California, state and federal agencies, and the public formed in 2004 to assess how treatments designed by the USDA Forest Service to prevent severe wildfires affect fire risk, sensitive wildlife populations, forest health and water resources. SNAMP is in year five of an ambitious 7-year experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of management strategies to modify fire behavior across the landscape.

SNAMP has examined real-world fires and developed computer models to evaluate wildfire severity and environmental impacts in response to fuel-reduction treatments looking 30 years to the future. In its Northern Sierra project covering roughly 30,000 acres, SNAMP evaluated three different treatment scenarios. In each case, fuels were reduced across approximately one-third of the study area, and all treatments showed substantial reductions in high-intensity wildfire across the landscape, not just treated areas for 20 years after implementation.

This is from California Forests Magazine, and this issue is full of articles about severe wildfires. The whole article is here. The picture is one of mine from the Lassen National Forest’s 1987 Lost Fire.

Pine Regeneration: Bridge Fire, Bryce Canyon National Park

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The 2009 Bridge Fire was started by lightning, and burned in both the Dixie National Forest and Bryce Canyon National Park. Since the fire didn’t closely approach structures, the fire was allowed to burn to the road, and in some places, to the rim.

Mortality was pretty severe but, there were still some green trees scattered about. It is hard to say if there has been a good cone year, since the fire. I didn’t see a single live new tree in this particular area.

I did see this dwarf Oregon grape but, it really wasn’t a surprise, since I had seen them growing among the hoodoos.

I also saw some manzanita and ceanothus becoming re-established, along with other desert brush species.

As the years go on, the odds for having a pine forest soon are worsening. At 9000 feet in elevation, this is a pretty harsh environment for any tree. I posted most of these pictures in high resolution, so you can see the vegetation easily, if you click on them. You cannot judge pine regeneration after only a few years but, in this case, pine regeneration looks very poor.

To see the pictures from my Bryce Canyon and Zion National Park adventures, go see my Facebook page, please. These include the Peekaboo trail in Bryce Canyon, and “The Narrows” in Zion National Park.

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New Age Forestry Project in California

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This is an example of what our thinning projects look like, when completed. As you can see, the stand is still well-stocked, and ladder fuels have been removed. You can also see that the stand will be resilient and that all the logging slash has been removed, as well. In looking closer, I’m not seeing any damaged trees, as well. Additionally, no large trees ( over 30″ dbh ) were cut, unless they could fall and hit the adjacent highway.

This logging was done during this season, and work is continuing in other units. The project is quite visual, being all along a major Sierra Nevada highway. We call this style of project “thinning from below”. Any thoughts?

Retaining Snag Habitat

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Here is a view of some other cutting units within the Power Fire. Above the road were tractor units, and a narrow stretch below the road, due to stream buffers, was helicopter yarded. Again, you see ample snag “recruitment”, years after salvage logging. Remember, we were also salvaging some trees with poor live/dead crown ratios. I do know that the marking was aggressive, as I did much of the inevitable follow-up marking, during the summer season.

What is really interesting about the tractor unit is how well the logger’s “alternate method” worked. My logger had a processor/loader, an excavator with a grapple attachment, a dozer and two skidders. The excavator would go out on the skid trails and grab/bundle the logs to orient them where the skidder can “grab-and-go”. Their crew was very experienced and efficient, not making messes they would have to clean up.

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The Power Fire, and the Blackbacked Woodpecker

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This helicopter unit experienced significant dieback, even as the fallers returned multiple times. The marking guidelines allowed for cutting trees with low crown ratios, and with the Forest Service getting projects together so quickly (six months!), the bark beetles hadn’t run their course, yet. In addition to the snag specifications in the project’s plans, you can clearly see that there are a great many more snags now, than the plans required. Also important in this is that snag of certain sizes had to be cut and flown out, as part of the fuels treatment (a HUGE expenditure!)  The Power Fire salvage project was halted by the Ninth Circuit Court, due to the new salvage marking guidelines, and a perceived need for more blackbacked woodpecker analysis. The cutting unit below was completed, though.

Also seen in the foreground is that nasty bear clover, which will dominate, until it is shaded out, or killed with herbicides. It is great to have this smelly carpet (AKA mountain misery) under a nice canopy but, in this case, it will hinder all trees from germinating and growing. Their roots can go 12 feet deep. Even the deerbrush is kept at bay by the bear clover.

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