salvage logging

Throwback Thursday Hits NCFP!

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After the “Siege of 1987”, and 43 wildfires on the Hat Creek Ranger District, in three days, the Lost Fire burned up this forest up on the Hat Creek Rim. Even without terrain effects, this fire raged through the forest incinerating everything in its path. There is an eerie beauty in this picture, reminiscent of an Ansel Adams monochrome image.

high-intensity-burn-web

Today, those forests are growing back, after a big reforestation program, and it appears, a subsequent thinning. Here is a Google Maps view of that area today.

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8027893,-121.4002792,862m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

Already this summer, there has been 3 large wildfires on this Ranger District. It is mostly a dry “eastside pine” forest, requiring trees to be thinned and crowns separated. It appears that the Forest Service is finally seeing that early thinning is key to restoring forests. In the past, it always appeared that they were “gambling” on waiting for the trees to get bigger (and more profitable), before managing their plantations.

Repeat Photography: Part Deux

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It’s kind of a challenge to assemble pictures shot in different years, from different spots, and from different cameras. This is an excellent way to view and monitor trends, showing the public what happens over time to our National Forests. Sometimes, you have to look hard to see the differences. In any future repeat photography projects, I will be using very high resolution, to be able to zoom in really far.

East-Panther-Power-Fire-web

One of the reasons why you don’t see much “recovery” is that the Eldorado National Forest has finally completed their EIS for using herbicides in selected spots, almost 10 years since the fire burned. This is part of the East Bay’s water supply. Sierra Pacific replanted their ground in less than 2 years. So, the blackbacked woodpeckers should be long gone, as their preferred habitat only lasts for an average of 6 years. As these snags fall over, the risk of intense soil damages from re-burn rises dramatically. Somewhere, I have some earlier pictures of this area which may, or may not line up well with this angle. I’ll keep searching through my files to find more views to practice with.

 

Burn Intensity in the Rim Fire

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I ventured into the Rim Fire, where access is (still) very limited, and found a variety of conditions. Along Evergreen Road, on the way into the Hetch Hetchy area of Yosemite National Park, I first saw an area that had a prescribed burn accomplished, a few years ago. A “windshield survey” of that saw that there were plenty of trees surviving. I wasn’t surprised to see scattered mortality. It remains to be seen how many of these green trees already have bark beetles in them. In fact, I’m sure that some trees have changed color since I was there, in late April.

Farther up the road, near the historic Camp Mather, I saw this managed area and wondered why it didn’t survive very well. You can see that understory trees were cut, reducing the ladder fuels. Farther up the gentle slope there appears to be some survivors. All of the trees in this picture are likely candidates for bark beetles, and the green ones can support more than one generation. We are already seeing accelerated bark beetle mortality outside of the fire’s perimeter.

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I scanned around, looking for a reason why the stand had so much mortality. Looking across the road, down the hill, I saw the reason why. It is pretty clear that this stand hadn’t seen any management, and the hot wind from the fire pushed the crown fire across the road. Some of those trees were simply just “cooked” by the hot gases, blowing through their crowns. While I have seen these fire-resilient pines sprout some buds the next spring, few of them survive through the next summer, for multiple reasons.

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With over 250,000 acres burned, of course there will be a varied mosaic, with lots of examples of things we like to talk about, no matter what your point of view is. I will post more examples of what I saw in future posts.

Balanced Post-fire Treatments in the Rim Fire

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I ran across this excellent article from  Eric Holst, Senior Director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s “working lands program”.

Here’s the link: https://www.edf.org/blog/2014/02/18/after-rim-fire-surprising-role-salvage-logging

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This picture is a view looking down into the Tuolumne River Canyon, from the “Rim of the World” overlook. Down there is where the fire started. I’d bet the spin on this wildfire would be VERY different if it was ignited by lightning.

Holst is showing some excellent judgement in looking at the bigger picture of the realities of the Rim Fire, seeing that “letting nature take its course” isn’t the way to go on every burned acre.

The Forest Service recently proposed to conduct salvage logging – removal of dead trees – on about 30,000 of the 98,049 acres of high intensity burned area and remove hazard trees along 148 miles of high use road in the burn perimeter. While it may seem counterintuitive for a conservationist to do so, I support this effort. In the high intensity areas, the Rim Fire burned so hot that it not only killed every tree but the top inch or two of soil with critical soil microfauna, and seed stocks were also sterilized. Fire of this intensity has been relatively rare in the moist middle elevations on western slopes of the Sierra Nevada and the native forests are not adapted to bounce back from this type of fire.

There are also some “interesting” comments, and a hint of “eco-bickering”. In those comments is also a return of the “Chapparalian”, using his actual name (instead of one of his many pseudonyms and even fake names). There are also some other interesting names commenting about these issues. John Buckley, a local leader of an environmental group comments with an open mind and a dose of reality. Others continue to spout the misguided idea that leaving the Rim Fire alone is the only way to go. Some commenters talked about the reality that we have plenty of BBW habitat, protected within the National Park. One reality not covered is that re-burns cause extensive damage that is very difficult to recover from, especially in areas left to “recover on their own”.

I still see that post-fire management is essential to getting big trees back on the land. We already have site-specific evidence that forests didn’t return when post-fire management was excluded, 40 years ago. We ended up with old growth brushfields, and a few stunted trees. Those old brushfields burned at moderate intensity. We have a big variety of landscapes, with differing burn intensities and site-specific conditions. This partial comment is spot-on, regarding these facts

It is interesting to see how many comments Eric’s post attracted from authors who are vehement that absolutely nothing except ‘let nature takes its course’ on National Forest lands. Since we have 100,000 acres of National Park land for that experiment, it would be more interesting to apply some other options on the National Forest lands. In the climate change debate, we continue to witness the rapid expansion of vocal people so sure of their own story that they refuse to even consider the possibility that it is worth learning more about the changing earth. Hopefully, this fate will not befall the response to the Rim Fire.

It seems pretty clear to me that a few open-minded people from both sides are seeing the realities of the Rim Fire, and its future.

Was John Karpinski a Visionary?

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When I recently posted a discussion about lodgepole pine ecology in this blog, Matthew seemed far more interested in the snippet of the September 3, 1994 Therese Novak newspaper article than in anything Bob Berwyn, the foresters and forest scientists, or I might have to say about the topic. I offered to send him the complete article, due to his interest, and will try and do so here, if I can learn to use links with these posts.

The attached article was also published in the September 3, 1994 Salem, Oregon Statesman-Journal, in conjunction with Novak’s article. “John” claims that only 1% of timber sales are litigated. This article sets a different course. Most timber sales aren’t even contemplated anymore because of the successful strategy described by Karpinski, above. Sometimes we quibble about word definitions in this blog. I would describe Karpinski’s threat as “obstructionist,” and remind everyone that lawyers on both sides of the table get paid, whether loggers or sawmill workers, or firefighters, or field foresters, or tree planters are paid or not. So it would also be “self-serving,” in that regard ($$).

Now if I can make a link in this thing, I’ll get the article to Matt:
http://www.NWMapsCo.com/ZybachB/Presentations/2004-2009/20060221_SAF_Siskiyou/B&B_News_19940903c.jpg

http://www.NWMapsCo.com/ZybachB/Presentations/2004-2009/20060221_SAF_Siskiyou/B&B_News_19940903e.jpg

http://www.ORWW.org/B&B_Complex/index.html