The Forest Service today seems to believe that its main mission is to reduce hazardous fuels. The agency was spending close to half a billion dollars a year on this program, an amount that was doubled by the 2021 infrastructure bill. Yet there is a huge debate among fire ecologists over whether this program makes any sense.
Would any amount of prescribed burning prevented this 2020 fire from burning thousands of acres?
The latest volley in this debate was published earlier this week in a peer-reviewed journal called Fire. Representing those who disagree with the Forest Service’s fire policy, the paper charges that supporters of the policy have deliberately overlooked evidence that it won’t work.
The debate only really applies to the forests which the paper calls “dry forests,” namely ponderosa pine and mixed conifer forests of the mountain West. These make up only about 40 percent of forests in the West. The other 60 percent, ecologists almost all agree, won’t benefit from fuels reduction (which doesn’t stop the Forest Service from spending money on it).
This 60 percent of forests are known mainly for high-severity fires in periods of hot, dry weather. The Labor Day fires of 2020 were such fires. When high winds suddenly blew through forests dried out by months of no rainfall, each of several fires burn something like 5 to 10 acres per second. They couldn’t have been stopped by any amount of fuels reduction before the fires.
The issue for the dry forests is basically this: Does the “natural” fire regime for these dry forests consist mainly of frequent, low-severity fires? Or do these forests sometimes also experience high-severity fires? If they also experienced high-severity fires in the past, then hazardous fuels reduction won’t help them either, for such efforts won’t prevent big fires when there are dry enough and windy enough conditions.
The authors of the new paper are responding to another paper that came out 20 months ago arguing for the low-severity fire history. That paper claims that high-severity fires were rare or non-existent in the dry forests until the Forest Service began its fire suppression programs in the early 20th century. These programs led to an unnatural build up of fuels that fed major fires, fires that could be avoided in the future by fuel reduction programs today.
The new paper, which was written by William Baker of the University of Wyoming, Chad Hanson of Earth Island Institute, and two other writers, claims that the authors of the 2021 paper deliberately ignored evidence of high-severity fires in tree-ring records, accounts of pre-Forest Service settlers, and other sources. The resulting “falsification of the scientific record,” say the authors, “has significant land management implications.”
Long-time readers of the Antiplanner know that I critiqued Forest Service management for two decades on behalf of environmentalists. Today, I disagree with the authoritarians who have taken over much of the environmental movement, but this is one issue on which I still agree with environmentalists like Chad Hanson.
I don’t think I’ve ever met Hanson, but he is doing what I used to do, using the Forest Service’s own data against them, plus what I’ve never done, which is publishing results in a peer-reviewed journal. His co-author, William Baker, is an emeritus professor of forest ecology at the University of Wyoming, and thus immune to threats of having his research defunded by the Forest Service for not kowtowing to the party line. I hope they can generate enough support for their ideas to prevail.
Hilarious joke from black comedian. ” white people are supposed to be smart, but comes ta home buying yall dumb as fuk. You built/bought yo home out of wood, nigga
Ya moved to where shit catch fire, nigga. You plant trees and grass when it DIES IN SUMMER yall like SHIT MY HOUSE burned down” ….
Fire’s role in dryland ecology is well known and researched, It substitutes the role normally reserved by decomposers like bacteria and fungi. In more humid and wetter environments they break down wood/plant matter into soluble nutrients for plant uptake. In xeric ecosystems this process is less efficient or virtually non-existant. So fire substitutes that role by charing material into water soluble ash.
It’s not climate change responsible for these catastrophic fires; it’s land and water use practices. Ignore them at your peril…Dryer lands receive much more rainfall than we assume. The Netherlands, for example get’s an average of 650mm (25.6 inches) of rainfall per year. Where as Xeric region Monterrey, Mexico has 680mm (26.8 inches) of rainfall. So How can the Netherlands despite having less rain, but have more fertile soils (besides a cooler climate) Be it degraded farmland or some xeric regions. Rainfall in some areas is Seasonal….in water stressed areas; water falls only at a peak of the year often a few weeks. Some regions have dry/wet seasons with six months of rain.
Terrain: rain falls on slopes, hills and mountains and then flows out into streams and rivers that convey its runoff water into the sea. When areas are degraded or severely eroded, there is often a soil hardpan due to decades of compaction. The downside to no-till farming is that while it prevents soil erosion; it makes soil less permeable so only 15-25% of the water enters into the soil. The rest runs away, when heavy rains occur flash floods are ubiquitous.
Pre-Industrial farmers built land terraces and planted natural hills and ditches to catch as much water as possible, modern farming eschews that. Modern home building completely bulldozes soil profile if an area making it impossible catch additional water. As result top 5 inches have any real soil at all…( rest subsoil is a compacted batch dirt and construction debris) as result grass and trees incapable catching soil moisture wither and die. Only constant watering by artificial means keeps them alive…. when drought or water restrictions are in effect, now you have a tinderbox.
Solution to wildfire problem is simple, Fix the soil profile.
Healthy soil mix is 4-7% water by mass, xeric climates deep layers are also 5-9% water by mass…..deep rooted plants like cacti and palms absorb this water, and their root systems act as channels to direct what rainwater falls thru it. This process of capillary action is how aquifers are fed. It’s why we have 300 foot tall sequoia in some drier regions Califirnia.
“It’s why we have 300 foot tall sequoia in some drier regions Califirnia.”
Sequoias grow natively only in the Sierra Nevada, which is not a “drier region” of “Califirnia” lol
Some groves receive 50 inches of precip a year, and the higher elevations of the Sierra can receive up to 100 inches of precip per year.
Sequoias exist there BECAUSE of this precip, not despite it.
But keep making things up. It’s so entertaining!
There are a few inaccuracies in this blog post:
The author states that the Forest Service was spending close to half a billion dollars a year on fuels reduction before the 2021 infrastructure bill, and that this amount was doubled by the bill. While the infrastructure bill does provide funding for fuels reduction, the author’s figures are not accurate. According to the Forest Service’s Fiscal Year 2022 Budget Justification, the agency requested $327 million for hazardous fuels reduction in 2021, and $361 million in 2022. It is unclear if the infrastructure bill increased this amount.
The author suggests that prescribed burning would not have prevented the Labor Day fires of 2020 from burning thousands of acres. While it is true that high-severity fires in dry forests cannot be prevented solely through fuels reduction efforts, prescribed burning can be an effective tool in reducing the intensity and spread of wildfires.
The author claims that 60 percent of western forests will not benefit from fuels reduction, citing fire ecologists as the source of this claim. However, it is not clear where this statistic comes from or how accurate it is.
The author misrepresents the argument of the 2021 paper on low-severity fire history in dry forests. The paper does not claim that high-severity fires were rare or non-existent in dry forests prior to fire suppression efforts, but rather that low-severity fires were more frequent and played an important ecological role.
Overall, while there is debate among fire ecologists about the effectiveness of fuels reduction efforts in dry forests, the author of this blog post misrepresents some of the arguments and statistics.
Yosemite receives 95% of its precipitation between October and May. Areas dominated by Giant sequoia. Species I should made clear.
Rest season dry as a bone. Dry gains lot moisture from surrounding soil.
Months out year forests in Sierra Nevada and surrounding areas are dry and hot.
The benefits of modest set fire is minimal because it mostly just scorches woody debris. Wood has an autoignition temperature, an adjacent forest fire and re ignite wood and dry brush. Real prescribed burns must fully burn 20% to 50% of adjacent wood.
The Yellowstone 88 fires illustrated the necessity of infrequent high intensity burns. Land aside….I also mentioned water issue.
In soil, there are millions of vertical channels – pipes – these are called “capillary tubes”. Whenever there is a downpour, excess water runs underground through these capillary tubes. When it is dry, these same tubes transport water to the surface. Trees have their roots in these capillary tubes – which also contain threads of fungi which are hygroscopic (attracting water); and with their lateral roots, they soak up capillary water when it is hot and dry. This is how a tree survives heat and drought. Even in rocks, minuscule and invisible fissures function as capillary tubes. Modern construction disrupts this soil profile making it impossible to reclaim ground water so when it rains 70 to 90% of water leaves the area as runoff, more than a Lawn can effectively soak up. Solution is to drill small micro channels to replicate the capillary and make sure roots grow in that facet. Even in dry Mediterranean climates, grassland and forest is dominant ecosystem, A single millimeter of rainfall is equal to 1 liter of water per square meter or 0.15 to 0.25 million gallons per acre. Some deserts and xeric regions even get up to 1000 mm rain. The Netherlands gets around 700 mm a year.
The problem is not the lack of precipitation, but the time it falls. In some locations, it rains for 1-3 months, and it remains dry for 9 to 11 . If the wet period is too short to allow the young roots to reach capillary water, the sapling (young tree) dies. If the wet period is long enough, and the roots reach capillary water, the sapling can survive. More so capillary network is byproduct of deep tree tap roots whose digging into channels acts as a funnel to attract the rain. Even outside national parks and forests wooded areas and human habitation is a contributor to neighboring water supply.