Less hysteria about fighting fire in beetle-killed forests: example, Church’s Park fire

Churchs park fire
Church’s Park fire. Photo from InciWeb (no date or photo credit)

More firefighters are recognizing that fire behavior in beetle-killed forests is not necessarily more extreme than you would see in green stands of trees. The Church’s Park fire near Fraser, Colorado is burning in areas that have been affected by the mountain pine beetle. The fire has burned 530 acres and is 30% contained. Here is an excerpt from Denver’s channel 7:

The fire is burning in an area filled with green pines and dead, gray-colored trees that have been killed by pine beetles.

“Because of the beetle kill, there’s a whole lot of dead trees,” said Austin Deganhart, one of the first people to report the fire Sunday afternoon. “All of the lodgepole pines stand anywhere from 20 to 40, 50 feet tall and they’re totally dry and dead. That’s what makes up the majority of our forest up here.”

Fire officials said the dead trees post a great danger because they may fall on firefighters.

“There is a significant amount of pine beetle killed trees in the fire area. The greatest danger from the trees is not in terms of fire behavior, but hazards and risks that are posed to our firefighters on the ground,” said Geoff Bell, the fire’s incident commander.

Geoff Bell is the Forest Fire Management Officer for the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest, working out of Fort Collins, Colorado. He is a former Superintendent of the Tatanka Hot Shots (still photos and video of the crew) on the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota.

An earlier article, which has been removed, even quoted the local Sheriff as saying the beetle-affected trees did not increase fire behavior. Oddly, in Colorado the County Sheriff is responsible for fire protection on unincorporated private land, so it’s good in this case that the Sheriff has some knowledge of wildland fire. I wonder if in some states the local fire chief is responsible for law enforcement?

Seven Senators ask for $49 million to fight beetles

Meanwhile, seven U. S. Senators signed a letter that was sent to the Secretary of Agriculture asking for an additional $49 million in just one U.S. Forest Service region, their Rocky Mountain Region, to fight the beetles. Part of their justification was that the forests, because of the beetles, are “at risk of catastrophic fire”. Last year $40 million was appropriated in the region for beetle mitigation. *sigh* Your tax dollars at work.

Our other articles about beetles.

Firefighters should calm down about beetle-killed forests

pine beetle damageThe dirty little secret that some firefighters and land managers either don’t know or will not admit to knowing, is that forests that have been affected by mountain pine beetles are less likely to burn as intensely as green forests. When the needles on a pine tree die, the volatile oils that cause a green, healthy pine tree to torch and support a crown fire, break down. And a tree with no needles is not a good candidate for a crown fire either — less so than a green tree.

Sometimes land managers, when faced with a landscape of brown, ugly, beetle-killed trees, fall all over themselves finding additional taxpayer funds to “fix” the problem, such as a state Governor vowing to order his state employees to storm into a federal wilderness if there are any fires in the area, which has some beetle-killed trees, or a 1,200-acre park (Mount Rushmore National Memorial) asking for $5.7 million to fix a possible future beetle problem.

Some scientists have tried to say that the wildfire potential in areas affected by beetles is over-stated. But now there is new research that further confirms that point of view. And it appeared on the NASA web site, whose satellites were used to collect some of the data.

University of Wisconsin forest ecologists Monica Turner and Phil Townsend, in collaboration with Yellowstone National Park Vegetation Management Specialist Roy Renkin, are studying the connection in the forests near Yellowstone National Park. Roy, by the way, is also a qualified Fire Behavior Analyst, who I have worked with many times on fires. He knows his stuff.

Here is an excerpt from the NASA article:

Their preliminary analysis indicates that large fires do not appear to occur more often or with greater severity in forest tracts with beetle damage. In fact, in some cases, beetle-killed forest swaths may actually be less likely to burn. What they’re discovering is in line with previous research on the subject.

The results may seem at first counterintuitive, but make sense when considered more carefully. First, while green needles on trees appear to be more lush and harder to burn, they contain high levels of very flammable volatile oils. When the needles die, those flammable oils begin to break down. As a result, depending on the weather conditions, dead needles may not be more likely to catch and sustain a fire than live needles.

Second, when beetles kill a lodgepole pine tree, the needles begin to fall off and decompose on the forest floor relatively quickly. In a sense, the beetles are thinning the forest, and the naked trees left behind are essentially akin to large fire logs. However, just as you can’t start a fire in a fireplace with just large logs and no kindling, wildfires are less likely to ignite and carry in a forest of dead tree trunks and low needle litter.

[…]

“Both fire and beetle damage are natural parts of system and have been since forests developed,” Townsend said. “What we have right now is a widespread attack that we haven’t seen before, but it is a natural part of the system.”

Renkin agrees with the assessment. “Disturbances like insect outbreaks and fire are recognized to be integral to the health of the forests,” he said, “and it has taken ecologists most of this century to realize as much. Yet when these disturbances occur, our emotional psyche leads us to say the forests are ‘unhealthy.’ Bugs and fires are neither good nor bad, they just are.”

What this boils down to is that the rate of spread and flame lengths of a fire in beetle-killed lodgepole pines will be less than you would see in green stands of lodgepoles. But fighting fire in an area that has a large number of dead trees can be extremely hazardous for firefighters due to the snags falling as they burn. Green trees are less likely to burn through and fall in the first few hours or days after a flame front moves through. Too many firefighters have been killed or injured by falling snags, or while cutting down snags.

Pine beetle fear

There is a lot of hysteria out there in response to the pine beetle  outbreak that has affected at least 5 million acres in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and South Dakota, and even more acres in British Columbia, which has been called ground zero for the beetles. Some people are suggesting that beetle-killed trees will inevitably lead to catastrophic wildfires and that massive logging or insecticide-spraying operations must begin in order to protect our citizens. But the science does not support that school of thought.

Beetle-killed trees can be more flammable during the relatively short period of time when the needles on the pine trees have been killed and have turned red, but after the needles fall to the ground the dead trees are less likely to support a crown fire than a live forest.

Here is an excerpt from an article by George Wuerthner that appeared today at HelenaIR.com. The entire article is here.

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The current pine beetle “outbreak” that has led to tree mortality among Rocky Mountain forests has prompted some people to suggest that beetles are “destroying” our forests and that beetle-killed trees will invariably lead to larger wildfires.

At the heart of this issue are flawed assumptions about wildfires, what constitutes a healthy forest and the options available to humans in face of natural processes that are inconvenient and get in the way of our designs.

While it may seem intuitive that dead trees will lead to more fires, there is little scientific evidence to support the contention that beetle-killed trees substantially increase risk of large blazes. In fact, there is evidence to suggest otherwise.

Bark beetles tend to focus on larger trees, and not all trees are killed. This has important implications for fire risk. Fine fuels — not large snags — are the prime ingredient for sustained fire. After a major beetle outbreak, and once the red needles and small branches have broken off the trees, all that remains are upright big boles that do not burn particularly well.

To sustain a blaze among a snag forest you usually need fine fuels to maintain the heating process. That is why one uses small kindling and other fine fuels to start a campfire, and must continuously feed small wood and/or a sufficient bed of coals under the bigger logs to keep the fire going.

Ultimately, fuels do not control fires. If the climate/weather isn’t conducive for fire spread, it doesn’t much matter how much dead wood you have piled up, you won’t get a large fire. As an extreme example, think of all the dead wood lying around on the ground in old-growth West Coast rainforests — tons of fuel, but few fires — because it’s too wet to burn.

Large blazes are driven by a combination of extreme drought, low humidity, high temperatures and, most importantly, wind. These conditions do not occur in the same place at the same time very frequently — which is why there are often decades to centuries between major blazes and most fires go out without burning more than a few acres.

In the Rockies between 1980 and 2003, there were more than 56,000 fires that charred 9 million acres. But 96 percent of the fires — more than 55,000 of those blazes — charred less than 4 percent of the total acreage burned; the climatic conditions just weren’t conducive to fire spread, even though fuels were abundant. By contrast, less than 0.1 percent of the fires during that period were responsible for more than half of the acreage burned.

Even more surprising is that a forest dominated by bug-killed snags may be less vulnerable to a blaze than a green forest. Just as a recently burned forest often acts as a fire break due to limited fine fuels, bug-killed trees affect fire spread in much the same way. In fact, green trees stressed by drought can have internal moisture levels drop lower than kiln dried lumber, but because they still possess flammable resin-filled needles and small branches that burn almost explosively, green trees are sometimes more flammable than dead trees.

Even more importantly, bark beetles are increasingly recognized by ecologists as “ecosystem engineers,” much as beavers are now recognized as important to the creation of wetlands and riparian areas. Beetles are essential to maintaining biodiversity and healthy forests.

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Read the rest of the article here.

George Wuerthner is an ecologist, writer and photographer with 34 published books, including “Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy.”

Thanks Dick

Senate hearing about bark beetle legislation canceled because of anger over health care bill

Our hired help in Washington is implementing elementary school tactics to run our country.

From the Associated Press today:

DENVER (AP) _ U.S. Sen. Mark Udall and a Colorado state senator have gotten caught in the crossfire over health care. A hearing Tuesday on Udall’s bill to protect communities from bark beetles was canceled after Republicans angry over the passage of health insurance reform legislation blocked it by using an obscure Senate rule requiring a unanimous consent to hold hearings scheduled after 2 p.m.

If we give them the benefit of the doubt, they canceled the meeting because working past 2 p.m. would have been contrary to their preferred working hours, not because they threw a *hissy fit over the fact that some legislation was passed.

From Senator Udall’s office today:

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Today’s hearing on Senator Udall’s bark beetle legislation has been canceled due to Republican Obstruction

Washington, D.C. — Today’s scheduled hearing on Senator Mark Udall’s bill to protect communities from wildfire and falling trees as a result of bark beetle infestation has been canceled due to Republican obstructionism. Angry over the passage of health insurance reform legislation, Republican leaders are using an arcane rule, which requires the unanimous consent of Senators in both parties to agree to hearings scheduled after 2 p.m., and have objected to the bark beetle hearing and vowed not to cooperate with Democrats for the rest of the year.

“It is critical that this hearing go forward — especially with Senator Gibbs in Washington to explain how important this bipartisan bill is to Coloradans. Delay just prevents urgently needed resources from going to Colorado communities threatened by beetle-killed trees,” Senator Udall said. “I strongly urge my colleagues to re-think their strategy — this is a matter of public safety, and that’s too important for political gamesmanship.”

The bark beetle bill was introduced in November by U.S. Senators Mark Udall, D-CO, and James Risch, R-ID. Senator Risch is a graduate of  the University of Idaho’s School of Forestry.

*Hissy fit, from Urban Dictionary:

noun. A sudden outburst of temper, often used to describe female anger at something trivial. Originally regional from American South. Thought to originate from contraction of “hysterical fit.”

Climate change: beetles, fire, and aspen

There may be discussions about its cause, but there is overwhelming evidence that climate change is having a profound effect on the forests of the world. We don’t have the luxury of debate–it is here.

There may also be profound changes in how we fight fire, where the fires occur, the length of the fire seasons, and the number of personnel and dollars needed to suppress fires. Some of these changes in fire management are already occurring.

Here are some excerpts from an excellent article in the Guardian.

For many years, Diana Six, an entomologist at the University of Montana, planned her field season for the same two to three weeks in July. That’s when her quarry — tiny, black, mountain pine beetles — hatched from the tree they had just killed and swarmed to a new one to start their life cycle again.

Now, says Six, the field rules have changed. Instead of just two weeks, the beetles fly continually from May until October, attacking trees, burrowing in, and laying their eggs for half the year. And that’s not all. The beetles rarely attacked immature trees; now they do so all the time. What’s more, colder temperatures once kept the beetles away from high altitudes, yet now they swarm and kill trees on mountaintops. And in some high places where the beetles had a two-year life cycle because of cold temperatures, it’s decreased to one year.

Such shifts make it an exciting — and unsettling — time to be an entomologist. The growing swath of dead lodgepole and ponderosa pine forest is a grim omen, leaving Six — and many other scientists and residents in the West — concerned that as the climate continues to warm, these destructive changes will intensify.

Across western North America, from Mexico to Alaska, forest die-off is occurring on an extraordinary scale, unprecedented in at least the last century-and-a-half — and perhaps much longer. All told, the Rocky Mountains in Canada and the United States have seen nearly 70,000 square miles of forest — an area the size of Washington state — die since 2000. For the most part, this massive die-off is being caused by outbreaks of tree-killing insects, from the ips beetle in the Southwest that has killed pinyon pine, to the spruce beetle, fir beetle, and the major pest — the mountain pine beetle — that has hammered forests in the north.

These large-scale forest deaths from beetle infestations are likely a symptom of a bigger problem, according to scientists: warming temperatures and increased stress, due to a changing climate. Although western North America has been hardest hit by insect infestations, sizeable areas of forest in Australia, Russia, France, and other countries have experienced die-offs, most of which appears to have been caused by drought, high temperatures, or both.

One recent study collected reports of large-scale forest mortality from around the world. Often, forest death is patchy, and research is difficult because of the large areas involved. But the paper, recently published in Forest Ecology and Management, reported that in a 20,000-square-mile savanna in Australia, nearly a third of the trees were dead. In Russia, there was significant die-off within 9,400 square miles of forest. Much of Siberia has warmed by several degrees Fahrenheit in the past half-century, and hot, dry conditions have led to extreme wildfire seasons in eight of the last 10 years. Russian researchers also are concerned that warmer, dryer conditions will lead to increased outbreaks of the Siberian moth, which can destroy large swaths of Russia’s boreal forest.

While people in some places have the luxury to doubt whether climate change is real, it’s harder to be a doubter in the Rocky Mountains. Glaciers in Glacier National Park and elsewhere are shrinking, winters are warmer and shorter, and the intensity of forest fires is increasing. But the most obvious sign is the red and dead forests that carpet the hills and mountains. They have transformed life in many parts of the Rockies.

It is interesting that normal amounts of precipitation combined with warmer temperatures can translate into drought:

Continue reading “Climate change: beetles, fire, and aspen”

Beetles, logging, and wildfires

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The National Center for Conservation Science and Policy (NCCSP) has issued a report titled Battling forest insects may be counter-productive. Here is the first paragraph:

IN RESPONSE TO RECENT BARK BEETLE EPIDEMICS, decision-makers are calling for landscape-level mechanical treatments to prevent the spread of these native insects and to reduce the perceived threat of increased fire risk that is believed to be associated with insect-killed trees. The best available science indicates that such treatments are not likely to reduce forest susceptibility to outbreaks or reduce the risk of fires, especially the risk of fires to communities. Furthermore, such silvicultural treatments could have substantial short-and significant long-term ecological costs when carried out in national forest roadless areas.

A person has to be careful when digesting reports like this from relatively obscure organizations. You don’t know when they are skewing “science” to promote their own point of view. Here is how the group describes themselves on their web site:

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