Morgan Varner in the HSU fire lab. Photo: Preston Drake-Hillyard

Humbolt State University in northern California is one of three universities in the U.S. with a fire lab. Here is an excerpt from an article in the student-run newspaper:

You smell it as soon as you walk into the Natural Resources building: that familiar campfire smell. What you’re experiencing is HSU’s fire lab. Students come here to start fires.

The fire lab is an opportunity for students to learn about wildfires in a hands-on environment and provide fire science research for agencies throughout the nation. It’s a rare resource: only three universities in the U.S. have fire labs.

J. Morgan Varner III is an associate professor of wildland fire science. He oversees the fire lab, and he’s visibly excited by his work. “Most research is mundane stuff” he says, eyebrows raised. “We get to burn stuff.”

At first glance, the lab is nothing special. It’s a medium-sized classroom with 24 seats. The fire table is a piece of steel tabletop with a low-tech, hand-drawn ruler rising vertically off of it. Varner lowers an enormous ventilation hood. Smoke is sucked out of the building, allowing indoor burns.

Varner starts a burn. He lays down cotton strings soaked in an accelerant and casually tosses a handful of Washoe Pine needles on top. He lights the ends of the string with a standard barbecue lighter. The pile of duff quickly ignites.

As the pile burns, Varner points out the height of the flames. This simple datum is the core of the fire lab’s work. It shows the energy contained in wildfire fuel- leaves, pine needles, sticks and logs – and how it burns. The way different fuels burn is key to the prevention of wildfires. Flame patterns, color and the ash and residue left behind all add to the understanding of how fuels burn. Temperature is crucial. The goal is to see how hot fires get and how much plants can withstand.

[...]

Varner laments the lack of field opportunities provided by the school. Fears of liability from the state prevent the forestry department from carrying out field studies in fire season. Some students take on summer internships involving wildfires. Varner expresses excitement and jealousy about the stories that students bring back from their experiences. He feels the learning process would be best if he could share it with them.

Soils major Katia Keston has heard great things about Varner’s program. She says almost everyone she knows in the forestry department is emphasizing in fire ecology. “There’s tons of wildland fire jobs.”

Here are a couple of interesting videos featuring Jack Cohen, a researcher at the Missoula Fire Science Lab. The videos explain radiant heat and how difficult it is for fine fuels and structures to ignite from that alone, and the role of embers in spreading fire and burning structures.

via @FireInfoGirl

The Director of the John Muir Project, Chad Hanson, has written a paper about wildfire and its relationship to biodiversity and climate change, titled The Myth of ‘Catastrophic’ Wildfire. Here are some of his findings, as reported by New West:

• There is far less fire now in western U.S. forests than there was historically.

• Current fires are burning mostly at low intensities, and fires are not getting more intense, contrary to many assumptions about the effects of climate change. Forested areas in which fire has been excluded for decades by fire suppression are also not burning more intensely.

• Contrary to popular assumptions, high-intensity fire (commonly mislabeled as “catastrophic wildfire”) is a natural and necessary part of western U.S. forest ecosystems, and there is less high-intensity fire now than there was historically, due to fire suppression.

• Patches of high-intensity fire (where most or all trees are killed) support among the highest levels of wildlife diversity of any forest type in the western U.S., and many wildlife species depend upon such habitat. Post-fire logging and ongoing fire suppression policies are threatening these species.

• Conifer forests naturally regenerate vigorously after high-intensity fire.

• Our forests are functioning as carbon sinks (net sequestration) where logging has been reduced or halted, and wildland fire helps maintain high productivity and carbon storage.

• Even large, intense fires consume less than 3% of the biomass in live trees, and carbon emissions from forest fires is only tiny fraction of the amount resulting from fossil fuel consumption (even these emissions are balanced by carbon uptake from forest growth and regeneration).

• “Thinning” operations for lumber or biofuels do not increase carbon storage but, rather, reduce it, and thinning designed to curb fires further threatens imperiled wildlife species that depend upon post-fire habitat.

In addition to being the Director of the John Muir Project, Mr. Hanson is also a researcher at the University of California at Davis and was elected as one of the directors of the Sierra Club in 2000.