Taxpayer funded research should be available to taxpayers

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Bill Gabbert

Much of the research that is conducted on wildland fire and other topics is funded by taxpayers, but the results of the research are not always available to the public. It is common for government agencies to publish their findings in scientific journals under a copyright. In order to read the paper you have to pay substantial fees to either subscribe to the publication or buy access to a single article.

Government funded research should be published immediately on the internet and made available at no charge to everyone. In the present system, government agencies sometimes pay thousands of dollars in page charges for a paper to be published in a journal, then the journal collects substantial access fees from taxpayers who want access to the information. This makes no sense, when the government agency could publish the information on the web at no cost while making it available to everyone at no cost.

We have written about this previously, HERE and HERE.

There are at least two initiatives working to make taxpayer funded research available to the public. One is the Alliance for Taxpayer Access. The other is a new online pledge, called Research Without Walls, where those who assist in the peer review process for conferences or journals pledge to only do so only if the accepted publications are made available to the public for free via the internet. The web domain “Research Without Walls” was first registered on October 10, 2011 and as of today, October 21, has 89 signatories. It will be interesting to see how much interest it generates.

Effectiveness of fuel treatments

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Bill Gabbert

Here is an excerpt from a U. S. Forest Service news release about a simulation study of more than 45,000 forest stands which provides a scientific basis for fuel reduction guidelines.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 1, 2011 – In the largest ever study of fuel treatment effectiveness, U.S. Forest Service researchers have found that intense thinning treatments that leave between 50 and 100 trees per acre are the most effective in reducing the probability of crown fires in the dry forests of the western United States.

The study, the results of which are published in a recent issue of the Canadian Journal of Forest Research, provides a scientific basis for establishing quantitative guidelines for reducing stand densities and surface fuels. The total number of optimal trees per acre on any given forest will depend on species, terrain and other factors.

“This study proves once again that an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure,” said U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. “Thinning dense forests reduces the impacts of the catastrophic wildfires we’ve already seen this year and expect to see more and more of in the future. This work helps protect communities, provides jobs and promotes overall better forest health.”

This year, Arizona and New Mexico have already experienced the worst fires in the states’ histories. The importance of thinning was illustrated by the recent Wallow fire in Arizona, which burned more than 538,000 acres. Although 38 structures burned, a system of fuel treatments developed cooperatively by federal, state and local governments, as well as private citizens, successfully reduced fire behavior and allowed firefighters to protect thousands of structures and, in many places, halt the spread of the fire.

Thanks go out to Dick.

Researchers conclude climate change may eliminate forests in Yellowstone area

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Bill Gabbert

Arnica fire in Yellowstone National Park, September 24, 2009

A group of five researchers studying climate change in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem (GYE) have concluded that higher temperatures will lead to more frequent fires, changing the fire return interval from 100-300 years to less than 30 years. This would prevent the current suite of conifer species from regenerating and result in them being replaced with nonforest vegetation. This is expected to occur by mid-century.

From the abstract:

Our findings suggest a shift to novel fire–climate–vegetation relationships in Greater Yellowstone by midcentury because fire frequency and extent would be inconsistent with persistence of the current suite of conifer species.

Holy crap! By the time you or your children are applying for Medicare, there may be very few trees left in Yellowstone National Park.

Here are their findings:

Conclusions

Continued warming could completely transform GYE ﬁre regimes by the mid-21st century, with profound consequences for many species and for ecosystem services including aesthetics, hydrology, and carbon storage. The conditions associated with extreme ﬁre seasons are expected to become much more frequent, with ﬁre occurrence and area burned exceeding that observed in the historical record or reconstructed from paleoproxy records for the past 10,000 y. Even in years without extreme ﬁre events, average annual area burned is projected to increase, and years with no large ﬁres—common until recently—are projected to become increasingly rare. The timing and spatial location of such changes varied somewhat among the three GCMs used in this study, but the models converged by the latter part of the century. The magnitude of predicted increases in ﬁre occurrence and area burned suggests that there is a real likelihood of Yellowstone’s forests being converted to nonforest vegetation during the mid-21st century because reduced ﬁre intervals would likely preclude postﬁre tree regeneration. A change in dominant vegetation would also cause the GYE to shift from a climate- to a fuellimited ﬁre regime (24). We suggest that the climate–ﬁre system is a tipping element that may qualitatively change the ﬂora, fauna, and ecosystem processes in this landscape and could be indicative of similar changes in other subalpine or boreal forests.

The paper can be found at PNAS.org and was written by Anthony L. Westerling, Monica G. Turner, Erica A. H. Smithwick, William H. Romme, and Michael G. Ryan. The title is Continued warming could transform Greater Yellowstone ﬁre regimes by mid-21st century.

In August, 2009 we wrote an article that criticized the U.S. Government for funding research, but publishing the results in privately owned publications which charge substantial fees for access to the government-bought research findings. We are very pleased to report that the paper described above is published as an “open access article” so that, as far as we know, anyone with an internet connection can read it.

Related articles:

Do us a favor. If you appreciate this article, click the +1 button below to recommend it to Google. Thanks!

Smoke from Fourmile fire provides bonanza for researchers, bad news for firefighters and the public

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Bill Gabbert

A woman wears a mask in central Moscow to "protect" herself from smoke from fires outside the city. August, 2010. Photograph: Mikhail Voskresensky/Reuters

When the Fourmile Canyon fire was burning west of Boulder, Colorado in September, 2010, Jim Roberts, a chemist with NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, was surrounded by something he had previously studied at the U.S. Forest Service’s Missoula Fire Science Laboratory in Montana — smoke, and lots of it. In Missoula he used a new instrument they had built, a custom mass spectrometer, to examine the levels of isocyanic acid in the atmosphere and in smoke. Isocyanic acid has been difficult to detect with conventional measurement techniques. At Missoula, he measured the levels of the chemical in smoke generated when the researchers burned vegetation in the lab and in cigarette smoke.

When the Fourmile Canyon fire started, Roberts had the mass spectrometer at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

Here is an excerpt from the Daily Camera:

Isocyanic acid easily dissolves in water, which makes it possible for the acid to also dissolve into moist tissues in the body, including the lungs. The full health effects of exposure to isocyanic acid in the air aren’t fully understood, but the chemical has been linked to cataracts, cardiovascular disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

Last September, the researchers had the opportunity to measure the presence of the acid in a real wildfire. On Labor Day, the Fourmile Fire began burning in the foothills west of Boulder, just a few miles upwind of the state-of-the-art atmospheric instruments housed at NOAA’s campus on Broadway.

“Boulder has a world-class atmospheric chemistry building and only once in its lifetime is it going to have a full-on hit from a wildfire,” said Joost de Gouw, a co-author of the study and a researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Science. “So just everyone in that building turned on their instruments.”

CIRES is a joint institute of the University of Colorado and NOAA.

The sensitive new spectrometer used in Missoula also picked up the isocyanic acid in the plume of smoke from the Fourmile Fire.

More information

Smoke from the Fourmile fire as imaged by the MODIS satellite on September 6, 2010.

The future of wildland fire smoke research

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Bill Gabbert

The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) has released their plan for wildland fire smoke research. The 58-page document outlines their priorities for funding smoke research through 2015.

Much of the emphasis appears to be directed at how to deal with the public’s perception and tolerance of smoke. Smoke is becoming an increasingly sensitive subject to the population due to larger wildfires burning for longer periods of time, concern about the effects of wildfire smoke on global warming, and prescribed fires continuing to be an important tool for land managers.

One aspect of wildfire smoke that Wildfire Today has written about frequently is the short and long term effects of smoke on the health of firefighters. On April 23, 2010 we covered the study that NIOSH and the U.S. Fire Administration are conducting about cancer among structural firefighters. We called out the land management agencies and the firefighting associations:

There needs to be a concerted effort to conduct a similar study on wildland firefighters. It should be led by a physician/epidemiologist and should evaluate the long term health and occurrence of cancer and other diseases among wildland firefighters. There is a lot of grant money out there and it should be possible to get some of it pointed towards this overlooked niche of firefighting.

Followups to that article are HERE and HERE.

The JFSP five-year plan does mention research on the effects of smoke on wildland firefighters, but at times it seems like an afterthought. For example, the objective for one of four research themes, “Smoke and Populations”, sometimes includes the “impact of smoke on populations” (page 26), and in other places it is described as “impact of smoke on populations and fire fighters” (page 21).

However, the plan does list some specific “Smoke Science Foci” that may benefit firefighters:

2011: (SSP T3 -2): Epidemiological research/literature review to determine human health risk from high PM loadings.
2011 (SSP T3-4): Fire fighter smoke health hazards: trends in health and exposure.
2012 (SSP T3-5): Review of epidemiological research to determine human health risk from high PM, high ozone and high aromatic hydrocarbon loadings with a focus on synergisms between pollutants.

We hope that the “foci” turns into actual research.

Natural Inquirer: natural resources for middle schools

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Bill Gabbert

The U.S. Forest Service has been producing a natural resources science journal for middle schools, called “Natural Inquirer”, since 1998. Here is a description of the publication from their web site:

Each journal contains articles on a variety of subjects, usually centered around one theme. Many editions also have word puzzles, questions (or “reflections”) for the students to consider, and lesson plans for teachers.

One of the lesson plans calls for groups of four students get together and write letters to USFS researchers, with each letter having four questions for the researcher about the article they just read. It makes you wonder what kind of workload this places on the researchers when they receive hundreds or thousands of letters, each with four questions for them.

The publications introduce the researchers and scientists to the middle schoolers in a “Meet the Scientists” section, which has their photos and some personal information, such as “my favorite science experience”, for example, “climbing into the top of a 175-foot-tall red fir to collect lichen samples during a wind storm”, or riding my motorcycle 2,000 miles to attend the 9th World Wilderness Congress in southern Mexico. This purpose of this may be to have the students identify with the scientists, for science research to appear to be something that normal humans can actually do, to have the students take more science courses, or to even consider natural resources research for a career. Or, all of the above.

There have been two editions of the journal that focused on wildland fire. The first was Spring, 2003, and the other was Summer, 2010.

The latter contains an article titled “Trust Is a Must: What Is Involved in Trusting Those Who Manage Forest Fires?” (page 41). It asks the middle schoolers a question:

Do you think forest managers can do a better job if citizens trust them? Why or why not?

The Spring, 2003 edition had an interesting section on correlating weather measurements with large fire occurrence. It included this:

In the past, scientists thought that air temperature, relative humidity, dew point depression, and wind shear were the weather measurements most associated with large or dangerous wildfires. This research suggests that dew point depression is the most important measurement. On days when large wildfires burned between 1971 and 1984, the dew point depression was high. When people try to predict wildfires based on weather conditions, they should pay the closest attention to dew point depression.

Below is the cover of the latest edition of the Natural Inquirer.

Continue reading →