Researchers have determined that we have a “fire deficit” in the western United States. Since the late 1800s, they say, human activities, grazing, climate change, and fire suppression caused a large, abrupt decline in burning similar to the Little Ice Age (which was between 1400 and 1700), leading to a buildup of fuel, or biomass. Large fires in the late 20th and 21st century have begun to address the fire deficit, but it is continuing to grow.
We owe the ecosystem some fire, and the debt collector has come to visit.
Their key findings:
Comparing charcoal records and climate data, as expected, showed warm, dry intervals, such as the “Medieval Climate Anomaly” between 1,000 and 700 years ago, which had more burning, and cool, moist intervals, such as the “Little Ice Age” between 500 and 300 years ago, had fewer fires. Short-term peaks in fires were associated with abrupt climate changes — warming or cooling.
Wildfires during most of the 20th century were almost as infrequent as they were during the Little Ice Age, about 400 years ago. However, only a century ago, fires were as frequent as they were about 800 years ago, during the warm and dry Medieval Climate Anomaly. “In other words, humans caused fires to shift from their 1,000-year maximum to their 1,000-year minimum in less than 100 years,” Gavin said.
Climate and humans acted synergistically — by the end of the 18th century and early 19th century — to increase fire events that were often sparked by agricultural practices, clearing of forests, logging activity and railroading.
The authors of the paper, especially lead author Jennifer R. Marlon, are to be commended for publishing this as Open Access, which means that the results from this taxpayer funded research are freely available to the people who paid for it (unlike other research by the U.S. Forest Service that we wrote about earlier today).
The figure below made my head hurt as I figured it out, never having seen anything like this. It is a portion of a chart in the referenced paper.
From the research paper: "Long-term perspective on wildfires in the western USA"
The paper, titled Long-term perspective on wildfires in the western United States can be found HERE, and a summary is HERE. The authors are Jennifer R. Marlon, Patrick J. Bartlein, Daniel G. Gavin, Colin J. Long, R. Scott Anderson, Christy E. Briles, Kendrick J. Brown, Daniele Colombaroli, Douglas J. Hallett, Mitchell J. Power, Elizabeth A. Scharf, and Megan K. Walsh.
International Crown fire experiment in healthy, not beetle-killed trees. Photo U.S. Forest Service
UPDATE at 2:11 p.m. MT, Feb. 16, 2012:
We contacted Nan Christianson, the Assistant Station Director – Communications at the Rocky Mountain Research Station, and asked where they stood on Open Access, and why the study, below, was only available to taxpayers if they paid $31.50 to a private company. Within a few hours they added it to a U.S. Forest Service web site, TreeSearch, where it is available at no charge. It is still listed at the private company for $31.50. We are waiting for more detailed information from the USFS concerning their policy on the Open Access of taxpayer-funded research.
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February 15, 2012
At Wildfire Today we have previously written about mountain pine beetle research that used satellite data and computer models to extrapolate findings to fire behavior characteristics. Now there is a new study that measured foliar chemistry, moisture, and flammability in the lab and also draws a conclusion about fire behavior out in the real world.
The latter study, which is published behind a pay wall in the April, 2012 edition of Elsevier’s Forest Ecology and Management, was written by Matt Jolly and others at the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station. In their study, foliar samples were taken periodically from multiple trees identified as green, recently attacked by mountain pine beetles, and red (dead). The fuel moisture content, chemical composition, and time to ignition of needles from each attack category were quantified. They found that in the lab, decreased moisture content and changes in foliar chemistry increased the flammability of beetle-attacked foliage, and red needles ignited much more quickly than green needles. They further extrapolated that “crown fire potential may be higher in attacked stands as long as foliage is retained on the tree”.
You can read the study, which American taxpayers paid for already, but you will have to pay the for-profit Elsevier corporation $31.50. This is not Open Access, which we have written about before. (The U.S. Forest Service should publish the results of all of their research immediately upon completion at no additional cost to American taxpayers. What is the point of the USFS funding research if the results are kept a virtual secret?)
In an earlier study, University of Wisconsin forest ecologists Monica Turner and Phil Townsend, in collaboration with Yellowstone National Park Vegetation Management Specialist Roy Renkin, examined the beetle and fire connection in the forests near Yellowstone National Park.
Using satellite data they studied burn patterns and fire occurrence data and the relationships to mountain pine beetle attacks.
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.
A third study published in 2011 used computer models to predict fire behavior and how it was affected by beetle attacks. It was titled “Do mountain pine beetle outbreaks change the probability of active crown fire in lodgepole pine forests?” Here is an excerpt from the abstract:
Modeling results suggested that undisturbed, red, and gray-stage stands were unlikely to exhibit transition of surface fires to tree crowns (torching), and that the likelihood of sustaining an active crown fire (crowning) decreased from undisturbed to gray-stage stands. Simulated fire behavior was little affected by beetle disturbance when wind speed was either below 40 km/h or above 60 km/h, but at intermediate wind speeds, probability of crowning in red- and gray-stage stands was lower than in undisturbed stands, and old post-outbreak stands were predicted to have passive crown fires. Results were consistent across a range of fuel moisture scenarios. Our results suggest that mountain pine beetle outbreaks in Greater Yellowstone may reduce the probability of active crown fire in the short term by thinning lodgepole pine canopies.
The paper was written by Martin Simard, William H. Romme, Jacob M. Griffin, and Monica G. Turner. A summary of their findings is HERE.
All three of these studies, while they collected some static data from the field, were executed in laboratories, and not from observed fire behavior in the real world.
So which school of thought do you subscribe to? Do you go with the most intuitive-friendly one and think lower foliar moisture content leads to more crown fires in beetle-kill areas, or do you buy into the satellite burn data and the computer model data which lean toward more resistance to crown fires in areas affected by beetles?
It may take another International Crown Fire Experiment (see photo above), like was done in Canada between 1995 and 2001, setting actual fires in healthy and beetle-affected stands, to resolve the question.
President Obama has released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2013. At this point it is merely a suggestion until Congress passes appropriation or spending cap bills.
The budget fully funds the 10-year average cost of wildland fire suppression operations, but there is a reduction in the funding of the treatment of hazardous fuels — by 24% in the Department of Agriculture and by 21% in the Department of Interior.
The numbers in the table below are in millions, and represent the proposed wildfire budgets for the U.S. Forest Service and the four land management agencies within the Department of Interior.
2012
2013
Change
USFS Preparedness
1,004
1,001
-3
USFS Suppression
853
931
+78
USFS Hazardous Fuels
317
242
-75
USDA State & Volunteer Fire Assistance Grants
99
84
-15
DOI Preparedness
277
280
+3
DOI Suppression
81
277
+196
DOI Hazardous Fuels
183
145
-38
DOI Rural Fire Assistance (was $7 million in 2011)
0
0
0
In the Department of Interior’s justification for the 21% reduction in the hazardous fuels budget, they invoked the name of a U.S. Forest Service researcher, Jack Cohen, who has studied the wildland urban interface:
The Wildland Fire Management account in DOI supports wildland fire preparedness, suppression, rehabilitation, and hazardous fuels reduction activities. When targeted properly, hazardous fuels reduction activities (e.g., removing brush and small trees in strategic locations) can reduce impacts from wildfires, including threats to public safety, suppression costs, and damage to natural and cultural resources.
DOI and the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service have agreed on several actions to reduce impacts from wildfires, such as: 1) prioritizing fuels treatments that have been identified as key components of Community Wildfire Protection Plans and are cost effective; and 2) expanding wildland fire use as a means of treating fuels.
Although funding for hazardous fuels treatments has quadrupled since 2000, the previous policy of treatingthe greatest number of acres possible has led to a patchwork of hazardous fuels treatment that has not been as focused as it could have been on reducing risks in the WUI. As suggested by Forest Service scientists, extensive wildland vegetation management does not effectively change whether or not homes in the WUI catch on fire. However, when there is a clear priority of treating acres within the WUI, hazardous fuels treatments can be more effective in reducing risk.
1,2 In 2013, the Forest Service and DOI will target fuels management activities to mitigate hazards and enhance the ability to control fires in WUI. The agencies will focus funding for hazardous fuels treatments in communities that are on track to meet Firewise standards and have identified acres to be treated in Community Wildfire Protection Plans (or the equivalent) and have made an investment in implementing local solutions to protect against wildland fire.
The Department of Agriculture explained their reduction in the U.S. Forest Service’s hazardous fuels budget, saying that “though the majority of the inexpensive locations have now been treated to reduce hazardous fuels, FS is also furthering its efforts to focus its hazardous fuels treatments in the Wildland-Urban Interface in areas that are identified in Community Wildfire Protection Plans and are highest priority.”
The Kisatchie National Forest near Alexandria, Louisiana (map) has plans to burn 130,000 acres in prescribed fires this year, according to Ed Bratcher, the U.S. Forest Service Fire, Land and Mineral Team leader. Much of the ignition will be done with a helicopter. Here is a link to a recent video in which Larry Kyle said they were about to ignite a 1,155-acre prescribed fire with 14 firefighters, including those in the helicopter. He expected they could get it done in four to five hours.
Extremely dry in some regions of the United States
I stopped trying to predict the intensity of fire seasons long ago. The number of fires and acres burned is primarily affected by the weather DURING the fire season. If the fire season is cool and wet, there will not be many large fires. But if the current trends continue for several months, the extremely dry conditions in some areas of the United States could lead to firefighters being very busy.
The “Percent of Normal Precipitation” map indicates that those areas include the upper midwest, the southwest and the southeast. As the east coast and midwest enter their fire seasons, firefighters could find themselves going from fire to fire.
The CBS station in Minneapolis, Minnesota quotes Byron Paulson, the Fire Weather Program Leader at the National Weather Service, as saying he’s never seen the land as dry as it is this year.
Below is one of the maps from our article on February 1 which covered the wildfire potential for the next 30 to 90 days.
The Washington Post has an article about the U.S. Forest Service’s new strategy for replacing aging air tankers, a topic that we covered on February 10. Here is an excerpt:
…“Trying to figure out the right attributes . . . the right specifications, and . . . working across the variety of land and . . . just coordinating with people takes a bunch of time,” [Tom] Harbour, [national fire director for the Forest Service] said. “We’re happy it’s out. It’s a part of the discussion we have to have with Congress.”
Money also played a role in the agency’s struggle to draft a proposal to modernize. Its pricey shopping list of planes was not acceptable to the Office of Management and Budget.
The agency sought state-of-the-art C-130Js, at $80 million each, a price it cannot afford, according to congressional staffers and aviation experts. The head-turning cargo plane flies at nearly 400 mph and can deliver an optimal load of 4,000 gallons of fire suppressant.
Harbour called the C-130J “an aircraft . . . designed for the kinds of stresses and strains of this work.” As a 20-year investment, he said, it “might be the best thing we could do.”
P2V air tanker on the Whoopup fire, 7-18-2011. Photo by Bill Gabbert
Neptune Aviation has provided more information about the 24-inch crack they found on a wing spar and skin on one of their 50+ year old P2V air tankers, which prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue an Emergency Airworthiness Directive. The EAD required that all P2V airplanes be inspected within 24 hours of receiving the directive. Neptune and Minden, who operate all 11 of the large air tankers on U.S. Forest Service contracts, which are all P2Vs, did not find any similar cracks on the other aircraft during the FAA required inspections.
Here are some excerpts from a news release provided by the American Helicopter Services and Aerial Firefighting Association:
Missoula, MT…Neptune Aviation, the country’s biggest operator of large airtankers, reports that its fleet of ex-Navy P2V Neptunes remains wildfire mission-ready, following the discovery of a crack in the left wing of one of its tankers during a routine scheduled inspection in late January of this year. Although that one airtanker remains out of service pending an engineering evaluation, the remaining nine P2Vs were never grounded–thanks to quick action by the operator.
“We were the ones who discovered the problem and notified the FAA’s Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) in Helena, MT, and at the same time filed a Service Difficulty Report through the FAA’s electronic reporting system,” said Dan Snyder, President of the Missoula-based company. “We then developed inspection criteria, which we took to the FAA’s Aircraft Certification Office (ACO) in Denver after we had inspected our entire fleet. The ACO asked us to provide the details of our inspection criteria, and then used that as the basis for the emergency airworthiness directive (AD), which was issued for all P2V operators in the US.”
[…]
Snyder pointed out that Neptune’s maintenance and inspection criteria are in full compliance with the approved Continuous Airworthiness Program (CAP), implemented by Neptune, and mandated by the US Forest Service (USFS) in 2004. “Neptune Aviation has always been at the forefront of dealing with the aging aircraft issues involved with the current tanker fleet. The fact that we detected this problem before it led to a catastrophic failure indicates that the CAP is doing its job,” he said.
In fact, Neptune Aviation is in the forefront of efforts to replace its Post-World War II tankers. Last year, it secured interim approval from the USFS for deployment of a modified BAE 146 jet, formerly in air carrier service, and is proposing that aircraft for the air tanker role. “We will be responding to the US Forest Service’s Next Generation Tanker Solicitation by the February 15, 2012 deadline,” Snyder reported. “Our intention is to add more aircraft to the US Forest Service airtanker fleet under this solicitation, while continuing to maintain our current P2V tanker fleet.”
