Some congressmen want to increase logging by suspending environmental laws

North Pole Fire Custer
North Pole Fire west of Custer, SD, March 3, 2015. Photo by Bill Gabbert.

The House of Representatives has passed another bill that would suspend some environmental laws so that more logging can occur in federal forests. Similar to one passed in the House in 2013, it would enhance fire prevention and restoration, according to the proponents of the legislation which has three supporters in the Senate who introduced it there.

Below are excerpts from an Op-Ed in the New York Times about this effort which failed two years ago.

…Just as they did in 2013, supporters of this legislation are using the public’s fear of forest fires to advance their agenda. They argue that overgrown and “unhealthy” forests raise the risk of wildfires, and that the government has been hampered by litigation and environmental reviews from allowing timber companies to thin forests to reduce the risk of fire.

The legislation is rooted in falsehoods and misconceptions.

Some of the bill’s supporters claim that environmental laws regulating commercial logging have led to more intense fires. But, as we saw in the 2013 fire near Yosemite, known as the Rim Fire and one of the largest in California history, commercial logging and the clear-cutting of forests do not reduce fire intensity.

In the case of the Rim Fire, our research found that protected forest areas with no history of logging burned least intensely. There was a similar pattern in other large fires in recent years. Logging removes the mature, thick-barked, fire-resistant trees. The small trees planted in their place and the debris left behind by loggers act as kindling; in effect, the logged areas become combustible tree plantations that are poor wildlife habitat.

The bill’s supporters also argue that increasing logging and clear-cutting will benefit wildlife. But decades of forest ecology research strongly link the logging of both unburned and burned forests to the declines of numerous wildlife species, most notably the imperiled spotted owl.

Recognizing these findings, some 250 scientists sent a letter to Congress in 2013 opposing a similar version of the current legislation. They predicted, correctly, that the Rim Fire would actually benefit many wildlife species and rejuvenate the forest ecosystem, provided that the burned expanses were not then cleared by loggers…

The bill is titled, H.R.2647 – Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2015. The status of it can be followed at Congress.gov. As this is written, it has passed the House and now is before the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.

The Op-Ed was written by Chad T. Hanson, an ecologist with the John Muir Project, and Dominick A. DellaSala, the chief scientist at the Geos Institute. They are the editors of “The Ecological Importance of Mixed-Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix.”

Researchers: hotter fires may heat underlying soil less than cooler fires

Researchers studying a 22-acre prescribed fire in Portugal have concluded that fires which burn hotter do not necessarily produce higher soil temperatures. Below is an excerpt from an American Geophysical Union press release.

When scientists torched an entire 22-acre watershed in Portugal in a recent experiment, their research yielded a counterintuitive result: Large, hot fires do not necessarily beget hot, scorched soil.

It’s well known that wildfires can leave surface soil burned and barren, which increases the risk of erosion and hinders a landscape’s ability to recover. But the scientists’ fiery test found that the hotter the fire—and the denser the vegetation feeding the flames—the less the underlying soil heated up, an inverse effect which runs contrary to previous studies and conventional wisdom.

Rather, the soil temperature was most affected by the fire’s speed, the direction of heat travel and the landscape’s initial moisture content. These new findings could help forest managers plan when and where to ignite small controlled burns to reduce dry vegetation and restore the ecosystem in at-risk areas, said Cathelijne Stoof, the soil and water scientist who led this study as part of her PhD research at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

A report about the experiment by Stoof, who is now at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and her colleagueshas been accepted for publication by Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

To some people this may be “counterintuitive”, but many firefighters know the residence time, or how much time high temperatures exist at a location, is very important in determining how much heat is transferred into the soil or the organic material that is not consumed by the fire.

On a related subject…

In two previous fire management jobs I had the opportunity to assist researchers who were measuring the temperature at which wildland fires burn. Obtaining this data is not the easiest thing in the world.

In southern California I helped place thermocouples, which can measure very high temperatures, on brushy hillsides prior to a prescribed fire. Then, trying not to disturb the vegetation which could influence fire behavior when the site was burned, I crawled under the brush running asbestos-covered wires from the thermocouples to data loggers which were about the size of a football. Each one recorded information from several scattered thermocouples. Then we had to bury the data loggers so they could survive the fire. This was in the 1970s. The researchers in the Portugal study mentioned above used thermocouples and data loggers, but the data loggers were probably about the size of a package of chewing gum — much easier to bury.

On another project the temperature was measured using heat sensitive paint, a much less accurate system. About eight different paints were used which discolored at specific temperatures. A narrow strip of each paint was brushed onto a very thin strip of aluminum which was stapled onto stakes, sticking out to the side at various heights above the ground. After the fire burned through you would examine the strips and you might see, for example, that the 1,200 degree paint discolored but the 1,250 degree paint did not, so you could conclude that the temperature at that location was between 1,200 and 1,250 degrees. Sometimes it was a judgement call about which paints discolored and which ones did not.

At what temperatures do forest fires burn?

We’ve been asked a few times, “what is the temperature of a forest fire”, so we placed an entry on our Frequently Asked Questions page:

An average surface fire on the forest floor might have flames reaching 1 meter in height and can reach temperatures of 800°C (1,472° F) or more. Under extreme conditions a fire can give off 10,000 kilowatts or more per meter of fire front. This would mean flame heights of 50 meters or more and flame temperatures exceeding 1200°C (2,192° F). (Information provided by Natural Resources Canada.)

How hot is the sun?

On our Facebook page someone once wrote that forest fires burn hotter than the sun. He, of course, was badly and sadly mistaken. According to Space.com:

The temperature in the photosphere [near the surface] is about 10,000 degrees F (5,500 degrees C). It is here that the sun’s radiation is detected as sunlight.

The interior of the sun is much hotter and can reach more than 27 million degrees F (15 million degrees C).

Discovering more about how dormant seeds decide to sprout after a fire

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Scientists have known for years that some seeds after being dormant in the soil for years can be triggered to germinate and sprout after a wildland fire. But exactly how this happened was not clear.

Recent research by personnel at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has shed some light on this process. Below are some excerpts from an article at Science Daily:

[Joseph P.] Noel’s co-senior investigator on the project, Joanne Chory, professor and director of Salk’s Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory, says the team found the molecular “wake-up call” for burned forests. “What we discovered,” she says, “is how a dying plant generates a chemical message for the next generation, telling dormant seeds it’s time to sprout.”

[…]

In previous studies, scientists had discovered that special chemicals known as karrikins are created as trees and shrubs burn during a forest fire and remain in the soil after the fire, ensuring the forest will regenerate.

[…]

The chemical structures the team solved revealed all the molecular contacts between karrikin and KAI2, according to Salk research associate Yongxia Guo, a structural enzymologist and one of the study’s lead investigators. “But, more than that,” Gou says, “we also now know that when karrikin binds to the KAI2 protein it causes a change in its shape.”

The studies’ other lead investigator, Salk research associate and plant geneticist Zuyu Zheng, says this karrikin-induced shape change may send a new signal to other proteins in the seeds. “These other protein players,” he says, “together with karrikin and KAI2, generate the signal causing seed germination at the right place and time after a wildfire.”

Myth of catastrophic fires, revisited

Myrtle fire
Myrtle fire, South Dakota Black Hills, July 23, 2012. Photo by Bill Gabbert

In 2010 we told you about a paper written by Chad Hanson, Director of the John Muir Project. His point of view was that large stand-replacement fires are a necessary part of the forest ecosystem.

Brooks Hays has a recent article at his Government from the Ground Up blog that explores that premise and says the land management agencies should embrace high-intensity fires. Here is an excerpt:

It looks like this ecological truth is not yet understood by the general public. But the Forest Service also seems to be gripped by an old-fashioned view of fire’s functions. “It’s still a good old boy network,” says [Richard] Hutton, [forest ecologist and director of the Avian Science Center at the University of Montana], “full of rangers who honestly believe in their heart of hearts that their job is to keep trees green.” Their idea of a healthy forest is “no beetles, no fire,” he explains. “And they’ll thin and cut away trees to prevent fires or any other disruption that might prevent trees from being green.”

Making matters worse is the fact that the agency remains underfunded. And when the Forest Service is strapped for cash, Hutto points out, it’s the younger, better-educated, more ecologically-minded rangers that get the ax – and the trees follow.

“What’s missing,” says Hutto, “is ecology, in a word. There are too few ecologists in the forest service.”

Below we revisit the article we wrote in 2010.

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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.

 

Have some plants evolved to promote fire?

Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist, recently traveled to Australia where she learned a little about fires in eucalyptus forests. In an article she wrote for the New York Times, she wonders if some plants have specific characteristics that make it more likely that fires will burn intensely. Here is an excerpt from her article.

….It’s common knowledge that plants regularly exposed to fire tend to have features that help them cope with it — such as thick bark, or seeds that only grow after being exposed to intense heat or smoke. But what is less often remarked on is that the plants themselves affect the nature and severity of fire.

For example, dead branches burn more readily than living branches, so a tree that keeps dead branches (rather than letting them fall) makes it easier for a fire to climb into a forest canopy: the dead branches provide a ladder for the fire. Deadwood also allows fires to get hotter. Leaves that are high in cellulose, or that contain oils, also stoke the flames. Resins and gums are highly flammable. And as any girl scout knows, twigs catch light more readily than branches, so a twiggy sort of plant can catch fire more readily than its non-twiggy sister.

But here’s the odd thing. Many plants that live in places prone to fire are highly flammable — more flammable than plants that live elsewhere. This has led some to speculate that these plants have actually evolved to cause fires: that they “want” fire, and have evolved features that make it more likely that a spark will become a flame, and a flame will become a fire. I call this the torch-me hypothesis.

The argument goes like this. Many plants depend on fire for their propagation. Indeed, without fire, these plants disappear. If, for example, longleaf pine forests do not burn regularly, the pines will be replaced by water oaks and other species. So — runs the argument — fires are desirable because they kill the competition. Plants that enhance fires may thus have an evolutionary advantage: they murder the competition while creating the right circumstances for their own seeds to sprout.

This idea has sparked a heated debate. The problem is, showing that a trait has evolved because it enhances fire is difficult. Yes, oily leaves are more flammable; but perhaps the real advantage of oily leaves is that insects don’t enjoy eating them. Then, their flammability may be a by-product of tasting terrible.

The best evidence that some plants may have evolved to promote fire comes from pines. Some species of pine keep their dead branches; others tend to self-prune. As you would expect under the torch-me hypothesis, the more flammable species — the ones with the dead wood — also tend to have seeds that are released by fire. In short, the two traits go together….

The author seems to think she is the first person to consider this concept.

Lodgepole pine, photo: N. C. Heywood

One example of this is the lodgepole pine. It has shaggy bark and does not self-prune its limbs readily, so a fire at the base of the tree can, under dry conditions, run up the trunk of the tree and become a crown fire. It has a fire return interval of about 300 years, and fires tend to be of the stand replacement type, leaving nothing but snags. The serotinous cones open and disperse the seeds after the fire, promoting the resurgence of another lodgepole forest.

Lodgepole pine infested with dwarf mistletoe. Photo: D. Johnson

UPDATE: Chuck Bushey wrote to us about this.

Bob Mutch actually wrote his MS thesis on this topic at the University of Montana in the late 70’s. It was later published in the Journal of Ecology and I think he was the first to formally express the concept in the scientific literature.

Chuck later said the actual citation is:

Mutch, Robert W., 1970. Wildland Fires and Ecosystems – A Hypothesis.

Ecology, Volume 51(6):1046-1051.