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Tag: fuel management

Three universities receive $20 million to make fuel management data more usable for managers

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , , , 7 Comments on Three universities receive $20 million to make fuel management data more usable for managers

Will also evaluate outcomes to see what works

Cameron Peak Fire
Cameron Peak Fire smoke plume at Boyd Lake, InciWeb, Oct. 14, 2020.

In an effort to improve forest resilience and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires in the Interior West, three organizations are receiving a total of $20 million from the U.S. government.

The funds are part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed by Congress with bipartisan support and signed by President Joe Biden in 2021, which will go to enhancing key systems and processes to mitigate the impact of forest fires.

The award will be made to the Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes (SWERI) which includes the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute (CFRI), Highlands University’s New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute, and Northern Arizona University’s Ecological Restoration Institute. The SWERI were created through congressional legislation passed in 2004 which charged the three institutes with promoting adaptive management practices to restore the health of fire-adapted forest and woodland ecosystems of the Interior West.

The Colorado Forest Restoration Institute is housed in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship in CSU’s Warner College of Natural Resources.

The three institutes will work collaboratively on three key components with the funding, to:

  • Develop a national database of existing data on fuel treatments and wildfires,
  • Work with managers, planners, and policymakers to facilitate use and applications of the data, and,
  • Research outcomes of forest management and wildfires to learn what works.

“The work we’re charged with developing under the Infrastructure measure will create opportunities for land and fire managers, scientists and community stakeholders to co-produce actionable knowledge to lessen the harmful effects of wildfire events to people and the environment,” said Tony Cheng, director of the CFRI and professor in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship.

CFRI geospatial mapping products
Land and fire managers and community stakeholders in Boulder County huddled around CFRI geospatial mapping products aided by CFRI’s science and outreach staff. Photo by Tony Cheng.

According to Cheng, the new funding aligns with the CSU land-grant mission and offers an opportunity to grow CFRI’s existing data management, application, and research efforts to be accessible for a wider audience.

The funding is prompted by climate change-driven increases in fire activity and fire season length, continued development in the wildland-urban interface, and interactions between fire and disturbances like pest and pathogen disturbance.

The CFRI recently completed a statewide database of forest vegetation management and wildfires for Colorado, complementing a similar effort for New Mexico and southern Colorado led by the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute. The data serve as a foundation for the decision support tools and collaborative processes that CFRI deploys around the state and throughout the Interior West. The national database will be developed using similar types of data across the country.

The data are only the starting point, said Brett Wolk, one of CFRI’s assistant directors. Making data meaningful for land and fire managers, scientists, policymakers, and community stakeholders working in their specific places is a critical function the institutes excel at and is called out in the Infrastructure provisions.

“Unless the data is situated within a social context where people can understand how it applies to their work, all the best data and science in the world won’t change decisions or outcomes on the ground,” said Wolk. “That’s why SWERI works to co-develop solutions with partners and empower decisions that are science informed but also locally relevant.”

A third component of the funding is researching outcomes of past treatments to improve future decisions. This will build on deep research expertise at the Arizona and Colorado institutes, exemplified by a recent CFRI co-led publication and accompanying podcast evaluating accomplishments of the Forest to Faucets partnership aimed at protecting Denver’s water supply from devastating wildfires.

The challenge, Wolk said, is applying the collective institutes’ knowledge and expertise across the entire U.S. At the same time, there is an opportunity for other states to benefit from the collective knowledge across the institutes.

“It’s a massive opportunity to help fast-track implementation of what’s working in forest and fire management. But research also shows big gaps in who has access to and contributes knowledge towards these forestry data and decision-making processes. If we can increase the application of science, while making incremental change to expand equity of ideas and resources among wider audiences, those will be our measures of success.”

From Colorado State University

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Gerald.

Forest Service announces 10-year initiative to increase fuel treatment

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , , , 18 Comments on Forest Service announces 10-year initiative to increase fuel treatment

It will use $2.42 billion authorized by the infrastructure bill for fiscal years 2022 through 2026 for fuels-related projects

Geronimo Hotshots
Geronimo Hotshots on the Big Windy Complex, Oregon, 2013. USFS photo by Lance Cheung.

On Tuesday the U.S. Forest Service announced a 10-year strategy to address what they call the wildfire crisis which poses immediate threats to communities. The initiative, called “Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: A Strategy for Protecting Communities and Improving Resilience in America’s Forests,” combines the recent large investment funded by congress  with years of research and planning into a national effort that is intended to significantly increase the scale of forest health treatments over the next decade.

The Forest Service will work with other federal agencies, including the Department of the Interior, and with Tribes, states, local communities, private landowners, and other partners to focus fuels and forest health treatments more strategically and at a larger scale.

Funding was approved in November

The Bipartisan Infrastructure bill signed by the President November 15, 2021 authorized about $2.42 billion for fiscal years 2022 through 2026 for fuels-related projects. (M = million)

  • $100M, Pre-fire planning, and training personnel for wildland firefighting and vegetation treatments
  • $20M, Data management for fuels projects and large fires
  • $100M, Planning & implementing projects under the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program
  • $500M, Mechanical thinning, timber harvesting, pre-commercial thinning
  • $500M, Wildfire defense grants for at risk communities
  • $500M, Prescribed fires
  • $500M, Constructing fuelbreaks
  • $200M, Remove fuels, produce biochar and other innovative wood products

Previous testimony about fuel management before congressional committees

During testimony June 17, 2021  before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources former US Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen said the agency treats fuels on about three million acres each year but said they need to treat two to four times that amount. She repeatedly called for a “paradigm shift” for treating hazardous fuels. Senator Ron Wyden (OR) got Ms. Christiansen to confirm that the agency’s latest estimate is that it would take $20 billion over a 10-year period  to “get in front of the hazardous fuel challenge”.

On September 29, 2021 in a hearing before the House of Representatives Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry, new USFS Chief Randy Moore said, “We will never hire enough firefighters, we will never buy enough engines or aircraft to fight these fires. We must actively treat forests. That’s what it takes to turn this situation around. We must shift from small scale treatments to strategic science-based treatments across boundaries. It must start with those places most critically at risk. We must treat 20 million acres over 10 years. Done right in the right places, treatments make a difference.”

On October 27, 2021 Jaelith Hall-Rivera, Deputy Forest Service Chief for State and Private Forestry told the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Natural Resources, “We need to treat an additional 20 million acres over the next decade and that could cost up to $20 billion or more.”

What is now planned

The plan released Tuesday by the Forest Service calls for:

  1. Treating up to an additional 20 million acres on the National Forest System lands in the West, over and above current treatment levels;
  2. Treating up to an additional 30 million acres on other Federal, State, Tribal, and private lands in the West;

The current level of treatment in recent years has been 2-3 million acres per year for fuels and forest health, the new document stated.

The plan calls for an unprecedented “paradigm shift” in land management to increase fuels and forest health treatments across jurisdictions to match the actual scale of wildfire risk to people, communities, and natural resources, especially in the Western United States.

The Forest Service is developing staffing plans and will be increasing capacity in not only field personnel specializing in prescribed fire to complete the work but also key administrative positions like contracting officers, human resources professionals, collaboration and partnership coordinators, communications, and grants and agreements specialists who will assist in connecting with partners.

Marshall Fire, Louisville, Colorado, by WxChasing/Brandon Clement
Marshall Fire, Louisville, Colorado. Photo by WxChasing/Brandon Clement, Dec. 31, 2021.

In 2022 and 2023

During the first two years of the initiative, the agency will be looking for large landscape-scale projects that are ready to go, up until now lacking only the necessary funding.

They will be seeking projects that are:

  • Designed to reduce wildfire risk to communities, water supplies, or critical infrastructure (including utility lines, roads, and national security sites);
  • Critical ecological values (including watersheds, wildlife habitat, and old growth stands) and ecosystem services (including carbon storage);
  • Economic values (including outdoor recreation, timber, and grazing areas);
  • Areas of cultural and historic significance (including areas important to Tribes); and,
  • Areas of social importance to communities (including for access and subsistence use).

Reforestation

The new initiative also strives for increased rates of reforestation following forest fires.

“We currently address only 6 percent of post-wildfire replanting needs per year, resulting in a rapidly expanding list of reforestation needs,” the new plan states. “We have plans for the reforestation of more than 1.3 million acres of National Forest System land. However, these plans only address one-third of National Forest System reforestation needs, estimated to be 4 million acres and growing. As we work to recover from wildfire, we are emphasizing planting the right species, in the right place, under the right conditions, so forests will remain healthy and resilient over time.”

Our take

The testimony before congressional committees said that in order  to “get in front of the hazardous fuel challenge” and “turn this situation around” the Forest Service needs an additional $2 billion a year for the next 10 years, over and above what is currently being spent. What was appropriated for the next five years was about $0.48 billion per year, less than one-fourth of the additional funds the agency said was needed.

The growth of the climate crisis which has contributed to the “wildfire crisis” appears to be exceeding the estimates of scientists. Changes are occurring even more quickly than previously expected. So low-balling the funding for protecting our homeland will mean we will fall even further behind in treating fuels and attempting to keep fires from wiping out more communities.

The heads of the five federal land management agencies need to be honest with congress and continue to point out the scope of the fuels problem and the increasing risk of fiddling while the forests and subdivisions burn. Congress must accept the facts and pass legislation adequate to address the threats to our ecosystems and communities.

Interpretive exhibit about forests and fire opens in Truckee, California December 10, 2021

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 1 Comment on Interpretive exhibit about forests and fire opens in Truckee, California December 10, 2021

Forest ecology and its relationship with Fire

Forest Fire exhibition

FOREST⇌FIRE is an inter-disciplinary, multi-sensory installation connecting art, the humanities and science. Debuting at the Truckee Community Recreation Center in Truckee, California December 10, 2021, it flows thematically through past, present and future, utilizing painting, textiles, beadwork, sculpture, photography and more, to tell the story of the Forest ecology and its relationship with Fire.  Of how indigenous people, using low intensity fire, created and maintained the West’s pre-European, old growth forest for thousands of years, of why our forests are currently in ecological collapse, and what can be done immediately to prevent the loss of our Forest.

Through the story and artwork of 19 California writers and artists, the exhibition:

  • Shares a science-based solution to catastrophic fire.
  • Addresses the paradox that some trees need to be removed to save the Forest.
  • Explains why fire needs to become our partner in returning the Forest to resiliency.
  • Provides a vision of what a healthy future forest actually looks like.
  • Offers an economically sustainable, hopeful future for the Forest.
  • Aims to activate a transformative cultural understanding that we learn to live as a part of Nature, rather than apart from Nature in facing Climate Change.

Bringing our forests back into equilibrium (⇌) with fire via small tree and slash reduction combined with traditional low intensity burns, will regenerate healthy, fire-resistant, large-tree-forests of pristine beauty and great utility, personally affecting each and every Californian.  Healthy, large tree forests purify our water and the air that we breathe, slow the effects of global warming via carbon sequestration, encourage biodiversity, and provide an endless and sustainable source of small-tree timber products and the jobs that result from maintaining a healthy forest ecosystem into the future.

For more information about the FOREST⇌FIRE Project and Exhibition, visit forestandfire.org and nevadacountyarts.org/forestfire, where supporters can donate to this project.

What:  FOREST⇌FIRE Exhibition Opening
When: Friday, Dec. 10, 2021, from 5  to 7 p.m.  (exhibition runs through June 2022)
Where: Truckee Community Recreation Center, 10981 Truckee Way, Truckee, CA 96161 (Masks are required inside the building.)

(The above is from the exhibit’s website)

Forest Service explains low intensity fire

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Prescribed FireTags , 9 Comments on Forest Service explains low intensity fire
low intensity fire
Image from USFS fuel management video

The U.S. Forest Service has released the fourth in a series of videos about fuel management and wildfire. This four-minute episode explains the importance of routine, low intensity fire within California’s fire adapted ecosystems. It also covers the consequences of removing low intensity fire from these same landscapes including the buildup of hazardous fuels.

Low Intensity Fire – California FOREST NEWS – Episode #4 from Pacific Southwest Region on Vimeo.

Will the fuels reduction completed near South Lake Tahoe help protect homes from the Caldor Fire?

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , , , , 38 Comments on Will the fuels reduction completed near South Lake Tahoe help protect homes from the Caldor Fire?

The Home Ignition Zone is the key

3:13 p.m. Sept. 1, 2021

Fuel treatments, Lake Tahoe Caldor Fire
Fuel treatments, Lake Tahoe area, and perimeter of the Caldor Fire Sept. 1, 2021.

For decades land managers and some residents in the Lake Tahoe area have been anticipating the Caldor Fire that has been burning since August 14. The blaze has blackened more than 204,000 acres as it rages to the northeast. It passed through the south edge of Meyers six miles south of the lakeshore and the head of the fire Wednesday morning was four miles from the lake.

Under the concept of reducing the fire threat to structures in the Lake Tahoe Basin, the US Forest Service and other organizations have been conducting hazardous fuel treatments. Since 1997, over 2,000 acres of landscape underburns and over 8,000 acres of prescribed pile burning has been completed on the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (LTBMU), a division of the USFS that manages much of the land near the lake. In these areas, surface fuels have been reduced and smaller live trees thinned. The USFS says this “creates a zone where a damaging crown fire is less likely, which provides a safer environment for firefighters.”

The map above shows the fire on the morning of September 1 and completed hazardous fuel treatments. The green areas represent mechanical methods, such as thinning by hand or by using machines such as dozers or feller bunchers which can rapidly gather and cut a tree before felling it. Then the cut vegetation is piled. The purple areas represent locations where piles were burned. Some of the projects shown were completed in the last few years and others are older. This map shows very few areas (in yellow) that were treated with prescribed broadcast fire.

The USFS web page for the LTBMU politely says that budget restraints limit the number of acres that can be treated: “Increasing the annual number of acres treated with prescribed fire will challenge our future capacity.”

USFS engine crews on the initial attack of the Caldor Fire
USFS engine crews on the initial attack of the Caldor Fire, August 14, 2021. USFS photo.

The hope is that reducing the flammable vegetation will reduce the chances of structures being destroyed when a fire like the Caldor Fire burns into the area. Thinning trees and removing brush will not stop a fire, but in a best case scenario under benign weather and fuel conditions it might reduce the intensity of the fire and the number of firebrands landing on and near structures. If a fire does dramatically slow down when entering a treated area, it may make it possible for firefighters on the ground, perhaps aided by firefighters in the air, to stop the spread. That is, unless the wind is too strong and the vegetation moisture is historically low like we have seen this summer in California. As we wrote on August 22, under these conditions, “There is no possibility of stopping the forward spread of the fire. There is no number of 747 air tankers or firefighters on the ground that could be effective against the flaming front of this raging inferno.” This will continue to be true until something changes — some combination of cooler more humid weather, less wind, and vegetation with higher moisture content — or until it runs out of fuel at high elevations or spreads into agricultural land.

The Caldor has been lofting burning embers into the air that have landed a mile ahead of the flaming front, starting new fires, called spot fires by firefighters. When that is occurring fuel reduction projects a half mile wide around a community will not necessarily keep structures from burning. We could pave the forest paradise and put up a parking lot but if a fire a mile away can ignite residences we need other solutions.

The Home Ignition Zone (HIZ) is what home owners need to concentrate on. If it is welcoming to an ember storm, then the structure could burn no matter how much forest management is done. The HIZ must be maintained so that burning embers will not start a fire on the structure or ignite nearby vegetation which creates a fire that spreads to and ignites the building.

This is called Living With Fire. We can’t stop fires from burning, but we can stop homes from igniting when the inevitable fire occurs.

The best way to prevent homes from being destroyed in a wildfire is not clear cutting or prescribed burning a forest, it is the homeowner reducing flammable material in the HIZ. This includes spacing the crowns of trees at least 18 feet apart. The envelope of the structure itself must be fire resistant, including the roof, vents, siding, doors, windows, foundation, fences, eaves, and decks. A FEMA publication (13 MB) has excellent detailed recommendations. Headwaters Economics found that the cost of building a fire-resistant home is about the same as a standard home. When implemented, Chapter 7A of the California Building Code, regulates these features.

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Jack Cohen and Dave Strohmaier:

Uncontrollable extreme wildfires are inevitable; however, by reducing home ignition potential within the Home Ignition Zone we can create ignition resistant homes and communities. Thus, community wildfire risk should be defined as a home ignition problem, not a wildfire control problem. Unfortunately, protecting communities from wildfire by reducing home ignition potential runs counter to established orthodoxy.

UPDATE September 3, 2021:

In a live briefing Sept. 3 about the Caldor Fire near South Lake Tahoe, California, East Side Incident Commander Rocky Oplinger complimented the land owners and managers for the fuel treatments that have been accomplished over the years. He said the 150-foot flame lengths dropped to about 15-feet when the fire entered the treated areas. This allowed hand crews and engines to take an aggressive approach to suppress the fire and prevent structure loss. The video of the briefing is on Facebook; Mr. Oplinger’s comments about the fuel treatments begin at 34:10.

Investigation shows California Governor misled the public about fuel reduction projects completed

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 3 Comments on Investigation shows California Governor misled the public about fuel reduction projects completed
Prescribed fire fuel break Angeles National Forest
Prescribed fire on the Clear Creek fuel break in the Angeles National Forest in Southern California. ANF photo.

An investigation found that California Governor Gavin Newsom grossly exaggerated the amount of fuel reduction projects that have been completed on state lands, and he reduced the fire prevention budget.

From Capradio, June 23, 2021:

“An investigation from CapRadio and NPR’s California Newsroom found the governor has misrepresented his accomplishments and even disinvested in wildfire prevention. The investigation found Newsom overstated, by an astounding 690%, the number of acres treated with fuel breaks and prescribed burns in the very forestry projects he said needed to be prioritized to protect the state’s most vulnerable communities. Newsom has claimed that 35 “priority projects” carried out as a result of his executive order resulted in fire prevention work on 90,000 acres. But the state’s own data show the actual number is 11,399.

“Overall, California’s response has faltered under Newsom. After an initial jump during his first year in office, data obtained by CapRadio and NPR’s California Newsroom show Cal Fire’s fuel reduction output dropped by half in 2020, to levels below Gov. Jerry Brown’s final year in office. At the same time, Newsom slashed roughly $150 million from Cal Fire’s wildfire prevention budget.”

Update at 6:44 a.m. PDT June 24, 2021

Here are two other points of view: