Engine rollover, Warm Springs, Oregon, July 18, 2014.
*The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center has published a report on a BIA engine that rolled over near Warm Springs, Oregon, July 18, 2014. Two people were injured, one seriously. The LLC says more than 50 fire vehicles have rolled over in the last 10 years.
*Fire officials in Washington state suspect an arsonist is responsible for igniting 23 fires in less than two weeks. Most of them have been vegetation fires.
*In other news from Australia, a Senator gave a speech, titled, Thank you For Smoking, praising nicotine fiends for their $8 billion a year contribution to the economy. He said he did the math: Last year smokers cost the health care system $320 million and another $150 million in bushfire control.
*Researchers have found that “recent (2001–2010) beetle outbreak severity was unrelated to most field measures of subsequent fire severity, which was instead driven primarily by extreme burning conditions (weather) and topography.” Unfortunately, to read the article, researched and published by government employees, it will cost you $10 for two days of access. If the researchers, Brian J. Harvey, Daniel C. Donato, and Monica G. Turner, are going to hide the results of their taxpayer-funded research behind a pay wall, what’s the point in hiring researchers? Support Open Access.
*Firefighters are on lessened alert in the Black Hills after the area received two to five inches of rain over the last few days.
Federal employees working for the United States Forest Service and the citizens of the United States have published the results of research done on behalf of the taxpayers, titled Climate Change and Wildfire. If you want to read it you will have to pay $35.95 to the for-profit Elsevier corporation headquartered in the Netherlands that published the paper. It was written by research meteorologists Yongqiang Liu and Scott Goodrick from the Forest Service’s Southern Research Station (SRS) and Warren Heilman from the Northern Research Station. The concept of Open Access to taxpayer-funded research still has a long way to go in the U.S. Forest Service.
Below are some highlights of the research, according to the USDA Forest Service’s Southern Research Station. We will have to take their word for it. The agency suggests that “for the full text of the article” go to the Elsevier web site, where you have to pay $35.95.
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(UPDATE at 11:44 a.m. MST, February 24, 2014)
After we reached out to her and left a message, we received a phone call today from Zoë Hoyle, the author of the press release about the research that was issued May 20, 2013. She said the link to the full text of the article which directed web site visitors to the pay wall was an error. She said the usual practice of USFS researchers is to place their results on http://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/ where they can be read at no charge, but that still has not taken place. Ms. Hoyle said, however, that the paper should be on treesearch by the end of this week.
In the meantime, one of our readers, Liz H., used Google Scholar to find a copy of it at firescience.gov. Thanks Liz.
And thanks go out also to Ms. Hoyle for correcting the oversight. We are pleased to hear that the usual practice of the USFS is to publish their research on treesearch, an open access format on the internet.
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(UPDATE at 1:54 p.m. MST, February 24, 2014)
Ms. Hoyle contacted us again to let us know that the USFS was able to expedite the placement of the research paper on treesearch, where it can now be viewed without having to pay the company from the Netherlands $35.95.
Here is one of the illustrations from the paper, about the interactions between the climate and fire.
Below is an excerpt from the May 20, 2013 USFS news release about the research.
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“While research has historically focused on fire-weather interactions, there is increasing attention paid to fire-climate interactions,” says Liu, lead author and team leader with the SRS Center for Forest Disturbance Science. “Weather, the day-to-day state of the atmosphere in a region, influences individual fires within a fire season. In contrast, when we talk about fire climate, we’re looking at the statistics of weather over a certain period. Fire climate sets atmospheric conditions for fire activity in longer time frames and larger geographic scales.”
Wildfires impact atmospheric conditions through emissions of gases, particles, water, and heat. Some of the article focuses on radiative forcing from fire emissions. Radiative forcing refers to the change in net (down minus up) irradiance (solar plus longwave) at the tropopause, the top of the troposphere where most weather takes place.
Smoke particles can generate radiative forcing mainly through scattering and absorbing solar radiation (direct radiative forcing), and modifying the cloud droplet concentrations and lifetime, and hence the cloud radiative properties (indirect radiative forcing). The change in radiation can cause further changes in global temperatures and precipitation.
“Wildfire emissions can have remarkable impacts on radiative forcing,” says Liu.
“During fire events or burning seasons, smoke particles reduce overall solar radiation absorbed by the atmosphere at local and regional levels. At the global scale, fire emissions of carbon dioxide contribute substantially to the global greenhouse effect.”
Other major findings covered in the synthesis include:
The radiative forcing of smoke particles can generate significant regional climate effects, leading to lower temperatures at the ground surface.
Smoke particles mostly suppress cloud formation and precipitation. Fire events could lead to more droughts.
Black carbon, essentially the fine particles of carbon that color smoke, plays different roles in affecting climate. In the middle and lower atmosphere, its presence could lead to a more stable atmosphere. Black carbon plays a special role in the snow-climate feedback loop, accelerating snow melting.
Land surface changes may be triggered that also play into future effects. “Wildfire is a disturbance of ecosystems,” says Liu. “Besides the atmospheric impacts, wildfires also modify terrestrial ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, soil fertility, grazing value, biodiversity, and tourism. The effects can in turn trigger land use changes that in turn affect the atmosphere.”
The article concludes by outlining issues that lead to uncertainties in understanding fire-climate interactions and the future research needed to address them.
Full text of the article: [note from Bill. We deleted the link to the for-profit web site with the pay wall]
After the Rim Fire, water now worries land managers
The 257,000-acre Rim Fire is now 100 percent contained, at a cost of $127 million, but the effects of rain on barren slopes is the newest worry for land mangers. Over 90 percent of the fire burned in the Tuolumne River watershed in and near Yosemite National Park in California. The loss of vegetation and exposure of the soil could lead to erosion and increased water runoff that may lead to flooding, increased sediment, and debris flows.
The Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) team has been working in the Rim Fire area for weeks and continues to assess the needs and implement emergency stabilization measures. Projects the team is working on include:
Improving road drainage and storm-proofing roads at risk of failure from increased flooding.
Stabilizing and repairing trails.
Monitoring for and treating invasive weeds.
Mulching and chipping to protect fragile soils.
Two dry years in a row have worried land managers but now the thought of a heavy rain has them concerned.
Acid frogs are not greatly affected by fires
Often we hear of people who suffer mental anguish over the plight of animals being affected by wildfire — they assume that Bambi and others die by the thousands. But most creatures have adapted to fire over tens of thousands of years.
Recent research in Australia concluded that acid frog “populations did not suffer adversely from moderate intensity fires as suitable refuges, including standing water, were available. All species were present shortly after fire with subsequent successful reproduction occurring once wetlands were sufficiently inundated.”
You can obtain a copy of the taxpayer-funded research by paying the International Journal of Wildland Fire, published by CSIRO, $25. The researchers work for Griffith University, which apparently does not believe in the concept of Open Access to taxpayer-funded research.
New Hampshire may ban fire balloons
New Hampshire may become the 26th state to ban fire balloons, which are sometimes called sky lanterns or Chinese lanterns.
These incendiary devices use burning material such as rubbing alcohol or a candle to heat the air in a bag made of tissue paper or very thin plastic. The heat makes the device lighter than air causing it to rise into the sky, staying aloft for 10 minutes to 2 hours. They can be very pretty to watch especially when they are released dozens or hundreds at a time such as at a wedding or some other celebration. The problem is they are uncontrollable and sometimes start wildfires or structure fires.
The National Association of State Fire Marshals adopted a resolution this year urging states to ban the sale and use of the devices. Below is an excerpt from their position on the issue:
…Therefore, be it resolved that the National Association of State Fire Marshals strongly encourages states to ban the sale and use of sky lanterns through whichever means is most expedient for them. Banning the use of sky lanterns is important to help control homemade devices as well as those purchased from various sources.
New Hampshire state Senator Nancy Stiles has introduced a bill to prohibit them in her state. Below is an excerpt from USA Today:
Stiles, a Republican, filed her bill at the request of Rye Fire Chief Skip Sullivan. Sullivan said people have lit the lanterns at the beach thinking they would float out to sea only to have them blow inland. One landed in a selectman’s yard but burned out and did no damage, he said.
Sullivan said fire officials want a law “primarily for the fact that when you light these and send them off, it is an open fire you’re sending off.”
He added, “When these things come down, are these people going to clean up the mess they leave behind?”
A decade after a stand-replacement forest fire on the Metolius watershed in Central Oregon, almost no trees have begun to regenerate on one of the dry sites at lower elevation. (Photo courtesy of Oregon State University)
Government employees working for Oregon State University have determined that predicted increases in temperature and drought in the coming century may make it more difficult for conifers such as ponderosa pine to regenerate after major forest fires on dry, low-elevation sites, in some cases leading to conversion of forests to grass or shrub lands, a report suggests.
But even though you paid for it already by funding the research as a taxpayer, it will cost you $35.95 to purchase a copy of their findings, written by Erich Kyle Dodson and Heather Taylor Root of the University’s Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society in Corvallis, Oregon. The for-profit Elsevier corporation headquartered in the Netherlands published the paper. Wildfire Today supports open access to the results of taxpayer-funded scientific research. (UPDATE April 4, 2018: the research is now available for no additional charge.)
Dodson and Root concluded that moisture stress is a key limitation for conifer regeneration following stand-replacing wildfire, which will likely increase with climate change. This will make post-fire recovery on dry sites slow and uncertain. If forests are desired in these locations, more aggressive attempts at reforestation may be needed, they said.
The study, published in Forest Ecology and Management, was done in a portion of the Metolius River watershed in the eastern Cascade Range of Oregon, which prior to a 2002 fire was mostly ponderosa pine with some Douglas-fir and other tree species. The research area was not salvage-logged or replanted following the severe, stand-replacing fire.
“A decade after this fire, there was almost no tree regeneration at lower, drier sites,” said Erich Dodson, a researcher with the OSU Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society. “There was some regeneration at higher sites with more moisture. But at the low elevations, it will be a long time before a forest comes back, if it ever does.”
Similar situations may be found in many areas of the American West in coming decades, the researchers say, and recruitment of new forests may be delayed or prevented – even in climate conditions that might have been able to maintain an existing forest. While mature trees can use their roots to tap water deeper in the soil, competition with dense understory vegetation can make it difficult for seedlings to survive.
Openings in ponderosa pine forests created by wildfire have persisted for more than a century on harsh, south-facing slopes in Colorado, the researchers noted in their report. And fire severity is already increasing in many forests due to climate change – what is now thought of as a drought in some locations may be considered average by the end of the next century.
If trees do fail to regenerate, it could further reduce ecosystem carbon storage and amplify the greenhouse effect, the study said.
Restoration treatment including thinning and prescribed burning may help reduce fire severity and increase tree survival after wildfire, as well as provide a seed source for future trees, Dodson said. These dry sites with less resilience to stand-replacing fire should be priorities for treatment, if maintaining a forest is a management objective, the study concluded.
Higher-elevation, mixed conifer forests in less moisture-limited sites may be able to recover from stand-replacing wildfire without treatment, the researchers said.
State and federal governments spend millions of taxpayer dollars on research every year. If the knowledge gained through those efforts is kept locked away in for-profit journals or not made freely and easily available to the public, a person could argue — what is the point of paying for the research?
One avenue the U.S. Forest Service is using to transfer research results is through the “Natural Inquirer”, created so that scientists can share their research with middle school students. Each article on the site introduces scientific research conducted by Forest Service scientists.
Here is an excerpt from the web site:
…All of the research in this journal is concerned with nature, trees, wildlife, insects, outdoor activities and water. First students will “meet the scientists” who conduct the research. Then students read special information about science, and then about the environment. Students will also read about a specific research project, written in a way that scientists write when publishing their research in journals. Students become scientists when they do the Discovery FACTivity, learning vocabulary words that help in understanding articles.
This seems like a great idea, and deals with at least two issues. That of transferring research results, and helping to increase and improve the science programs in schools. It may also allow students to identify with scientists by linking research with individual employees in the USFS. Who knows, it might even encourage a middle school student to consider science as a profession.
Wildland fire is included as one of the many topics covered at the site, as you can see if you search for “fire” on their search page.
The Natural Inquirer has published a series of “Scientists’ Cards”. Below are the front and back of the card for Dr. Pepe Iniguez, a landscape fire ecologist:
The United States government is taking steps leading toward open access to the results of taxpayer-funded scientific research. Too often researchers pay privately owned scientific journals “page charges” to publish their findings, which then are sold back to taxpayers in the form of subscriptions which cost hundreds or thousands of dollars a year or more than $30 to read one paper if you don’t have a subscription.
At least partially in response to an on-line petition at the White House web site which received over 65,000 signatures (including mine), the administration issued a memorandum today that increases access to research. It helps, but is not an ideal solution. The new procedures require agencies that spend more than $100 million annually on research to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication. While that is better than keeping it secret or making taxpayers pay twice for the data, 12 months is too long. It should be much shorter, say, 3 or 6 months after appearing in a journal. In addition, ALL research should be available to the public, not just research funded by agencies that spend more than $100 million on R&D.
For the last three years Congress has dithered about the issue, doing little until last week when a bill was introduced, theFair Access to Science and Technology Research Act, which would force the public release of journal articles within six months of publication. It also only applies to agencies that spend more than $100 million a year on R&D.
The for-profit Elsevier corporation headquartered in the Netherlands has published papers on wildland fire research written by government employees, and vehemently opposes the bill, according to an article in the Washington Post. In fact, in 2011 Elsevier backed a bill that would quash open access to scientific articles. The bill died after it encountered serious opposition.
At Wildfire Today we have ranted about this for the last couple of years (tag: open access), and it’s heart-warming to see some progress is being made.
There are at least 39 published studies about the effects of bark beetles on wildland fire behavior. With such a bounty of government-funded work, you could hope that we would have some definitive answers, but unfortunately, while there is some agreement among the studies, there is substantial disagreement on some key issues, including the impacts of beetle-caused tree mortality in key areas such as fire behavior during the red needle phase, which is typically one to four years after a beetle attack.
This was one of the conclusions in a recent study that analyzed 39 other published works about the effects of pine beetle mortality. It is titled Effects of bark beetle-caused tree mortality on wildfire, and was written by Jeffrey A. Hicke, Morris C. Johnson, Jane L. Hayes, and Haiganoush K. Preisler.
The chart below is from their paper.
The author’s confidence in the conclusions reached about torching potential and active crown fire potential for the first ten years was low, but it is probable that active crown potential would increase for the first four years after mortality and then decrease dramatically. Torching potential would probably increase.
Surface fire properties, defined as reaction intensity, rate of spread, and flame length, would likely increase, but the confidence in the prediction for the first four years was low.
The authors pointed out that changes in fire behavior following a pine beetle outbreak…
…may only occur under some environmental conditions. For example, effects may be manifested during intermediate wind speeds (Simard et al., 2011) or in moister conditions, such as earlier in the fire season (Steele and Copple, 2009). Past controversy on this topic can be partly reconciled by this consideration of more specificity about study question, time since outbreak, and fuels or fire characteristic when describing results.
Our view of the research
It would be helpful if all of these parameters and studies could distill the conclusions into one index, which I will call Resistance To Control (RTC). Simultaneous increases in surface fire, torching, and crowning would result in more RTC. But it becomes more complicated to characterize when, for instance, crown fire potential decreases to near zero, while surface fire intensity and torching increase. Long distance spotting is a firefighter’s biggest headache and makes fires almost impossible to control, at least at the head. Crown fires are the major culprit for long distance spotting, but surface fires and individual or multiple tree torching can also create spot fires. And all of this varies, of course, with the weather. Strong winds can make ANY fire very resistant to control as long as the fuels are continuous.
If a person leaps to the possibly incorrect conclusion that all of the fire behavior parameters shown in the chart above are accurate, including the sections with low confidence, then RTC would increase one to four years after a beetle outbreak, and then would probably decrease since the crown fire potential would dramatically decline. Surface fires, including those with some torching, can be more easily controlled using tactics, sometimes with aerial support, such as direct hand line construction, hose lays, indirect line construction with burnouts, and backfiring from out ahead of the fire. When crowning is the primary method of fire spread, you usually have to wait for either the weather or the fuels to change. Air tankers and helicopters dropping fire retardant or water can be more effective when the fire is confined to the surface, as long as firefighters are on the ground to take advantage of the temporary slowing of the rate of spread, and if the wind is not too strong.
With apologies to the authors of this very good research paper, I took the liberty of adding a Resistance To Control variable to their chart:
And of course the authors of the paper included the familiar phrase, “more research is needed”, which is a mandatory section in every research paper.
The authors, who are employed by taxpayers, arranged to have the government pay a fee to have their paper published by the for-profit Elsevier corporation which is headquartered in the Netherlands. But thankfully, this time the USFS also published it on their U.S. Government web site where taxpayers can access it at no additional charge.
If you believe taxpayer-funded research should always be available to taxpayers freely over the internet, go to the White House web site and sign the petition. (Update Jan. 23, 2013: you can still read the petition at the site, but it is closed to new signers.)
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.
The rapid escalation of a small fire due to fire channelling can result in a catastrophic decay in both firefighter and community safety that is counterintuitive.
That is how the authors of a paper wrapped up their findings about a weather phenomenon that can cause a wildfire to spread in unexpected directions. “Fire channelling” can force a fire on the lee side of a ridge to spread 90-degrees from the general wind direction. For example, if a west wind pushes a fire across a north-south ridge, on the lee or east side of the ridge the fire could spread to both the north and the south, counterintuitively.
The white arrow shows the general wind direction. The black area was not imaged by the line-scanner on this run. From the Sharples, McRae, and Wilkes paper funded by the Australian government.
Generally a strong wind has the most effect on the direction of spread of a fire — more so than topography or fuel. If a fire is spreading with a strong west wind, the rate of spread on the flanks, the north and south sides, will be much less than the head of the fire on the east side. Unless — fire channelling is occurring.
Firefighters usually face less risk when they attack a fire on the heel or flanks of a fire. In most cases it can be impossible to safely attack the head of a fast-moving fire in heavy fuels. But this fire channelling phenomenon has the potential to present firefighters with unexpected fire behavior, putting them in a dangerous situation on what they expected to be the flanks of a fire that suddenly converted to heads of the fire.
Fire channelling caused by wind-terrain-fire interactions. From the Sharples, McRae, and Wilkes paper funded by the Australian govermnent.
The authors of the paper, which is titled Wind–terrain effects on the propagation of wildfires in rugged terrain: fire channelling, considered several causes of fire channelling, including thermally induced winds, pressure-driven channelling, forced channelling, and downward momentum transport, but they settled on wind–terrain–fire interactions as the most likely mechanism driving the atypical spread. Here is an excerpt providing some details about wind–terrain–fire interactions:
…If a fire happened to spread into a region affected by a separation eddy, then the hot gas from the fire could be entrained within the eddy, with the strong wind shear at the top of the eddy impeding mixing between the synoptic and separated flows. Hence, supposing a fire enters a region of separated flow at the north end of a slope or valley, and treating the air within the eddy as a quasi-isolated system (i.e. a system that involves only limited mixing with the surrounding environment; cf. Byron-Scott 1990), the air within the northern part of the eddy will be at a higher temperature and pressure than the air within the southern part of the eddy. As a consequence, the air within the eddy will tend to move towards the south in response to the thermally induced pressure gradient or simply owing to thermal expansion of the air within the eddy. Based on the available evidence, such an interaction constitutes the most likely mechanism driving the atypical spread.
Access to the research
If you want to read the paper you will have to pay CSIRO Publishing $25, in spite of the fact that the authors appear to be funded by the Australian government. It was written by Jason J. Sharples, Richard H. D. McRae, and Stephen R. Wilkes who are associated with three organizations in Australia, the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, and the ACT Emergency Services Agency.
This is another example of government funded research that taxpayers have to pay for twice. Once when the government-paid employees conduct the research and write the paper, and a second time if a person wants to read it. We have written about this lack of Open Access numerous times before. However, this example is a little murky, in that the government sponsored research was published by CSIRO, a governmental body. But many U.S. wildfire researchers who are government employees publish their papers in the same CSIRO publication, the International Journal of Wildland Fire, behind a pay wall.
Sign the petition
At the U.S. White House web site you can sign a petition to make government funded research available at no additional charge to the public. Let President Obama know that you oppose HR3699, the Research Works Act, which is an attempt to put federally funded scientific information behind pay-walls and confer the ownership of the information to a private entity. You will need to register at the site, giving them a name and a real email address.
Two members of congress have introduced legislation that would prohibit taxpayers from freely accessing research that they have already paid for. The Research Works Act, sponsored by Representatives Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, and Darrell Issa, a Republican from California, would forbid the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from requiring that their grantees provide copies of the papers they publish in peer-reviewed journals so that the NIH can make them available in the NIH on-line library. If this ill-conceived piece of legislation passes, it could easily spread from the NIH to the rest of the federal government.
We have written about this issue several times before and have provided examples of government funded wildfire research that is not available to taxpayers unless they pay a privately owned publishing company a fee, usually around $25 to $30 dollars for each article.
Thankfully, according to Tim Swedberg, Communications Director of the Joint Fire Science Program which provides a great deal of federal money for wildfire-related research, the JFSP has a written policy about the findings from the research they fund which the authors publish in a journal:
Journal acknowledges that Author retains the right to provide a copy of the final manuscript to JFSP upon acceptance for Journal publication or thereafter, for public archiving in firescience.gov as soon as possible after publication by Journal.
This proposed legislation has generated some interest, as you can see from this list of dozens of articles written on the subject over the last two weeks.
The New York Times has an excellent story on the topic. Here is an excerpt:
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…The publishers argue that they add value to the finished product, and that requiring them to provide free access to journal articles within a year of publication denies them their fair compensation. After all, they claim, while the research may be publicly funded, the journals are not.
But in fact, the journals receive billions of dollars in subscription payments derived largely from public funds. The value they say they add lies primarily in peer review, the process through which works are assessed for validity and significance before publication. But while the journals manage that process, it is carried out almost entirely by researchers who volunteer their time. Scientists are expected to participate in peer review as part of their employment, and thus the publicly funded salaries most of them draw through universities or research organizations are yet another way in which taxpayers already subsidize the publishing process.
Rather than rolling back public access, Congress should move to enshrine a simple principle in United States law: if taxpayers paid for it, they own it…
Researchers should cut off commercial journals’ supply of papers by publishing exclusively in one of the many “open-access” journals that are perfectly capable of managing peer review (like those published by the Public Library of Science, which I co-founded). Libraries should cut off their supply of money by canceling subscriptions. And most important, the N.I.H., universities and other public and private agencies that sponsor academic research should make it clear that fulfilling their mission requires that their researchers’ scholarly output be freely available to the public at the moment of publication.
UPDATE January 22, 2012:
HERE is a link to a 3-minute audio recording from KCRW, in which Dr. Michael Wilkes, a Professor of Medicine and Vice Dean for Medical Education at UC Davis, provides his “Second Opinion” about open access to taxpayer-funded research.
