"Thin it or lose it" was the lesson of the Schultz fire, which left these trees charred in 2010.
Image: Flickr/Coconino National Forest
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- The smell of wood-burning stoves seems to permeate this gateway to the Grand Canyon and pit stop on the legendary Route 66.
In this corner of the state, trees, wood and fire have an ever-evolving relationship. Surrounded by the Coconino National Forest, this northern Arizona town sat at the edge of the 2010 Schultz fire, which burned 15,000 acres.
While the Schultz fire visibly marked the landscape, the damage was relatively benign compared with the floods that came a month later. The fire had stripped the hills of trees and vegetation, and soil erosion left a smooth slope allowing the summer rains to push an avalanche of mud, rocks and other debris down into the community. A 12-year-old girl was killed. Millions of dollars in damage ensued. The vulnerability left by the fire was unearthed -- literally.
The fire, plus the floods that followed, had a net economic impact between $133 million and $147 million, according to a recent report. It was one in a series of megafires that have ignited Arizona over the past 25 years, including the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski fire and the 2011 Wallow fire, each around half a million acres. Since 1990, nearly 1.2 million acres of Arizona's timber has burned.
"A big fire used to be 1,000 acres," Dick Fleishman said as he walked alongside the fire-scarred boundaries of the Schultz fire on a snow-covered mountain range. "Now, it's in the tens of thousands."
Fleishman is the assistant team leader of the Four Forests Restoration Initiative, called 4FRI. It is the largest forest stewardship project in the country. The plan is to restore 1 million acres over 20 years, from the Grand Canyon to the New Mexico border, by thinning small ponderosa pines -- the dominant species in the region -- and making the forest less dense. 4FRI covers the Kaibab, Coconino, Apache, Sitgreaves and Tonto national forests.
The Forest Service hired Pioneer Forest Products last May to cut and process the trees from the thinned forests. Pioneer will recycle the small-diameter timber into wood products -- for cabinetry, for example -- and wood laminate. Nearly 40 percent will be feedstock for a 30-million-gallon-per-year biodiesel plant run by Western Energy Solutions/Concord Blue USA. The processing plant in Winslow, Ariz., will employ about 500 people. The firm is still waiting to receive financing to begin operations in a budget-strained environment, said Marlin Johnson, a consultant for Pioneer.
The vision is essentially this: Thin the landscape so that the thick tangle of forest becomes "clumps" of trees, with open spaces in between.
Another key to restoration is to encourage the growth of diverse grasses, which burn quickly and minimize fire damage to the soil. The point, said Ed Smith, a forest ecologist with the Nature Conservancy and a member of the coalition of stakeholders overseeing the massive 4FRI project, is not to stop the fire, but to drop it to the ground.
"It's inevitable," Smith said. "The forest is going to burn, so let's find a way to do this safely and effectively."
Bringing back the 'fire regime'
Fighting fires has become a growing financial burden for the Forest Service. Last year, the agency surpassed its fire suppression budget by $452 million, pulling the extra funds from other Forest Service programs.
The ultimate goal is to restore what ecologists called the fire regime, a cycle of fire that aids in the dispersal of seeds and the renewal of soil and makes other important contributions to the health of forests. For a century, land management practices across the country have suppressed that regime, leading to a tinder-packed forest that is vulnerable to bigger and much hotter fires.
The fire cycle for ponderosa pines is five to 10 years, in which a natural ignition sparks a low-intensity fire. Every 100 years or so, a major fire would sweep through and kill a stand of trees. Today, those 100-year events are happening more frequently. Schultz was a high-severity fire with severe soil impacts.
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28 Comments
Add CommentHow does this affect C02 levels? True, fires create C02, but it's also true that living trees convert some C02, and store carbon. How much carbon absorption will we loose by removing trees? How much stored carbon will be released back into the atmosphere from the debris after thinning?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFinally, why are cities (loaded with underground infrastructure) trying to plant trees in the parking strips along streets and sidewalks, while entire forests are being cut down? Cities will not be able to make up the difference and will further degrade their surface and underground infrastructure by root damage.
Isn't there a more comprehensive approach to managing our resources?
Trees have all sorts of benefits in urban areas. They retain moisture, provide cooling, clean the air, and look good. When the correct types and sizes of trees are used they won't cause any appreciable damage. Obviously keeping trees has a cost to a city, but they seem to be worth it, at least up to a certain point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyway, I don't the answer to the CO2 questions. I'm sure it isn't a simple question to answer. Remember too, if wood products are made from trees, those will also be a carbon sink, at least over some period of time (50 to 100 years probably).
Having less frequent / less severe fire episodes will reduce the soil erosion and mudslides described in this article. With more topsoil and ecosystems staying intact through the fire cycle instead of basically starting from scratch after a huge fire, the forests should be more stable and productive. If the fires are kept low and just burn undergrowth while allowing the trees to survive, then this will result in more CO2 coming out of the atmosphere than it does now. Getting grass to grow beneath the trees will absorb a lot of CO2 as well and lead to quicker rebound after fire events.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf Deforestation in the Amazon is contributing to global warming by removing whole swathes of CO2 processing greenery, how is a 'massive forest thinning project' justified? Besides, what's the minimum safe distance that a burning ember can't jump from one tree to the next?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo the questions above. After reading the article, I realized this isn't an matter of thinning the forest but rather, reconfiguring the growth pattern. They are talking about thinning the overall forest, they are talking about creating forest breaks. Instead of a large forest, making it several distinct stands of trees. This way, when a fire breaks out, it doesn't automatically wipe out a huge swath of forest, just one or two stands.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn top of that, controlled fires will lead to less fuel on the ground and better growth for mature trees.
I am inclined to agree with timbosta. The whole idea sounds fishy. It seems more like an excuse to harvest more of the valuable old growth than to minimize fire hazards.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEnvironmentalists, timber companies and the Forest Service have all agreed on this approach. While nobody gets what they want, a lot of people a lot smarter than you or I have looked over the plan and said it could work. Old growth forests are threatened if these fires get too big anyway, so you have to look at the big picture and see what's he best decision. 4FRI might not be it, but it's much better than anything I can come up with and you certainly aren't coming up with any alternatives either.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisComing in late but are not the states west of the Mississippi river in the middle of a drought.? This article is suggesting thinning forests in the West?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThinning out forests and using them for biodiesel releases some extra CO2. Using them for wood products releases less. But what is the alternative? Fires.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPart of our response to global warming has to be wind/solar/nuclear/efficiency. But part of it has to be mitigation. Try as we might on the first front, we're still going to get hurt. If only to spare resources that can then be put to use on the first front, we must tend to the second. Thinning vulnerable forests is a mitigation effort.
In the San Bernardino National Forest, where I live, over time the difference in density is obvious when you compare historical photos to today. 100-130 years ago, the forest consisted of huge trees, widely spaced. Today, not only are the trees much smaller and closer together, but there is far too much undergrowth and ladder fuels. It used to be that a fire could burn through the forest without devastating it. Now, when a fire burns through, it completely destroys large areas such that there is little to no natural regrowth because the soil became too hot for roots or seeds to survive. We need thinning, because nothing else will convert what we have into what we need, which is forests more capable of surviving a fire. And that has nothing to do with the people who live in or around the forest. Even if communities are completely destroyed, over the long term the survival of the forest itself is more important.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Another key to restoration is to encourage the growth of diverse grasses, which burn quickly and minimize fire damage to the soil. The point...is not to stop the fire, but to drop it to the ground."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDry grass burns fast and the fire moves fast. The hope is that the fire will move quickly enough to spare most of the trees. Adding in firebreaks should also help reduce the chance of a massive fire.
You're penny-wise and pound foolish, and take nitpicking to new levels.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, I've become convinced that an unholy alliance of John Birchers, Ron Paul psychos, gun-nuts and rabid right-wind religious, evolution and global warming-denying zealots are involved in this forest-thinning plot.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey've got a thing against nature - probably because the Earth cried out for joy upon Obama's (PBUH) re-election.
Gosh, what would the Earth do without humans around to tend ta all the little stuff? I guess it'd burn up or evaporate or sumtin'. Golly gee.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAwww crap...someone is HACKING my account again!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is the REAL sault again. Seriously, why in the heck would you try to impersonate me unless I am saying things that frighten you? Why are you such a coward that you have to go BEYOND the ad hominem and try to discredit me by stealing my identity? Nothing says that you are terrified of a real debate and that you don't have anything constructive to add louder than pulling off stunts like this!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJesus, this site has more Nova Scotians mothers then I care to answer for. Stargate Atlantis is not an accomplishment beyond the writing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis site, actually feed those beyond your numbers.
Thinning is good forestry practice. If you are a gardener, do you keep every seedling or do you spread them out & give them room to grow? In a forest, if you do not do the thinning, nature will. Often very destructively. Controlled burning of undergrowth during cooler times is also good practice for the health of the forest.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I find more interesting is that when I click on the link I saved yesterday concerning the use of algae for fuel that I commented on, I am redirected to the present link below. The link to the algae article no longer brings up that article nor does any search, why?
The link:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/03/20/are-algae-biofuels-a-realistic-alternative-to-petroleum/#comment-7653
It has bee pulled with the loss of the accompanying comments. What actually comes up?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=us-starts-massive-forest-thinning-project
I’m told that I’m easily confused, so please bear with me. In your posts of 3 and 7, you seem to support the thinning. I’m not sure what you are saying in your 13 post? What is your position on the thinning program?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI had to look up the Peace Be Upon Him acronym. I had trouble following the context, but the (PBUH) was funny.
Okay, that makes more sense then. Thought maybe happy hour had gotten you. Or that it was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation. The PBUH was funny whoever wrote it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah, #13 was the IMPOSTOR / HACKER. I still don't know why somebody want's to sully my name on an anonymous comment board, but they're sure going to great lengths to do it. I must be doing something right to make them that mad!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMan proposes climate change disposes (to vary the old expression).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSault, perhaps this link can explain your 'hacker' :
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder
Just sayin'...
I note that the link to the algae article that I referred to in post #18 has been restored. Thanks. I also note that this comment had spell checker or at least an underlined alert without having to first drop it into a word doc. Double thanks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClear cutting in the past leads to dense regrowth as trees of the same age try to out compete each other. One can tell, even decades later, stands that were clearcut due to the trees being the same age, and it looks as unnatural as it sounds. The USFS is known for having to retreat its own management practices. Foresters tend to be much less scientific in deciding treatment practices and seldom experiment on the small scale before acting on the large scale. Botanists and biologists need to be doing the research and recommending actions or inactions based on the best science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe CO2 thing is a non-issue if they're using it for fuel - substitute commercial burning for nature burning. They're trying to make the case that overall it's less burning. They're also trying to sell the plan with a job creation halo. The reality is they're backed into a corner when it comes to disaster adaptation. Next they'll figure out that the thinned forests are more vulnerable to tornado-force winds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo the plan is for the harvested trees and brush to be processed into biofuel by a 30 million gallon per year plant (3 x the size of KiOR in MS) that isn't even funded, let alone under construction yet. Brilliant. Who are the entrepreneurs/investors/financiers behind Western Energy Solutions/Concord Blue USA? It's a good bet they are friends of the Administration and are counting on large USDA grants paid for by taxpayers. It's also a safe bet that the plant will never be finished, as by then the debacles of cellulosic ethanol courtesy of KiOR and INEOS Bio and Zeachem and Abengoa will be well known.
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