Study: Logging burned areas kills new trees

[G_j]

(an argument against Bush supported "salvage logging")

http://159.54.227.3/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060105/NEWS06/60105074

Study: Logging burned areas kills new trees, increases risk of forest fires

BY JEFF BARNARD

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — A study of the aftermath of the 2002 Biscuit fire, which has become the focus of debate over national forest management, concludes that logging burned trees killed large numbers of seedlings that sprouted on their own and increased the short-term danger of wildfire.

The study, to be published Friday in the journal Sciencexpress and later in Science, comes as conservationists and the timber industry battle over a bill in Congress to speed up the process of evaluating whether to harvest burned trees and plant new seedlings on the millions of acres of national forests that burn every year.

"These results surprised us," said Dan Donato, a graduate student in forest science at Oregon State University who was lead author of the study. "Even after a huge high-severity fire in a place that is really tough to grow trees we are finding abundant natural tree regeneration."

Based on test plots in areas that were logged and not logged, the study also found that cutting down dead trees left much more wood on the ground to fuel future fires, even after the logs were hauled away, than leaving the trees standing, unless crews burn the debris.


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[havocmom]

1. Didn't see who paid for the study. That might matter some to validity

Yeah, stomping on baby trees and leaving debris around is not good, but leaving a lot of downed trees is bad too. That invites infestations of tree killing bugs which are also bad for baby trees.

Proper harvesting takes a bit of time which is $$ the timber industry doesn't wanna spend. Doing it right is good for the forests but bad for short term profits. Doing it fast and cheap is bad for the forests.

[mike_c]

8. this might very well turn out to be a myth, too....

I was at a forest insect conference a couple of years ago where the results of a study in Arizona testing this assumption, which has always been sort of dogma among forest entomologists, suggested that standing snags and partially damaged trees after a large wildfire did not necessarily foster epidemic bark beetle population growth. The major risk has always been assumed to be Dendroctonus spp. population explosion, with Ips beetles a lesser threat, but my impression is that logging slash is a much worse hazard than fire damaged trees, at least for those particular beetle genera. Other wood boring beetles degrade the wood quality of any salvagable timber (e.g. buprestids), but are not a threat to living trees.

[Kagemusha]

2. Well in nature, forests grow back.

That shouldn't be shocking, but somehow, it is to people.

[mom cat]

3. Nature has been about the process of regrowth after fires

a lot longer than man.

[SoCalDem]

5. Some seed-pods require fire for them to even open and germinate

Mother Nature invented fire:)

[mom cat]

7. And the brush gives protection from the winds and holds the soil.

[Shakespeare]

4. Yup.

The idea that we have to somehow "manage" a forest, ostensibly for its own good, has always struck me as quite absurd. If people would quit building their homes in the middle of a burn zone--or, conversely, stop acting surprised and terrified when the world around them lights up (and expect the firefighters to come save them)--we wouldn't have any need whatsoever for "forestry management."

[Wilms]

6. Yup.

It's humanity that needs management. Not nature.

[Up2Late]

9. I wish the headline was "Bush wrong again re:Salvage Logging"

If you can't remember what he said about this 3 years ago, listen to this report from NPR:

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5131755>