Forest fire prevention efforts will lessen carbon sequestration, add to greenhouse warming

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-07/osu-ffp070809.php

Public release date: 8-Jul-2009

Contact: Mark Harmon
[e-mail]
541-737-8455
http://www.orst.edu/">Oregon State University

Forest fire prevention efforts will lessen carbon sequestration, add to greenhouse warming

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Widely sought efforts to reduce fuels that increase catastrophic fire in Pacific Northwest forests will be counterproductive to another important societal goal of sequestering carbon to help offset global warming, forestry researchers at Oregon State University conclude in a new report.

Even if the biofuels were used in an optimal manner to produce electricity or make cellulosic ethanol, there would still be a net loss of carbon sequestration in forests of the Coast Range and the west side of the Cascade Mountains for at least 100 years – and probably much longer, the study showed.

"Fuel reduction treatments should be forgone if forest ecosystems are to provide maximal amelioration of atmospheric carbon dioxide over the next 100 years," the study authors wrote in their conclusion. "If fuel reduction treatments are effective in reducing fire severities in the western hemlock, Douglas-fir forests of the west Cascades and the western hemlock , Sitka spruce forests of the Coast Range, it will come at the cost of long-term carbon storage, even if harvested material are used as biofuels."

The study raises serious questions about how to maximize carbon sequestration in these fast-growing forests and at the same time maximize protection against catastrophic fire.

"It had been thought for some time that if you used biofuel treatments to produce energy, you could offset the carbon emissions from this process," said Mark Harmon, holder of the Richardson Chair in the OSU Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society. "That seems to make common sense and sounds great in theory, but when you actually go through the data it doesn't work."

Using biofuels to produce energy does not completely offset the need for other fossil fuels use and completely negate their input to the global carbon budget, the researchers found. At the absolute maximum, you might recover 90 percent of the energy, the study said.

"That figure, however, assumes an optimal production of energy from biofuels that is probably not possible," Harmon said. "By the time you include transportation, fuel for thinning and other energy expenditures, you are probably looking at a return of more like 60-65 percent. And if you try to produce cellulosic ethanol, the offset is more like 35 percent."

"If you take old, existing forests from these regions and turn them into almost anything else, you will have a net loss in carbon sequestration," Harmon said.

That could be significant. Another recent OSU studied concluded that if forests of Oregon and northern California were managed exclusively for carbon sequestration, they could double the amount of sequestration in many areas and triple it in some.

The new study found that, in a Coast Range stand, if you removed solid woody biofuels for reduction of catastrophic fire risks and used those for fuel, it would take 169 years before such usage reached a break-even point in carbon sequestration. The study showed if the same material were used in even less efficient production of cellulosic ethanol, it would take 339 years.

The researchers did not consider in this analysis how global warming in coming years might affect the increase of catastrophic fire, Harmon said. However, "fire severity in many forests may be more a function of severe weather events rather than fuel accumulation," the report authors wrote, and fuel reduction efforts may be of only limited effectiveness, even in a hotter future.

"Part of what seems increasingly apparent is that we should consider using west side forests for their best role, which is carbon sequestration, and focus what fuel reduction efforts we make to protect people, towns and infrastructure," Harmon said. "It's almost impossible anyway to mechanically treat the immense areas that are involved and it's hugely expensive. As a policy question we have to face issues of what approaches will pay off best and what values are most important."

The report was just published in Ecological Applications, a professional journal. The lead author was Stephen Mitchell, who conducted the work as part of his doctoral thesis while at OSU, and is now at Duke University. Among the findings:

• Fuel reduction treatments that have been proposed to reduce wildfire severity also reduce the carbon stored in forests;


• On west side Cascade Range and Coast Range forests, which are wetter, the catastrophic fire return interval is already very long, and the additional levels of fuel accumulation have not been that unusual;


• A wide range of fire reduction approaches, such as salvage logging, understory removal, prescribed fire and other techniques, can effectively reduce fire severity if used properly;


• Such fuel removal almost always reduces carbon storage more than the additional carbon the stand is able to store when made more resistant to wildfire, in part because most of the carbon stored in forest biomass remains unconsumed even by high-severity wildfires;


• Considerable uncertainty exists in modeling of future fires, and some fuel reduction techniques, especially overstory thinning treatments, could potentially lead to an increase in fire severity.

The study authors concluded that fuel reduction may still make more sense in east-side Cascade Range and other similar forests, but that the west-side Cascades and Coast Range have little sensitivity to forest fuel reduction treatments – and might be best utilized for their high carbon sequestration capacities.

"Ultimately, the real problem here is global climate change," Harmon said. "Insect epidemics are increasing, trees are dying. There are no quick fixes to these issues."
###

Editor's Note: A full copy of the study can be obtained at this URL: http://www.esajournals.org/doi/full/10.1890/08-0501.1

[pinfo]

1. 3

hmm

[Nihil]

3. ?

Hmm?

[Fotoware58]

2. I wonder

...what this actually means to all those plantations from the clearcutting. Does it mean that they shouldn't be thinned? What about those medium-aged plantations which are extremely crowded and, at a very merchantable age? A significant amount of the Coast Range forest is private timberland. It is truly amazing what kind of land can be considered for clearcutting. I can't believe that anyone would sign off on a plan to clearcut and cable-log 60 degree slopes above a major river.

Real world fuels reduction projects have multi-product harvesting. Sequestering more carbon through sawlogs, which have no emissions from burning, can alter the numbers quite a bit. What also needs to be factored in is the increased growth and health from the remaining stand of trees. And the improvements to wildlife habitat, as well.

With "climate change" here and now, bigger and more intense firestorms will be more common in today's world. Will we stand by and watch, or will we intervene and "sculpt" new, resilient forests out of the old? The tipping point has come and gone and forests are dead and dying.

[PufPuf23]

4. I wish one did not have to pay to see the assumptions

in this study because the conclusion appears to be that vegetation management is folly.

I suspect that the study refers to existing older stands and excludes early seral natural stands, overly dense or brush choked plantations, stands with a history of repeated high grading, or stands where by logging or fire there has been a species shift (such as Douglas-fir/hardwood mix to tanoak after poor logging/reforestation practices or fire). Also within the range of the study there are substantial acres of oak - grasslands that have been converted to Douglas-fir stands by exclusion of fire and sequester far more carbon.

There are National Forest lands in the range of this study that have burned 3X in the last 20 years and each burn makes establishment and growth of species capable of high rates and levels of carbon sequestration per unit area more problematic.

[Fotoware58]

5. A very recent study...

from the Biscuit Fire in southwest Oregon sheds some light on what does happen when catastrophic fire rolls through. Within the Biscuit Fire perimeter, the Forest Service had an ongoing experiment area that made many pre-fire measuremnts. The fire burned through half of the study area and the plots were again measured. Metal tags in the plot areas were melted and they estimated that it takes 7000 F to melt a tag like that. Soils lost at least an inch of topsoil from all the organic matter being vaporized. Soil carbon and soil nitrogen were depleted for 3 feet down. Soils became rockier, less fertile and less able to support bigger trees. Soils also became hydrophobic, repelling water and increasing catastrophic erosion.

People need to learn about the other ways that wildfires damage our environment. Wildfires are NEVER good for the environment!

[Fledermaus]

6. Gosh, forest thinning has been proven to reduce pine beetle infestations.

Tiny Pest, Big Damage: About the size of a grain of rice, the mountain pine beetle (left) is destroying great swaths of pine trees in Colorado (reddish brown areas at right)
http://www.newsweek.com/id/148297

[Fotoware58]

7. One picture is worth a million acres?

Nice picture to illustrate this ongoing disaster that the government is doing nothing about. What happens when those dead trees burn?!?

Looking at the picture, what would each of you decide to do with 7 million acres of what is shown? Disregard any and all impacts, events and policies. What is past, is past. How do we move on to save forests from this level of mortality? "Fixing climate change" is not an option that will save many of our forests, so, what do we do about this disaster that dwarfs Katrina in its scope and impacts? When do we start treating this massive mortality and mitigating future firestorms??

[joshcryer]

8. "What happens when those dead trees burn?" The same thing that happens to live trees.

The "living material" in a tree is only the outer few cm (beneath the bark). Thus the living matter is inconsequential.

Check this out to see a more optimistic example of the bug outbreak: http://welcome.warnercnr.colostate.edu/images/docs/cfri/cfri_insect.pdf

It's just natural.

[joshcryer]

9. I hope you're not advocating Bush's forest clearing program.

[Fotoware58]

10. WWYD

I was asking what YOU would do if you were "the decider". Excess wood like that doesn't decompose into soil components. It is consumed in wildfires but, not in the quantities we are seeing today. No, 7 million acres of dead trees is NOT "natural".

[joshcryer]

12. Yeah, because nature has never experienced plagues like that before.

While the argument can be effectively made that AGW is responsible for the conditions necessary for this beetle resurgence, I think the proper solution is to let nature fight its battles rather than fight it for it. Especially since clearing and pesticide use (horrible, that) is effectively impossible (politically and economically) in these thousand square mile swaths of land.

We gotta let it run its course. Suggesting that we could actually mitigate beetle destruction is failing to understand just how large of an area we are talking about and the manpower needed to get it done.

Feel free to hit up our state senators here in Colorado to get them to fund it though. Certainly if you were to embark upon such measures you might be able to get it funded with some stimulus money. Just please avoid mentioning pesticides in the plan, they would do more harm than good.

[Fotoware58]

14. So....

you are one who is just fine with MILLIONS of tons of GHG's going up into our atmosphere, while we tax other sources of CO2? AND, at the same time losing MILLIONS of acres of forests, dead or otherwise in the inevitable runaway firestorm?

Yeah, that's one option.

[joshcryer]

17. Nice strawman.

[Fotoware58]

23. You can call it that but...

ALL of those things ARE currently happening now. We've had the 4 worst fire seasons in recorded history this decade, due to overstocking, which is worsened by drought. People can argue about whether it is "global warming" or just a solar cycle but, when there is way more trees in the forests than there was 300 years ago, there is just not enough water to keep all those extra trees healthy throughout their lifespan. With 80-200 tons of GHG's going up in smoke PER ACRE, a fire season of 10 million acres puts out at least 800 million tons of CO2 and GHG's. Fire "costs plus", which totals up the full monetary impacts of wildfires, often result in costs which are at least three times the actual suppression costs. Can we afford to pay a minimum of 30 billion dollars per year on human-enhanced wildfires?

Forest management "deniers" are killing our forests by not allowing a full restoration of our forests. They would much rather do nothing than to allow man's intervention in a disaster that dwarfs Katrina. Why isn't Obama responding to this emergency situation?

[Fledermaus]

16. Infestations, on this scale, have not been seen for 10,000 years.

The First Forest Managers

For many years it was believed that Native Americans used what they could find in their immediate environment to supplement their diet and lifestyle with little disruption to the surrounding landscape. Today, many scholars disagree that the original inhabitants of the Americas had little impact on the environment. Calling this the myth of the “ecologically invisible” American Indian, critics instead believe that Native Americans altered the land to better suit their needs. Based on archaeological evidence (mainly charcoal deposits and pollen records), in addition to eyewitness accounts by European explorers, many experts now contend that prehistoric people deliberately set fires to accomplish a variety of tasks. Besides using fire to clear large tracts of wooded land for farming (by 1500, millions of acres had been cleared to plant corn, squash, and other domesticated plants), Native Americans also set fires to improve visibility, facilitate travel, and control the habitat of the forest by getting rid of unwanted plants and encouraging the growth of more desirable ones like blackberries and strawberries. Fire also was used to make hunting more productive in two essential ways. First, Native Americans would light fires near a grazing herd to either force them off a nearby cliff to escape the flames or compel them to run towards hunters waiting to kill the animals with their spears. Second, the fires set to keep the land open and grassy also increased the number of bison, elk, and deer in the area, thereby making hunting even easier for the Native Americans.


European Contact

Isolated for thousands of years by oceans on both the east and west, the immune systems of most Native Americans could not fight the influx of new diseases brought by European explorers. Devastated by the huge decrease in their population in a short period of time (as a result of both disease and wars with the Europeans), the social structure, customs, and everyday practices of many Native American tribes collapsed. Consequently, the fires frequently used by Native Americans to alter the environment decreased dramatically. Over time, the halt in the periodic burning triggered changes to several ecosystems: prairies became woodlands, savannas transformed into forests, and the previously open forests of the eastern coast developed dense undergrowth. When large numbers of settlers began arriving in America during the 1700s, the land they saw was the result of over two centuries of reforestation. Romantic poets of the 19th century and other inhabitants of the United States described the landscape as difficult to traverse, dark, and dense. Just two hundred years before, European explorers portrayed the same forests as open and park-like. Such a discrepancy in accounts suggests that Native Americans did have an effect on their environment.

http://www.foresthistory.org/Education/curriculum/Activity/activ1/essay.htm

[joshcryer]

18. They happen every couple of decades.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2461578

As I said, AGW is arguably responsible to an extent, but there's basically nothing you can do about it but hope for rain so the trees can defend themselves. Colorado is getting some rain finally.

What we have here are outsiders claiming they know what's best for Colorado failing to understand just how massive and extensive these things are. You can't "fix" nature. And it's folly to assume natures cycles are "broken" in this case.

[Fledermaus]

21. You think so?

North America Could Face Massive Pine Beetle Infestation

Scientists fear that the swarms of mountain pine beetles that have killed more than half of all lodge pole pines in British Columbia may eventually make their way into forests in the US.

And while cold winters typically kill most of the beetle larvae, the region has recently witnessed unusually higher temperatures that have allowed the beetle to thrive for longer periods of time.

The beetle has recently been found in Alberta, and scientists told BBC News that they could threaten jack pine forests throughout North America.

"In places in Alberta there were stories of what they call beetle rain, where under a perfectly blue sky farmers would start hearing what sounded like rain on their tin roofs," Professor Staffan Lindgren, at the University of Northern British Columbia, told the BBC.

"It turned out it was beetles coming out and falling on the roofs, literally billions and billions of beetles."

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1714751/north_america_could_face_massive_pine_beetle_infestation/

4 states ravaged by beetles ask US for forest fire support

“The inevitable looms on the horizon like a gathering storm,’’ John Rich, a commissioner from Jackson County, Colo., said in prepared testimony. “Shame on us if we do not . . . adequately prepare.’’

Rich quoted Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a former Colorado senator, as describing the mountain pine beetle infestation as the “Katrina of the West.’’

The pine beetle problem, which hit Colorado in 1996, has spread to more than 2 million acres in the state. US Forest Service officials have predicted that by 2014, beetles will kill most of the state’s lodgepole pines, the predominant pine at high elevations.

Other severely affected states include Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. In Canada, more than 22 million acres have been affected and scientists suspect that the death of so many trees is altering local weather and air quality.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/06/17/beetle_plagued_west_asks_congress_to_boost_forest_fire_prevention/

FLOOD WATCH BC

This is a map of the Fraser River watershed showing areas affected by Mountain Pine Beetle. These amount to about 60% of the total watershed area of the Fraser River. The effect on flood risk is expected to be significant in beetle affected areas (Fraser Plateau, Chilcotin, Nechako, etc.).

(Courtesy River Forecast Centre, B.C. Ministry of Environment)


http://www.cbc.ca/bc/features/floodwatch/pinebeetle.html

[Fotoware58]

22. If "global warming" could be magically fixed tomorrow...

we would still have overstocked, unnatural and unhealthy stands, bark beetles and catastrophic wildfires, simply because there's only so much water that falls each year as precipitation. It's the fuels, both live and dead that make the fires "catastrophic". Wildfire intensity is continuing to grow, as well as acreages but, it is the severity that causes the worst damage. The fires spawn clouds of bark beetles that feast upon the fires' survivors, as well as forests downwind for many dozens of miles.

Maybe someday, we will welcome the science of forestry back into the forests but, for today, people prefer to trust the politicians instead of the greatest minds in forest ecology.

[joshcryer]

13. BTW, Colorado has been getting some glorious rain almost daily all spring.

And even well into the summer (and it doesn't look to be lessening, thankfully). This should help stem the beetle outbreak finally.

[excess_3]

11. this is crap .. controlled burns are absolutely needed .n/t

[Fotoware58]

15. Ya think?!?

Well, there's about 14 days in the fall when there is a window to do controlled burns in California. Do you think the Forest Service can get hundreds of thousands of acres safely burned every year with that 14-day window? There's no doubt at all that controlled burns will be needed, each and every year but, you cannot deal with these problems with controlled burns alone. The Colorado situation is much worse and the big buildup of fuels will make those burns hard to control. Will the residents want to tolerate the smoke for 10 straight years (or more)?

[joshcryer]

19. What are you talking about "big buildup of fuels"?

As I showed, there is no fuel distinction between a live tree and a tree killed by beetles.

Are you part of some company that does tree clearing? Because it seems like you want to get into the forests and cut some trees down for profit.

[Fotoware58]

20. No money in it for me

I'm retired and I have no economic ties to anyone. I just care about our forests and have predicted this would happen from "letting nature take its course". Forest after forest after forest continues to die, rot and burn, not coming back for maybe hundreds of years. We cannot watch our forests burn completely up and say "it's natural". Or, to simply say it is all the fault of global warming and then do absolutely nothing to mitigate the effects of a warmer world.

The goal should be to have drought resistant, beetle resistant and fire resistant forests.

Why are people in denial over this?!?