Thinning Mimics Wildfire

THINNING AND PRESCRIBED FIRE CAN MIMIC THE EFFECTS OF NATURAL WILDFIRES
(DNR 20-year Forest Health Strategic Plan, p. 41; emphasis added)
 

Forest management “mimics” natural wildfires? This may be a poor choice of words. Is August smoke over Seattle the only difference between wildfire and forest management?

And what happens when we make wildfire control our only criterion of forest health? This is where professional foresters get prickly. They are pressured by unhappy patients filling emergency rooms with respiratory problems. Families keeping their kids indoors when the smoke arrives are irritated. Tourist operators shut up shop and their clients blame DNR, climate change, Forest Service, and Government, in some order.

Fire control is one objective of forest management, but not the only one. We manage forests for timber production, recreation and viewscapes, wildlife habitat, surface water quality, carbon sequestration, and spiritual refreshment. And we ask our foresters to juggle these objectives on an eighty-year cycle (in eastern Washington). Foresters need to anticipate four (human) generations out the effects of what they do today.

No one management regime can maximize these often-conflicting objectives across all acres of treatment. We make choices of what and where.

Derek Churchill of DNR will lay out some of the nuances of planning for Washington’s forests. And he will touch on techniques as well.

Link to a very short DNR video to see manual thinning as well as comparative images of a healthy forest. Link then to a video of mechanical thinning, called masticating, just for fun.

Join Derek and George Wuerthner in a discussion of what we should expect from active forest management.


Don

Topic: Forest Thinning and Wildfire Behavior
Time: Mar 25, 2021 06:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87353896729?pwd=dFpxb2dqVTlKNEFyVGdkTjZ0NjNtUT09

Thinning is good, right?

Thinning is good, right? With thinning we can restore our forests to health and control wildfires and their smoke.

George Wuerthner wants to underline the question mark: “There are good reasons why thinning cannot and will not halt such [major] blazes” (Western Watersheds Project).

A different view: Looking carefully at the Carlton Complex Fire, a UW scientist said: “’I expected that on the wind-driven fire spread days, fuel treatments were not effective and on the benign weather days they’d be effective. But what we found is even in the wind-driven days they [fuel treatments] were still worth it. They still reduced the fire severity significantly,’ Prichard said.” (Methow Valley News, 4 March 2020).

Wuerthner’s doubt is rooted in climate change, and a sense of history: “Until we effectively address climate warming and associated changes in fire weather and fire seasons, the reliance on forest management will continue to be a sideshow that will not make our communities safer or reduce the costs of fire suppression efforts” (Critique of The West Is Burning Documentary, The Wildlife News).

Derek Churchill is in charge of implementing DNR’s “sideshow” of treating 1,250,000 acres in eastern Washington, with treatment meaning “thin and burn.” Expect Derek to be more optimistic about forest intervention. Check out his mapping of eastern Washington forest health and risks (hint: HUC6 = Hydrologic Unit Code 6, about 20k acres).

Let’s know the limits as well as the opportunities of the forest management decisions we are making.

Join Derek and George in a discussion of what we should expect from active forest management.

Derek Churchill, Department of Natural Resources, is responsible for implementing DNR’s 20-year Forest Health Strategic Plan. Its goal: Treat 1,250,000 forest acres. And what is “treatment”? Thin and burn. This is the caption overlaying a photo of an open forest stand: “THINNING AND PRESCRIBED FIRE CAN MIMIC THE EFFECTS OF NATURAL WILDFIRES AND CREATE RESILIENT FOREST STRUCTURES.”

Topic: Forest Thinning and Wildfire Behavior
Time: Mar 25, 2021 06:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87353896729?pwd=dFpxb2dqVTlKNEFyVGdkTjZ0NjNtUT09