Just another un-biased report. Not certain why they bother printing this crap.

Nowhere do I see any mention at all of the toxic GHG's that will go far into the upper atmosphere when these dead forests burn. Why not capture some of that pollution and carbon by using it to offset "dirtier" forms of energy production? Why not reduce the fuels that will certainly fuel the next inevitable fire? Why not get small branches and twigs on the ground to reduce erosion? Of course, one wouldn't want to apply the same treatment to every acre of salvage.

Also, nowhere do I see any mention of increased tree densities having a MAJOR effect on drought and bark beetles. Some pine stands have 1000 times more trees in them than before the white man came.

Leaving out these facts marginalizes this report that continues the trend of very recent anti-forestry "papers". Global warming means that our need to manage our remaining forests will become critical. Why not match the amount of trees to the land's new rainfall? It's a simple concept, and the right one, for whatever happens to our climate.

I've heard a number of advocates for logging in beetle-ravaged areas. However, the persuasive argument is that there is a short window (typically only a couple years) within which this timber is still commercially usable, after which there will simply be large areas of dead forest. I honestly can't say I've heard many people credibly advocate that logging will actually prevent beetle kill, so that seems like a bit of an odd thing to be disputing.

While it's true to say that drought and temperature are the key factors behind the beetle epidemics we are experiencing, the notion that dead forests don't play a significant role in increasing fire danger seems pretty hard to refute despite the finding of this study.

You reckon sending a crowd of loggers into the forest to cut the trees in the next couple of years will create a market for lumber?

now if we can just keep the fire from coming during the three years when the needles are brown we're golden!

People need to look at the bigger picture. We should be adjusting tree densities and species compositions to create resilient forests that harbor endangered species instead of just letting lodgepoles take over, with their 80-120 year cycle of catastrophic wildfires. Dead mature lodgepoles do not rot and turn into soil. They BURN!

When all these millions of acres of dead tree burn, everyone will suffer, with the possible exception of the eastern urbanite or politician who embraces "wild snaglands" instead of forest ecosystems. Soils will be heavily impacted and erosion will be radically accelerated.

What "benefit" is there to catastrophic wildfires? We keep hearing about that but, no one can come up with answers that justify the billions spent on "free range fire".

I wonder how many items currently made with plastic could be made with wood. And not be imported from China. I wonder how many acres of Canadian boreal forest could be saved by not importing their wood and using our own. I wonder how many American workers could go back to work restoring forests, then go home and buy stuff to stimulate the local economy. I wonder how many dollars would go into county roads and schools from timber projects.

I wonder a lot, these days.

Smith, you are right, you can't prevent beetles, at least not without an aerial pesticide attack, which in turn is prohibited on federal land -- it would never get past the chemical Alis.
However, it is settled science that even-aged, dense stands, especially of term-limited lodgepole, are especially vulnerable, and when the stands cover huge blocks of ground, the trigger point is reached in huge areas, all at once.
To fight beetles, trees have to poop out sap, and to do that there needs to be water and energy. Bottom line is trees trying to kill each other don't have much energy left over anyway, and when drought hits, they have none.
It was well known 30 years ago that the now-dead stuff was on its way, and it was also well-known that opening stands and cutting breaks, and prescribing fire, would break up the magic carpet ride for beetle spread. But that was about the time the Greens learned how to abuse those shiny new tools Congress handed them.
We would still have beetles, sure enough, but there wouldn't be nearly as many. Now the only hope is that 60 years from now, our grandkids will know better.

Its going to be one whale of a bonfire sometime. That kind of kindling once burning will take out whole towns. Read Northwest Disaster by Ruby El Hult on the 1910 fire. Pretty scary. Sad to say that the picture shown here tells it all, a fire "will" happen and it could be only the good Lord will put it out. Poor Management by mankind. It should have been thinned etc. long before this kind of disaster could happen.

Do you ever notice that these "studies" that claim the beetle won't increase fire hazard never go beyond the few years it takes the "needles" to fall off. The real fire hazard is in 20 years when dead fall will pile up. How come they never address that?

Because, Logger, that would be an inconvenient truth.

Logger and Dave Skinner,

what we know about fire behavior and fuels actually points to the fact that large woody material doesn't contribute to carrying fires. So these "piles" of of dead trees won't increase fire risk. If there are finer fuels to start and carry a fire, then it is possible that these larger logs would burn, but to what degree is unkown. It is likely some may actually burn up sompletely and cause some damage to soils, and some will not burn up much at all.

If you want to know more there are a couple of articles out there that do look at what happens 20 years after. One author is Turner et al. and the other is Page and Jenkins....search for those papers if you want more info. on this "inconvenient truth".

Fire danger is a changing thing, whether we are discussing thinned or dead trees. Yes, fire danger is less for some time after thinning, but it can increase as brush returns to thinnned stands. So what it means, in order to keep a stand fire resistant, it might require on going forest maintenance.
Same can be said about dead trees. At first the tree is a huge fire hazard, but when it looses it's needles the fire hazard is reduced. But then the fire hazard is increased tremendously when brush invades the dead forest. We need only look at what happened to Yellow Stone in 1987; lots of dead trees and lots of brush.
Bark beetles? We should not expect that thinning and sanitation will completely eliminate bark beetles or their spread. Thinning and sanitation cutting are effective management tools that moderate bark beetle spread and loss. But do not eliminate them.
The issues driving the debate about forest management are not scientific ones, though the debate is framed as scientific. The issues are philosophical. It might be better to focus on the essence of the philosophical divide. At the root of all human conflict are conflicts in philosophy and faith.

When the spruce BB killed hundreds of thousands of acres on the Kenai Pen. in Alaska, environmentalist org's had "experts" say that the standing and blown-down dead spruce would not burn. So State Forestry took a video of the hundred-foot flames on the first fire, the Skilak Lake Fire, and showed the video at public hearings for the timber sales. Sierra Club and others sued and the state won on all counts; the timber sales were sold.

What the state told the judge is that timber harvests can create a mosaic of age classes with less stand density and mixed species. The court agreed that is a reasonable response from professional forest managers to the spruce BB. The case has not been appealed. See Case No. 3 AN - 94-08606 CI, 3rd Jud. District, Anchorage, AK.

I hope the system will allow this link to a very recent picture within Yosemite National Park. This is a perfect example to counter the "let nature take its course" crowd. In 1989, the A-Rock lightning fire burned through the community of Foresta, within Yosemite National Park, itself. Hazard trees around structures were cut but the rest was left to "heal" on its own. Twenty years later, here is what you get when a prescribed fire gets away and burns 17,000 acres and costs $15,000,000 to extinguish, causing sickness due to smoke, hurting the tourist trade during the peak of the season, and taking away badly needed resources during the Station Fire.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qRVP02SjfCs/S4G8Iv2dGUI/AAAAAAAAAtA/hBdoevTOoBI/s400/P2150516-web1.jpg

Does this former old growth stand have a chance to return to its former state, and how long will that take?

What kind of a moron tells people that wood doesn't burn? That's like saying the intense heat couldn't have weakened the beams in the world trade center.
Who are these people?
Talk about artificial inteligence.

I have read Page and Jenkins "predicted fire behavior in selected mountain pine beetle infested lodgepole pine". Here's a couple quotes:" total heat release of surface fires,...was also higher in the postepidemic stands owing to heavy accumulations of large diameter fuels. Crown fires were more likely to initiate in the postepidemic stands owing to greater fireline intensities". I don't see how this supports Tdub's point?
Kulakowski authored a study in Colorado that contended that salvage clearcuts didn't stop fires. Of course the only clearcut he looked at was three years old. It was basically a grass fire that burned across. Pretty shallow evidence for such a dramatic claim. I recently sent his one time coleages at Coloarado University, Mr. Veblen and Tania Schoenagel photos I took on 7 wildfires in Montana where "regenerated clearcuts" didn't burn. The "green islands" in a sea of black are quite striking.Maybe they could share them with Mr. Kulakowski.
Where is academia on that one? The reality that regenerated clearcuts seldom burn is an inconvenient fact to such academians. In our forest litigation world, I guess if it hasn't been published, it has never happened. Salvage clearcutting works quite effectively as a fire break. On every fire I toured, the fire's were stopped at firelines tied into these clearcuts. Ask any type II USFS fire incident commander about this, he will agree with me.
Phillip Omi did a study after the Yellowstone fires. He found that "fire severity was greatest on mature forest sites on national park lands, as opposed to areas with saplings in regenerated clearcuts on national forest lands" and " 90% of mature forests suffered severe fire damage while onle 20% of the regenerated clearcuts did".
Jain and Graham (2007) made some good observations of the regerated clearcuts don't burn phenomenon "Plantations...frequently contain moist layers of ground lever vegetation...the surface fuel matrix was modified through slash disposal...crown fires would burn around these areas..."
I could go on, but that said, law of averages says that probably most of these beetle killed forests won't burn in the future. I can think of lots of epidemics that didn't burn in the past. But most of the fires in Montana that I photographed were fuelled by heavy deadfall from the 80's epidemic. No ones proposing to "log it all off" to save it. Since only around an average of 10% of Montanas national forests have been logged in 50 years, that's impossible. But salvage logging is very effective around the WUI and roads and areas the public might not want to get cooked off.
I've sent my pictures to the Governor, 20 Montana politicians, 20 Colorado politicians. Since academia seems to be slow to look into the clearcuts don't burn phenomenon, I'd be happy to send them to anyone who e-mails me at .

Logger, regarding the clearcuts don't burn idea, can you define what age following clearcas well.ut you are speaking of? It's fairly obvious that very young stands that have been treated for vegetation control following clearcutting will act as fuel breaks, but as these stands mature, especially densely planted ones, a continuous fule structure is available and has been shown to carry fire well, Thompson et al. 2009 PNAS. This study also showed that areas of natural regeneration burned severely as well. The one thing I love about posts and blogs like these is that it always has to be one way or the other. Where is the acceptance of the inherent variation that occurs in forests and their disturbances. For every "picture" of a STAND that burned severely, I can show a picture of a LANDSCAPE that has a mix of severities (no mortality to complete mortality) following fire.

Tdub-seldom are issues black and white but shades of gray. To the contrary, it's been my observation that regenerated clearcuts are most effective fire breaks when they reach 15-20 years of age. For the very reasons that Jain and Graham cited. Closed in canopy creates a moist micro climate, and surface fuels treatment after logging (piling and burning of slash).
On the Brush Creek fire, west of Whitefish Montana, 75% of the regen survived the fire. The 25% that burned consisted mostly of "young" clearcuts less than 10 years old. Basically a grass fire. 40% of the forest within the burn perimeter survived, and 90% of that was regenerated clearcuts.
Why do they burn. heres a couple observations. Slope is a big one. Anything over 30% slope doesn't survive well. Thats why fuels treatments should be on ridges, where fire fighters stop fires anyway. Recent pre-commercial thinning adds a lot of surface fuels-however in 10 years it's rotten enough to kick apart and the canopy closes in again. I've seen several cases where a fire storm burned into a regen clearcut, only to drop down half way through. I've seen several cases where the regen clearcuts had a "creeping surface fire" burn through them, but not severe enough to kill the trees. Species seems to be an issue. Spruce Fir stands seem to burn much easier than say lodgepole.
If you want to see some Google earth photo examples, In the "fly to" box type in 45 deg. 44' 56.65"N lat., and 113 deg. 44' 10.71"W Long. Also try 48 deg. 48' 22.39"N, 115deg. 11' 12.55"W. The "green polygons" you see are regen clearcuts in a sea of black. The phenomenon is real, and needs to be researched and published. It's unfortunate, that the words and opinions of wildland firefighters never get heard, and only the "published" research of a few academians get's published in the AP.

Logger, I agree we should implement the "observations" of firefighters (not the opinions) into our science. Finding a rigorous way to do this and still be able to say with numbers what patterns are across a landscape is difficult. I work in academia with several folks who have previously been firefighters, and they don't always see clearcuts as fire breaks. That's why we need to use these differing "observations" to form intelligent questions at a larger landscape scale and see what the overall pattern is. That's where rigorous statistical analyses come in, they allow us to move beyond disparate observations and detect patterns across all observations in a given study area.

Having said that we ALWAYS need to keep in mind the uncertainty that exists in BOTH our analyses and our observations.

The cutting of live trees with active infestations DOES reduce bark beetle blooms. The restoration of tree densities and species composition to match climate conditions is the way to keep our forests sustainable and resilient. The preservationists have promised to litigate if lodgepole forests are "managed", despite being DEAD! Bark beetles don't discriminate betweens lodgepoles and ponderosas.

fotoware - Actually mountain pine beetle (the one causing large scale mortality of lodgepole) does discriminate between lodgepole and ponderosa for the most part. Although this beetle will attack all pine species, it p-refers lodgepole of a certain size and density. When it really begins to attack ponderosa is at the end of an outbreak cycle where lodgepole becomes limiting (when it's all dead) and then you get spillover into ponderosa pine stands, mostly small diameter dense ponderosa pine plantations. At least this is the case in Oregon.

They munch on whatever is available but, ponderosas have thicker bark and are much less dense, hence, less stress. Indian burnings favored the ponderosas and cleaned out those pesky lodgepoles. However, there still are vast areas of land really only suitable for more lodgepoles. A focus should be towards historic ponderosa sites, restoring the grand "yellow bellies" that survive droughts, bark beetles and fires.

fotoware - if mountain pine beetle munched on whatever was available we would have huge bark beetle epidemics in ponderosa, and we don't for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

I also read your first post and am interested in your GHG comment. If you read some of the recent calculations on GHG emmisions from fires, they are very small compared to that of all the GHG emmissions we put out annually from cars and other industrial output. not that we should ignore them,but if we are really concerned we should focus on much larger outputs as that will have a much larger impact on GHG reductions.

It looks like it is YOU who should be looking at GHG's produced from wildfires. Peer reviewed estimates go as far as 300 tons per acre when high-intensity fire hits a thick patch of timber. After a fire burns off all vegetation, it may take centuries for that piece of land to recover its former capacity to sequester atmospheric carbon. Also, much of that carbon goes into the upper levels of the atmosphere, where plants can't benefit from those higher concentrations. So, it's a lose-lose situation for everyone, except eco-lawyers and firefighters. Flushing out centuries of sequestered carbon (and other toxic GHG's) cannot be a good thing for our environment. Even if you apply a mere 10 tons per acre over an estimated average of 8 million acres per year, you have a not-insignificant total of 80 million tons of GHG's per year.

Hey, and I am all for cleaner energy! Wood power can help to reduce the need for much dirtier forms of enrgy.

I keep asking.... What is wrong with restoring historical stocking levels, forest structure and species composition to pre-European baselines? Just letting whatever happens and calling it "natural" is neglect and very destructive, as well as not addressing the inevitable results of human-caused fires starting in dead forests. We can "sculpt" our unhealthy forests into functioning pieces of ecological art....or we can let them burn to a crisp and start over.

Here's an example of how beetles overwhelmed even the old growth growing next to the perennial stream on the San Bernardino National Forest. Every single ponderosa pine in the picture is dead. They lost an estimated 12+ million trees, most of which went unsalvaged, and are awaiting the next firestorm to hit.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qRVP02SjfCs/Sprne_1ADqI/AAAAAAAAAm0/6xQ8HQYXGcA/s1600-h/Camp_Seeley1-web.jpg

Fotoware - What kind of beetles were they? Do you know? It matters because the species of beetle that kills ponderosa in large quantities is different than the ones killing lodgepoles. Just labeling them "bark beetles" leaves out the larger context and doesn't help the debate or the management.

Secondly, there have been a couple of recent papers from two of the larger wildfires in Oregon's recent history that show somewhere around 17-25 Mg (roughly equivalent to tons) per hectare are emmitted. This can be anywhere from 3 to at most 30% of the CO2 emmitted by fossil fuels in Oregon alone in the same period. Having one or two extremely large fires in a decade isn't coming close to what we put out in C02 that decade from fossil fuels.

Finally, how do you think those presettlement forests maintained such a low density? Ahhhh that fire thingy must have had a role!
I agree fully that we need to think about managing forests for lower densities, especially in forest types such as ponderosa pine. But in the context of MPB and lodgepole pine, this can only buy us so much. We also need to think about creating hetrogeneity of age classes of lodgepole across the landscape.

I'm sitting here trying to remember the number of times I've watched wildfires burn in ways some chair-bound academician said wouldn't or couldn't happen. I've lost count. Nature doesn't seem to give a levitating rodent's patootie about what educated fools think or write. Obeying relatively simple laws of physics and chemistry, Nature just does it's own thing despite reams of silly papers to the contrary.

One day, hopefully, it will occur to some of these academicians to ask *firefighters* how fires burn. I've never been so questioned by an academician nor fought a wildfire next to one; neither has any firefighter of my acquaintance--and yes, we often discuss such things because the academicians and the politicians and the mis-named enviromentalists invariably make our jobs considerably more difficult. And infinitely more dangerous.

I wouldn't really expect them to publish what we'd say anyway, because we're honest about it--not politically correct--and answer only to Nature's fury, not the self-serving bureaucrats and funding-providers they answer to.

Park and forest administrators love these disingenuous reports because they can, and do, use them as an excuse to divert more of their funding toward attracting and coddling tourists and away from proper forest-management, (ask me about the National Park Circus'...um...Service's...$1,000,000--yep, six zeros--outhouse; better yet, google it). If there's a bad fire, the officials will simply blame the report or the weather guessers or the ranger who told him this would happen if something wasn't done. They'll point the finger at anybody or anything--anything but their own negligence and dereliction of duty. Been there, seen that, got covered with soot. More than once.

As a wildland firefighter, the *best* I can say about this disagraceful report is that the irresponsible negligence it encourages puts not only my life and the lives of my fellow firefighters in danger, but likewise endangers the families living in or near areas in which those hundreds--sometimes thousands--of dead trees abound. Carried by the winds, a burning firebrand can travel farther than a rifle bullet, with tremendously more destructive--often, deadly--results.

Leaving those countless acres of dead trees standing is as dangerous as leaving an open bucket of gasoline in the smoker's lounge: It isn't a question of IF it will result in a tragedy but WHEN. To even entertain such an idea is malicious if not downright criminal.

There are 4 possible ignition sources for wildfires: Lightning, men, women and children. Inevitably, one of those ignition sources will meet up with the fuel. It may be sooner, it may be later, but it WILL happen.

It takes only grade-school logic to understand that, if you remove the fuel, a fire is impossible. That is a word I rarely use but it here bears repeating: If you remove the fuel, a fire is IMPOSSIBLE. No one can die in it, no one's home can be reduced to smoldering rubble, because without fuel, fires simply *cannot* happen. Period.

The *worst* I can say about this outrageous, politically-tainted report is that it is a bald-faced lie. Someone will die, horribly, painfully, as a result of it. I hope it isn't me. Or you. Or your children.

By the way: I'm a *volunteer* firefighter. I don't get paid one red cent to fight a fire--in fact, it costs me money out of my own pocket; to take time off to fight fires, to drive sometimes a couple of hundred miles round-trip to take courses (from firefighters, not academicians) in fire behavior, or incident-command structure, or standards, or survival or EMT certification. We're not even given the $8 "Incident Response Pocket Guides" we constantly refer to at a fire, we have to buy them. What I have said here is based on experience, observation and conviction, not conflict-of-interest or political agenda.

Right on, fireman!! My extensive experience confirms your knowledge and objectivity. I've been a fire lookout, on an engine crew, on hand crews, in fire camps, done fire salvage and planted trees on burns.

Tdub- I do know that both Ips and the MPB attack ponderosa pines and white pines. The Ips tends to kill splotches of forest but, the MPB more readily kills wide swaths of drought-stressed pine forest.

Regardless of whether the ponderosa pines survive the bugs, or not, inevitable wildfire WILL kill them and lodgepoles will have taken over yet another ponderosa pine forest. We cannot change the past and we cannot change the climate quick enough to save forests. However, we CAN create forests that benefit endangered species, instead of thick, buggy and flammable lodgepole monocultures.

please stop cut down pine trees infested by pine beetle, we should use physical, electronic method & tools to protect pine trees in forest of mountain in the future. using normal methods are very difficult.
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