As many forests fail to recover from wildfires, replanting efforts face huge odds -- and obstacles

[Pivo]

Meanwhile in Colorado.
The U.S. currently lacks the ability to collect enough seeds from living trees and the nursery capacity to grow seedlings for replanting on a scale anywhere close to stemming accelerating losses, researchers say. It also doesn’t have enough trained workers to plant and monitor trees.

https://www.abqjournal.com/news/nationa ... 534ec.html

[Jim]

This article says nothing about so called "wilderness areas", which, if you have paid attention to what I think, are nothing but that in name only. Those areas will never again be what they were in 1800 or even the degraded state they were in 1900. The best you can hope for, is the horrible, impenetrable shrub lands that are developing in the Chiricahua Mountains, where primarily a few invasive oaks and other more or less chaparral species take hold and become the dominant species on the landscape, or fern forests and herbaceous slopes like you see in the Catalinas higher elevations. Aspen will at least flourish, more or less.

The future of the Pusch Ridge, Kendrick Mountain, most of the Kachina Peaks that has burned, and on and on, is what you will see. I was attacked recently for suggesting management in these areas, and I continue to see people here complain about managed fire. Until the attitudes of the public change to accepting fire, the situation will continue to degrade. When you live in a fantasy, you will be met with a very unpleasant reality. Just ask Florida in a week.

The southwest and 4 corners states didn't have the existing agro-foresty infrastructure that the Pacific Northwest and Southeast do. So, without seed orchards managed specifically to produce seed for replanting, you rely on wild seeds that will become rarer, and rarer. Those may be trees, but you run into other problems using fewer and fewer individuals to reforest vast areas.

Places like the Pusch Could have been kept on a trajectory of recovery, as there was pine regeneration. Doyle and Schultz could have had work done to mitigate the fuel load. Not simply logging, either: [ youtube video ] [ youtube video ]

The Santa Ritas could have work done to produce the old growth conditions that were prevalent 150 years ago. There has been ample conifer reproduction in numerous areas. However, the reproduction was so unnaturally dense over such a large area that it will never reach those conditions. Visitors to Mount Wrightson will begin to watch the dense thickets of Arizona Pine [ photo ] that cover the eastern slope of Josephine succumb to beetles and even their own weight, unless a hot fire gets them first. In 2017, I think, there was a lightning fire on the slopes of Wrightson that was suppressed. How "wilderness".

[chumley]

They tried on Graham. [ photo ]
And failed. [ photo ]

[Jim]

Guess I should have copied parts of text before it went behind a pay wall.

They tried, but they didn't really fail. Survival rates are low and are expected to be low due to the planting conditions. Preston and I also found numerous boxes of unplanted spruce seedlings. Just left to rot on the mountain.

That area on Graham is a dry windy site. There are natural and some surviving spruce, but ponderosa and doug-fir might be better to plant. Between the lack of soil, the huge expanse, the intense wind and the dry years, it would be reasonable to expect several plantings to be required.

Same for Elden, but that area has severe herbivory.

[Pivo]

Guess I should have copied parts of text before it went behind a pay wall.

Open the link in 'private/ incognito' window.

[The_Eagle]

@chumley
Rumor has it the Graham Red ate them all.

[RedRoxx44]

The government announces a new branch for the Forest Service--the US Brush Service!! Soon to be the largest branch of the southwestern US!!

[DixieFlyer]

It also doesn’t have enough trained workers to plant and monitor trees.

How much training is required to plant a tree?

[Jim]

@DixieFlyer
It depends, as there can be more to a successful planting than simply shoving it in the ground. However, being as this sentence also included, "monitor", I take this to mean that they lack certain staff for that task. Now, this spring I was told by several FS employees that they had trouble getting staff, but I was also told this was due to their HR department seeking to check boxes rather than fill positions with qualified people, many of whom were already in the organization but failed to check a box.

Monitoring can also include staff overseeing planting crews who are contractors. Maybe that is why so many seedlings were left to rot on Mount Graham?

[Pivo]

How much training is required to plant a tree?

Remember, you're talking about the government.

[Jim]

Finally able to see it again.

The Forest Service said the biggest roadblock to replanting on public land is completing environmental and cultural assessments and preparing severely burned areas so they’re safe to plant. That can take years — while more forests are lost to fire.

Sound like it is more about completing NEPA requirements and to some extent the site prep. Congress could act, if it cared.

“If we have the seedlings but we don’t have the sites prepped ... we can’t put the seedlings out there,”

Mount Graham didn't appear to be well prepped. What is it they say about poor planning?

“We need to start being creative if we want trees on our landscapes,” Stevens-Rumann said. “We’re in a place of such drastic climate change that we are not talking about whether or not some of these places will be a different kind of forest, but whether or not they will be forests at all.”

Expect oak and other shrub lands due to advanced regeneration of those species which are invasive and coppice well.

Perhaps the methods should adapt to the scale of the problem? For example, trees do reproduce on their own. Use later natural regeneration and plan for a 50 year reforestation cycle rather than a 10 year goal. In ponderosa and mixed conifer forests, instead of focusing on attempting to create a single cohort forest across the hundreds of thousands of acres of burned land with 400 to 700 trees per acre, plant 1 of every 10 acres using 1/10th acre to 1/20th acre stands distributed over that 100 acres, mimicking the patchy-clumpy stands in ponderosa and mixed conifer that predated 1900. In the remaining acreage, focus on creating the ground conditions that will allow for later natural regeneration once groups and smaller stands are created. Focus on reintroducing fire at a greater frequency in areas that former had it, and growing groups of trees that can eventually seed into adjacent areas; lower fuel loads, reduced competition from shrub or undesirable species, and even limiting herbivory.

“We’ve just underinvested in reforestation for decades in the U.S. There’s a lot of investment in human capital that’s going to have to happen.”

Because we don't care. If agency priorities are not what the agency is actually charged with, don't expect it to function.

There is also a bias of pure ignorance in the country. Here, in NJ, in 2013, there was some state level bill that was aimed at combating a pine beetle outbreak. It would have required management plans for local green acres lands over 20 acres, and management plans for the numerous state forests. Seemed that most state forests may not have management plans, which is strange. Anyway, management plans were opposed by the Sierra Club, which also makes little sense. The club demanded many other absurd things which just don't make sense until you realize they were coming from a place of pure ignorance.

[pseudalpine]

How much training is required to plant a tree?

Remember, you're talking about the government.

Remind us which it is, that "they're incompetent" or that "they" control hurricanes with space lasers? Asking for a friend.

[Pivo]

Remind us which it is, that "they're incompetent" or that "they" control hurricanes with space lasers? Asking for a friend

[pseudalpine]

@Jim_H
Seriously, I appreciate your insights. It seems as though you may have some experience in this area. Thirty-year plant biologist here with experience in breeding, chemistry, horticulture, and agriculture research. I don't know specifics about silviculture, but at least "they" have a plan and "they're" trying. It may be in vain, but I guess the other option is to do nothing as @RedRoxx44 joked about. Yes, I'm as selfish as every other American in that the project near my property in the Tonto Forest will likely increase our values, but I also know many other Americans will enjoy what "they're" doing there if it works. OAN: it would be interesting to tour the propagation sites that produce all these trees, I'm not sure where "they" do that work.

DixieFlyer
All you ever contributed is non sequiturs. We know you're upset that Joe Arpaio will never be Mayor of Fountain Hills. And that Kari "Can I talk about water really quickly?" Lake will never be governor of Az or our senator. But perhaps "they" might steer a few of thar' them hurricunes over Arizona to break our drought. But that would be a solution, instead of just lying and whining all the time. Fossil Fuels Rule!

@Pivo
Much easier on the eyes (pun intended) than the two political dinosaurs.

[Jim]

@pseudalpine
This isn't the greatest article. It blames NEPA Regs and lack of site prep funds as the biggest issue, but then talks about a 10 year goal and cites another article. That article referenced for the 10 year, 1 billion tree goal isn't all that clear on how the goal will be accomplished, just that money will be thrown at it. It in turn references other articles that really say little of substance.

The Forest Service this year is spending more than $100 million on reforestation work. Spending is expected to further increase in coming years, to as much as $260 million annually, under the sweeping federal infrastructure bill approved last year, agency officials said.

https://apnews.com/article/wildfires-fi ... 8084b0e903 Great, billions will be spent, can I get some pork, too? On what are they spending the money??!!

I'm basically saying that if seedlings are in short supply, work with the silvics of the trees that dominated the ecosystem. In AZ and NM, that is largely ponderosa pine and mixed conifer. If the problem is big, adapt in ways that enable as much to be done today. The industry or FS isn't going to quadruple seedling production in a year or two.

As far as the plan, they don't even talk about it in any meaningful way. I was looking over the USFS plan in Project 2025, and it is vague and suggests a reliance on logging, but appears to want no fire use at all. Something guaranteed to fail. https://static.project2025.org/2025_Man ... TER-10.pdf go to page 308, if interested. I found the EO mentioned, EO 13855. Didn't really say a lot. If fact, that seems to be a theme here: being vague.

Experts say there clearly will be areas where trees never return but it’s critical that the U.S. does as much possible in a thoughtful way.

-from the original article.
I find it curious that failure is provided as an option, but that is a bit of realism, at least. But, that statement is kinda vague.

Last, as always, none of it matters for the millions of acres of so called wilderness that are steadily being converted to scrub, shrub, and wastelands due to over a century of bad policy.