Why It May be a Bad Idea to Try to Control Large Fires

[kingsnake]

"As recently as the 1930s Dust Bowl drought years, more than 39 million acres burned annually in the US. And long term research going back thousands of years suggests that the past 50-70 years may be real anomalies in terms of acreage burned as well as fire severity. It may be that the limited fire activity between the 1930s and 1990s was more a reflection of moister climate conditions than due to any effective fire suppression."

Why It May be a Bad Idea to Try to Control Large Fires
Wildfires: Myths and Realities

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/03/ ... realities/

[Jim]

It may be that the limited fire activity between the 1930s and 1990s was more a reflection of moister climate conditions than due to any effective fire suppression.

Except there were drought periods with big fires, such as the 1950s and 1960s, we just have short memories, and choose to believe this is a completely recent event. The biggest change to have happened since the period began, is the post 1970 boom in suburban sprawl in places that abut wild lands.

There undoubtedly has been some fuel build up in a few ecosystems due to fire suppression, particularly low elevation forests such as those dominated by ponderosa pine that burned at frequent intervals. However, most of the acreage burned in recent years has been either range fires influenced largely by the presence of the exotic and highly flammable cheat grass and/or higher elevation plant communities dominated by lodgepole pine, and various fir species, which typically did not burn frequently. Stand replacement fires characterize these higher elevation forest communities. These forests types have suffered no fuel build up due to fire suppression because successful fire control hasn’t exist long enough to have affected the interval between blazes that typically dominates these forests.

The Wallow, the Rodeo-Chediski, the Miller, the Whitewater-Baldy, the Schultz, the Horseshoe 1 and 2, the Haymen, the Biscuit, the recent front Range Colorado fires, they are all lower to middle elevation fires in formerly high frequency fire systems.

The fact that recent fires are burning through clear cuts, thinned stands, and other forests that are supposed to be fire proofed, suggests that big blazes are, at least in some situations, the norm.

There is no such thing as a "fire proof" area, except mineral soil or water. The author is intentionally misleading, for what I suspect is a political purpose based on the site. There have not been claims of fire-proofing, just preventing a crown fire in areas overly dense from former silvicultural practices.

Furthermore, presumed “solutions” put forth by logging advocates such as thinning programs are unlikely to work effectively in drought years. And since nearly all big blazes occur in drought years, these are the only fires that are worth worrying about.

This assumes logging alone is a complete fix, which it never is. People who assume this are naive and usually see things very simply. In Arizona, fire is natural and the only way to properly manage the forests for human benefit is to utilize the natural forces to our advantage, as it pretty much would be in any place. A bare minimum of once a decade prescribed fire in the drier times of year is almost required to keep the forests in a semi-natural appearing state. We need to limit grazing, too, but we don't really do either.

What is missed in the “fire suppression” has created fuel buildups assertion is the fact that mixed to high severity stand replacement blazes are the “norm” for most western ecosystem. This includes chaparral, aspen, spruce-fir, western larch, boreal forests in Alaska, lodgepole pine, subalpine fir, and many other forest types For instance, the lodge pole pine forest of Yellowstone NP typically burns every 300-400 years. Fire suppression has had no impact on fuel loading in these forests.

I can't think of a single reputable forester, ecologist, or fire manager who would say that fire suppression has altered these communities, except in places like southern California where the return for high intensity fire was relatively short and fuel loads are probably higher than would have existed in 1700, simply because some locations haven't burned in over 100 years and without suppression, they would have. Still, even when burning in a 25 to 50 span, they were very intense.


I have written about my let them burn stance in the past, and would prefer a much greater use of fire and much larger prescribed fires. Places like the Gila should really never put out or fight a fire unless it directly threatens structures, and even then they should be back burning well in advance to simply steer the fire around a town. It never made sense to me that they put out a fire in early June of 2010, the entire area burned over twice, last year and this. The recent Gila Fire would have been a non-issue if it burned every few years as it ought to.

Some places are fir (such as grand fir in the Idaho-Montana area, or white fir in California) today and were not 100 years ago. In the northern Rockies, a disease changed forest composition from white pine to fir, and in California, where a tendency to cut pine and exclude fire altered forest composition. It is all well and good to say let it burn, except there are consequences to that, and we use forests as our water sheds. Really, we should be trying to allow fires in wetter years, and attempting to exclude in the severely dry ones. That is, until most places can have fire in them in the really dry years as they would have in 1800. I pointed out the lightning caused Whitewater-Baldy would have burned, and been wind driven 200 years ago as it was in May, the only real difference is the upper mixed conifer stands (which burned the hottest due to fire exclusion) would have looked more like the middle-elevation pine and it wouldn't have been that bad.

We lost most of out herbaceous layer in our forests, due to over grazing 120 years ago and continued grazing and other practices since. That fine fuel carried lower intensity fire really well most of the time, except when really green or wet, and it grows back fast, too. Unlike a thick duff build-up, it doesn't get so hot it sterilizes the soil or creates soil that runs off and erodes in a heavy rain, the way a lot of the current forests now have duff in them. Also, once soil and grasses are gone, it's hard to get back. Today, with the structural changes, a hot fire will not create the conditions that existed in previous hypothetical stand replacing fire in ponderosa. It's also to important to note that just because things happened in 1500, do we want that today? I for one greatly prefer a forest, even if considered to be against natural will, which is burned at least every 10 years and can accept a wild fire with 50 MPH winds and still have an intact herbaceous layer and green crowned trees 1 year later.

[writelots]

I think the greatest myth is that we as humans can actually control wildfire. We think we can - and often we try. But in ecological time scale, our attempts are pathetic at best. We stop it for a moment or a decade, but in the end, what needs to burn will burn.

Water will flow down hill.
Wood will burn.
Everything natural will experience dramatic change.

What's left is for us to decide how we will adapt our practices to best keep ourselves in harmony with it.