North Central Washington

Fire and Fuels Issues

a review of
Science News and Reviews
November, 2004

Reviewed by George Wooten

Review Paper: Graham,Russell T.; McCaffrey, Sarah; Jain,Theresa B.(tech.eds.) 2004. Science basis for changing forest structure to modify wildfire behavior and severity. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-120. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 43 p.

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This paper was recently recommended to a group involved in forest restoration. It can be read online at http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_gtr120.html

Graham and colleagues begin their paper with high aspirations.

"This report describes the kinds, quality, amount, and gaps of scientific knowledge for making informed decisions on fuel treatments used to modify wildfire behavior and effects in dry forests of the interior Western United States (especially forests dominated by ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir)."

This is a paper primarily designed for managers who wish to have better justification for increased funding of fuels management programs. For scientists, it offers a fairly comprehensive reference section, but that is about all. It is a review paper rather than a research paper; as such it merely enumerates existing published literature.

The paper begins with a broad scope―too broad. Significant issues of scientific research are glossed over and completely missed. For instance, the importance of surface and ground fires is only briefly described in the document.

On page 23, there is a bold leap of faith that casts dispersion on entire remainder of the paper:

"Crown fires are often considered the primary threat to the ecology of the dry forest types and human values as well as the primary challenge for fire management."

With this great leap the paper launches into a long discussion of management paradigms, some useful, but all with underlying assumptions glossed over.

The authors mischaracterize the lessons learned in the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Management Project done by researcher van Wagtendonk (1996). van Wagtendonk did original research to answer the question of what effect various fuel treatment alternatives have on fire behavior. They found that silvicultural modifications were often ineffective, and that the additional fuels resulting from cutting, lopping, and scattering understory trees and branches exacerbated fire behavior. They also found that surprisingly, controlled fire can also be ineffective in modifying fuel behavior. Only a combination of silviculture and controlled fire was effective.

Graham et al. purport to give a broad discussion of wildfires, when the report is specifically about reducing crown fire potential through the use of various types of forest thinning. The report doesn't even mention fires in the shrub-steppe, which are just as dangerous to lives and property as crown fires. Nor does the report mention the trade-offs in higher surface fire spreading rates that can result from reducing crown fire potential.

Managers should know that when the canopy is reduced, a forest will experience greater wind speeds, greater diurnal dessication, and more rapid growth of flashy fuels. All of these contribute to greater risk of fire in the landscape through more rapid fire spreading rates. The issue at stake is a matter of setting priorities, which isn’t addressed in this report.

The pictures of historical stands illustrated by Graham et al. appear to have management in them, casting doubts on the paper’s conclusions. Perhaps the suppressed nature of the stands is due to mismanagement, including logging.

There are some good numbers and references in the crown fire section, but without a balanced approach to wildfire in general, this paper is pretty ho-hum. There are plenty of other papers that offer a more balanced viewpoint. The whole article is somewhat too slick and polished to be considered science.

Scientific research can be descriptive or analytical, and this paper fits the former category. The topics can be investigated with de novo research or they can be summaries of other work, as in this review. Review papers are normally great sources for stimulating future research, but not in this case, other than to conclude that,

...a long-standing and large body of knowledge about the role of forest structure and fuels on fire behavior and severity provides a sound foundation for managers to develop prescriptions for hazard reduction and restoration of dry conifer forests at the stand level (for example, within individual treatment units).

A somewhat better characterization of the state of scientific knowledge about fire management is also offered,

Detailed site-specific data on anything beyond basic forest structure and fuel properties are rare, limiting our analytical capability to prescribe management actions to achieve desired conditions for altering fuels and fire hazard.

It is worth considering what sort of testable hypothesis might be undertaken to answer questions about fire behavior, had this been a research paper. It would have been very appropriate to suggest that fire research needs to develop a good set of definitions to guide fire and fuels management, which is still in its infancy. Managers badly need to understand the pros and cons of fire research, whether to burn in the spring or fall or summer, which species will benefit and which will not, how can priorities be addressed without more science…

The title and assumed hypothesis that there is a scientific basis for fuels reduction management pander to a layman’s view of what science is about.

Some people, particularly those that are beholden to government positions, treat SCIENCE as if it were a spice or a garnish, available for use whenever and wherever it can jazz up insipid management plans, giving them more flavor and vitamin enrichment.

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References