Don Healy
Over the past several years, I have been corresponding with many local journalists regarding the cause of the recent increase in forest fires in the U.S. Using the written word alone has garnered only modest success. While a few now mention fuel load in their articles, the mention is cursory at best with them harping back to increasing temperature as the driving force. Concluding that are more graphic approach was necessary I decided to use a period of Covid isolation to enhance my limited skills using the charting functions of Microsoft Excel. The following is the result when comparing U.S. data on acres burned to temperature and to fuel load:
Examining the situation from this perspective makes it very clear that fuel load is by far the dominant factor. This also confirms what we were taught by the forestry professors at Oregon State University in the late 1960s.
The rationale behind the chart and the sources for the data are as follows: The graph compares the number of acres burn in U. S. forest fires in recent decades to the two major conditions responsible for this increase, temperature and fuel load. The dashed orange “acres burned” line on the graph illustrates the increase in the acreage of forest fires that has occurred in the U.S. in the past four-plus decades. This data comes from the U.S. Interagency Fire Center. (Source: https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics/wildfires) This record used to extend back to the 1920s but was recently amended to cover the period from 1983 to the present, due to concerns about the earlier methods of determining burned acreage. Unfortunately, the Agency has nothing to replace this earlier data. Many are using this amending of the prior record to conclude that earlier periods, particularly the 1920s and 1930s, experienced fewer fires than were originally recorded. That assumption appears unwarranted in light of other peer-reviewed studies, the logs of some of the earlier Spanish and English explorers, anecdotal evidence from many of the early settlers, and even an account by Mark Twain during his visit to Tacoma in the 1880s. However, the data in this graph has been limited to currently approved data.
Upper solid blue line on the chart is the volume of merchantable timber on all ownerships in the U.S. and was obtained from the surveys conducted by the U.S.F.S. every ten years covering both hardwood and softwood timber species. (Source: United States Department of Agriculture Forest Resources of the United States, 2017A Technical Document Supporting the Forest Service 2020 RPA Assessment Sonja N. Oswalt, W. Brad Smith, Patrick D. Miles, and Scott A. Pugh. https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/57903) The dots on this line represent the precise data results from the surveys.
This record actually extends back to 1953 and shows that from 1953 to the last survey in 2017, merchantable timber volumes have increased by 60%. The U.S.F.S. inventory figures for 2017 were 985,238 million cubic feet. Therefore each digit on the left vertical axis represents 100,000 cubic feet. Not having any data on total biomass, the timber inventory figures have been used as a proxy for total fuel load. In reality, the fuel load increase is probably much greater than indicated since non-merchantable trees, shrubs and grasses, some highly invasive, have not been included. Going forward, the CO2 fertilization effect may further impact the fuel load situation by both increasing the growth rate of virtually all plant life, and its ability to increase the drought resistance of plants and trees. As an example, red alder trees are growing about 20% faster than they were in 1950.
The center dashed green line charts the change in the average annual temperature in the contiguous U.S. from 1983 to the present in degree F. This data is from the National Weather Service. (Source: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/national-temperature-index/time-series/anom-tavg/1/0) This graph was designed to show visually how much temperature has increased within the framework of normal human existence. The top horizonal blue dashed line is at 130 degrees F., slightly below the highest temperature record in Death Valley, and the bottom horizontal dashed magenta line represents -50 degrees F, (the coldest recorded was actually -70 degrees F.) In virtually all reporting today monitoring climate, temperatures are shown in tenths of a degree that greatly magnifies very small changes. It is important to compare data such as temperature changes, fuel load and acres burned on scales equitable for that comparison.
Comparing these three elements on a rational scale shows that acres burned tracks fuel load rather closely, while the small change in temperature is barely noticeable. However, most media and official reports stress the role of increasing temperature, with seldom a mention of the fuel load issue. If we are to deal effectively with the forest fire issue it is imperative that we get the foundational data correct first so we can develop effective strategies to deal with this major threat to mankind.
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No, the issue with old fire area data is the message they are trying to give. Rather than a footnote revealing the older data might be questionable, they are using the old “cut-off graph” trick, cherrypicking the data to make a false inference.
Noting such events as the Spotted Owl lawsuits, or CARB restricting controlled burns, or restrictions on grazing, or lawsuits restricting logging in general are more relevant to wildlands fires than temperature.
The other problem is that fires become essentially impossible to extinguish when the fuel load exceeds 2kg/m2 (0.4 lbs/ft2). According to Australia’s CSIRO, at this fuel load the fire can burn intensively enough to ignite the crown of the trees in a forest. When this occurs, the fire spreads more or less uncontrollably depending on the wind conditions due to the spread of burning embers from the tops of the trees. Indeed it is also possible that the fire intensity develops sufficiently to create its own climate and so called fire tornados can develop. If these conditions persist the only feasible methods to control the fire are created fire breaks or natural breaks such as lakes or wide rivers.
In temperate rain forests in Australia the fuel load development is quite rapid from falling vegetation, bark, fruit etc. The critical fuel load can develop within as little as 2-4 years in a completely fuel free site.
The finding that a rise in temperature of even 10C is insignificant should be obvious when it is realised that the ignition temperature of dry wood is around 300C. In other words there has to be some source of ignition such as lightning, a downed power line or human agency such as an incompletely extinguished camp fire or deliberate arson (regrettably).
Of course once the fire is alight then dry conditions can exacerbate the blaze but the only realistic way to minimise the fire damage is to limit the fuel loads with so called “cool” burning, that is burning of wet or moist fuel in the cooler months. It is obvious that there are some downsides to this practice but it should also be obvious that fires are not something new and that the wild life is adapted to this situation, for example trees and other plants being resistant to burning or by animals taking shelter or fleeing the flames.
One thing that most people don’t realise is that firebreaks and smaller water courses are mostly useful as an anchor point to burn back from.
Wide rivers and lakes probably provide a sufficiently wide fuel-free distance in most cases, but smoldering embers can travel rather long distances.
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Four supportive observations.
WRT 2, does the fuel load statistic account for this?
The greens now want to end ALL forestry – lock up all the forests to do nothing but sequester carbon. They think wood comes from Home Depot.
Obviously it is time to reopen our forest land to commercial lumber harvesting. That will reduce the fuel load, remove much of the invasive understory, create access roads and fire breaks and reduce the cost of lumber and thus new homes.
In other words it’s time to “cut-baby-cut”.
Rud,
I have enjoyed and agreed with most of your comments in various postings, but can’t agree number 4 above. “Smokey Bear” fire suppression policies have contributed to dangerous fuel loadings across the US, particularly with increases in stand densities and ladder fuels within forests such as thick-barked ponderosa pines or redwoods which historically experienced relatively frequent underburning. However, the Yellowstone ecosystem in 1988 was dominated by mature and overmature lodgepole pine which had been for years experiencing mountain pine beetle attack. Except for some non-serotiny around West Yellowstone, almost all of the Yellowstone ecosystem (and the northern Rocky Mountains) is dominated by cone serotiny in lodgepole pine. These cones require fire to open and release seed to establish new stands. The uniform distribution of mature and overmature lodgepole pine in Yellowstone 1988 attests to massive fires of the mid to late 1800’s which opened the lodgepole pine cones to establish the new stands. The “rebirth of Yellowstone” forest that the National Park Service now so enthusiatically promotes is simply a new age class of relatively uniform lodgepole pine forest that will again be subject to beetle infestation, dead fuel accumulation and a new round of fires in 80 to 150 years.
I was District Ranger managing the Buffalo Ranger District of the Bridger-Teton National Forest from 1985 to 1991. My District included the 585,000 acre Teton Wilderness which wraps around the southeast corner Yellowstone Park. I was intimately involved with setting fire suppression priorities via daily escaped fire situation analyses from July thru October as a quarter million acres of my district burned. I watched these fires spot 1/4 to 1 mile across wet sedge meadows that would not burn, and burn thru or around the few older burns that were encountered. A series of small natural fires might have provided pockets of diversity within the subsequently burned landscape, but would have done little to change the conflagration. I am an advocate of letting fire play its natural role within wilderness, but will not pretend that there are no effects. The “balance of nature” is sometimes expressed via magnificent excesses in production and consumption.
Again, I have enjoyed your comments and perceptions. Minor disagreement here.
John Baglien
“If we are to deal effectively with the forest fire issue it is imperative that we get the foundational data correct first so we can develop effective strategies to deal with this major threat to mankind.”
Can I get an “Amen!!!”
Amen!
Very nice, this is important. The journalists reporting CAGW don’t give a damn about the truth for things today or in the past. They have an agenda and they are going to fulfill it come hell or high water. They are liars and cheats.
Their agenda is money. Sensational headlines lead to ad clicks. When the media went digital and then was bought up by major conglomerates, the media became profit centers and the priorities shifted from accurate and balanced reporting to grabbing ad dollars.
I live in the N Rockies and have studied this a bit over the years. The local
state forester gave me a reading list at the height of the last beetle kill.
One effect of a high fuel load from wildfire is the soil gets destroyed down deep.
One can drive around this area and see what I learned is known as a “stand clearing fire”
Basically the forest becomes a mountain prairie and the trees don’t regrow for hundreds
of years.
“two major conditions responsible for this increase, temperature and fuel load”. No. Temperature is definitely NOT a major condition. See Steele postings.
You are correct. I guess I was looking at it from the journalist’s perspective then showing them what the relationship really is.
A period of warm and dry… then a windy day and a firebug.
Undergrowth fuel loads are building quickly where I am.
Temperature exacerbates drying when rainfall is scarce. Water evaporates faster at higher temperatures. This is a tertiary factor at best.
If the proper forest management were allowed to proceed (and not be halted by activists), the conflagrations being reported would not be newsworthy.
Yes, therein lies the major blockage to reducing the fuel load; we need changes to our legal system that prevent the frivolous but effective lawsuits that handcuff the U.S.F.S and other federal agencies.
Many state agencies too- happening here in Wokeachusetts, bigly.
In Australia, green policy has effectively locked and loaded our forests ready for the next inevitable wildfire.
Regular Aboriginal firestick burning of temperate forests prevented catastrophic bushfires for thousands of years. The same method was used in Africa, Canada and the US. Almost 100 enquiries after catastrophic fatal bushfires have recommended fuel load reduction by regular winter small cold burns. This has not been done because of green activist regulations, deliberate inaction and green pressure resulting in catastrophic high intensity fires in summer.
Most fires are started by arsonists and lightning. There is no relationship between climate change and forest fires. During the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires, green activists held a demonstration about climate change pulling police away from bushfire duties and, while people were being killed in these fires, the Greens Party was appealing for funds to continue their great works!
Bushfires show that greens activists have no concern for the environment, people or property and are only interested in trying to gain political points and more funding from disasters. The blame for catastrophic intense bushfires rests with green activists. Own the fuel, own the fire.
Almost all fires are started by humans and are exclusively man-made calamities. In Australia between 1977 and 2009, 87% of the 113,000 fires that started in forests and grasslands were man-made. A University of Colorado at Boulder report showed that 97% of home-threatening fires in the US from 1992 to 2015 were started by humans.
Foresters, farmers and fire fighters know that for a catastrophic fire, the forests need a period of wet weather followed by a drought then hot windy days. Fires need ignition, oxygen and a large fuel load.
Like many parts of Australia, the Sahara is hot, windy and dry. There is lightning for fire ignition and just as much oxygen in the air as in Australia. The Sahara has no bushfires because there is no fuel.
Reduce the fuel load. This reduces the intensity and size of the inevitable forest fires.
“In Australia, green policy has effectively locked and loaded our forests ready for the next inevitable wildfire.”
The “OK” for burn-off has to come from bureaucracy in Sydney somewhere.
Was talking to the local fire chief, he said the last few years a burn-off needs to be done “on the day” because the under-brush dries so quick in hot weather, and they have to have a windless day…
… but it can take a few days to get the OK… by then it has either rained, or become too dry and the wind has sprung up.
When we get another dry year, like 2019, which we undoubtedly will…
… we can expect severe bushfires…
… followed by manic pressitute ranting and raving about “climate change”
While working for the Australian Survey Office (defunct) in the late 1970s, the Surveyor General at the time warned survey teams surveying in the forrests around The Australian Capital Territory about the tactics used by the greens (and Parks and Wildlife sympathisers) to obstruct survey teams from carrying out land surveys for mapping. These included stopping maintenance of fire trails reducing access, placing heavy boulders in front of fire trail access points gates, sabotaging pad locks and using observers to inform on minimal scrub clearing to facilitate survey lines etc., The Surveyor General predicted large fires in the future. He was right!
That is what could;d be referred to as a blindingly obvious fact. But it is the essence and clear verification of this article.
In 1985 the concentration of CO2 in air at the MLO was about 345 ppm. In June the concentration of CO2 is now 427 ppm. The average annual temperature from 1983 to
2023 has been constant at about 55 deg. F. This plot falsifies the claim by the IPCC
that the increased amount of CO2 in air is causing global warming.
That is not a global temperature series; its for the U.S.
Healy touched on the CO2 fertilization effect as one cause for increased fuel load, but I think this may be the biggest factor behind the recent larger fires.
It’s frustrating that virtually no research is being conducted to measure fuel accumulation rates at varying CO2 levels. I believe the AGW promoters are doing everything they can to avoid researching or discussing the faster growth of plants for fear that people will realize there are also benefits from rising CO2 levels because of better crop yields.
Yes, CO2 does produce more fuel load but it also greens the fuel more, thus reducing the flammability of it.
That is the only thing saving my area from wildfire as we also can’t get permission for much-need burns.
Employing arsonists is a possible solution.
Burning of excessive load is only partial solution. Carbon captured by plants should be safely stored in soil as organic part. This has direct relation with soil fertility. By burning organics, soil is depleted of stored carbon and keeping infertile.
Problem here is how to skip middle dangerous step from living matter, through dry dead organic matter, to organics embedded into soil.
Jungle farmers rely on burning to restore soil fertility.
Cool burns have far less impact on soil carbon than major wild fires.
Same thing is happening in Australia. Hard lessons of the early to mid 1900s being unlearnt.
It is easier for governments to blame the demon CO2 that doing the hard work of actually managing forests.
With fewer regions available for logging, the forest managements skills are Newing lost.
The addition of CO2 is increasing forest productivity. That means the rate of fuel production is increasing while all the efforts to sequester carbon guarantees the dead wood is now sacred.
Rather than managed cold burns, forests are indeed primed for raging wild fires.
Hearing the media blaming climate change for the increasing number and severity of forest fires in California while ignoring the lack of forest management over the past few decades shows us how much the media is in the pocket of the Climate Change Faithful. After all, ‘The Narrative’ must not be questioned…even if it’s complete and utter balderdash.
An excellent presentation.
That means it will be suppressed and silenced and eliminated before anyone can use it for the benefit of humanity.
Ben Franklin observed that the purpose of newspapers (his included) was to sell newspapers.
They’re also very good for starting fires!
Fuel load is obviously important but in their report for 2022 the European Environment Agency, Mediterranean Region (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece), noted that
“96% of wildfires in the EU are caused by human actions”
Arson is only one of many “human actions.”
I don’t think they were implying that arson was the main cause, although it is ,of course, one of the causes.
“most media and official reports“
Some officials but almost no media types have ever walked in a “fuel-loaded” forest or a field of Cheatgrass. It is instructive to do so both before and after a fire. No need to ask me how I know – I’ve done both. I live in the Wildland-Urban Interface and have found old, charred fenceposts, I have not been able to determine the date of that fire. Likely before 1950. The Snag Canyon Fire (WA) of August 2014 burned across the slope just 2 miles north of me.
Canada just had a major fire that destroyed a portion of the town of Jasper. I know someone who was involved in investigating a significant beetle infestation that occurred 8-9 years ago and killed many trees in the area. He was in a meeting at the time (8 years ago) and personally heard the mayor of Jasper beg the federal government officials to do something to clear the dead trees, knowing the fire risk. He was told the feds had a “non intervention policy”. This year the resultant kindling went up and destroyed the town. The feds of course blamed climate change.
That is exactly what happened. Also, if you had ever gone on a wilderness tour, the guide would make sure to let everyone know that not even a twig should be removed because it is important to the ecosystem of living things.
One of the worst things that the Canadian Government could have done was to remove the Jasper Métis from the park in the 1920’s and relocate them to co-ops. They maintained the forests through burning and harvesting.
The forests have been so poorly mismanaged, especially since electing a self avowed activist prime minister and his fellow liberal activists.
Have to throw this out there because not burning isn’t just green policy. I grew up on a farm in a time we used to burn the fields after harvest. Residents had been agitating for years to stop the burning due to health risks from the smoke.They convinced our state capital to slowly phase out burning due to smoke induced problems to the point we no longer burn. I have no idea what the percentage of population has breathing issues such as COPD and Asthma but judging by the number of people I know with issues the number has to be fairly high. A heck of a lot of these people are not greens, just concerned about breathing without problems.
I bring this up because the same people will also be calling their representatives if we did controlled burns of the forest every year like we need to. The reality is while controlled burns are allowed they are very rare due to the precise conditions they need to meet prior to starting a burn.