Musings on Forest Fires, Fuel Load, Dr. Ehrlich and the CO2Fertilization Effect Upon U. S. Forests
18 hours ago Guest Blogger 41 Comments
Don Healy, July 2023
In the past two decades we have witnessed a upturn in the number of acres of forest lands burned in the United States. As shown in the graph below compiled by the National Interagency Fire Center, the years from 1958 to 1998 marked a consistently lower incidence of forest fires, averaging about 4 million acres burned per year. In the years since 1998 the number of acres burned has increased with two years equaling or exceeding 10 million acres. Aside from the catastrophic loss of timber resources, homes, structures and in some cases entire towns, the resultant smoke from these fires has created very hazardous air quality issues over broad swathes of the American West. In an ominous start to the 2023 fire season, fires in Eastern Canada have been so extensive as to impact much of the Eastern U.S. with dangerous air quality. There has been much handwringing, but thus far little motivation to seriously address this problem. The time has come to act, but the first step is to identify the root of the problem. Please take a moment to study the graph below.
Fig. 1
You will notice that during the years from 1926 to about 1956 forest fires were a much bigger issue virtually all years, showing more acres burned in all, with two years experiencing more than 5 times greater areas than the worst recent year. To put this in perspective, earlier in our history dense forests were viewed as an impediment to settlement and development in much of the west and there was little concern if vast acreages were burned so long as humans and settlements weren’t impacted. To many of our earlier citizens periods of heavy smoke commonly prevalent were viewed as “the price of progress”. It wasn’t until the mid-1930s that the recently formed U.S. Forest Service became active in suppressing forest fires.
What is the common denominator between the numbers on the right side of the chart versus those on the left side, separated by the relatively benign period between 1956 and 1998? As my forestry professor told us during Forest Protection class in 1965, the three most important factors in preventing forest fires were “fuel load, fuel load and fuel load, in that order”. Prior to the 1950s, extending back millennia, fuel loads in the western U.S. were massive. The anecdotal records from the early Spanish and British explorations of the Pacific Northwest indicate dense smoke from massive forest fires extending well out into the Pacific, and a record of Mark Twain’s visit to Tacoma Washington, in 1895 describes the city fathers apologizing to Mr. Twain for the heavy forest fire smoke that obscured the view of the surrounding mountains. The reality is that the period from the early 1950s to just a few years ago was probably a “goldilocks” event, one of the few periods when large fires and heavy smoke were not a common experience.
In conversations with many fellow citizens, it is my perception that most are quite convinced that the United States has less forested area and less wood volume currently than it did decades ago. However, the U.S. Forest Service takes a complete inventory of all United States forest resources on all ownerships on a regular basis that belie that notion.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/07/10/musings-on-forest-fires-fuel-load-dr-ehrlich-and-the-co2fertilization-effect-upon-u-s-forests/
