California is Burning (Again)

[supermodel159]

Got a link to that smoke map? Bad again last night and this morning. Probably same today and tomorrow. Incoming Wx system should help.

Red flag warnings from the frontal south winds? This system will not help.

[bodywhomper]

Mike, I'm pulling my air quality maps from yubanet

[bodywhomper]

You hint at this, but planning projects is one thing, funding projects is quite another. Currently the money to pay for suppression comes from federal agencies' programmed money ('hard' dollars), and when the programmed fire funds run out, they have to take money out of the other areas - including forest health treatments and recreations, etc. - to pay for fire. And suppression costs keep going up annually in this era of common megafires, so the federal agencies have had to postpone and cancel forest health projects to pay for suppression.

quoting this to point out that sierra nevada conservancy is a State grant funding agency.

[Meadow Skipper]

quoting this to point out that sierra nevada conservancy is a State grant funding agency.

I saw that, which is why I specified fed agencies in my reply. The King fire is on fed land. Not too many projects on fed land get funded with state money grants.

[bodywhomper]

^^ i hear ya. some fed agencies cannot fund wildfire mitigation on fed lands, too.

[AKbruin]

Are there any decent smoke forecasts for this weekend? I might need to head down to Mammoth to get away, which sucks because I love Fall in Tahoe.

A couple shots from 431 and Incline yesterday:

[bodywhomper]

Got a link to that smoke map? Bad again last night and this morning. Probably same today and tomorrow. Incoming Wx system should help.

http://www.airnow.gov/index.cfm?acti...yid=327#tabs-1

eta: good current data here: http://mobile.arb.ca.gov/breathewell/CityList.aspx

[teledad]

I saw that, which is why I specified fed agencies in my reply. The King fire is on fed land. Not too many projects on fed land get funded with state money grants.

Not just federal. There's a lot of private land back there as well (CalFire responsibility).

http://www.firepreventionfee.org/sraviewer.php

[Meadow Skipper]

Not just federal. There's a lot of private land back there as well (CalFire responsibility).

http://www.firepreventionfee.org/sraviewer.php

Well yeah, I should have said that far and away the bulk of the land involved in the King fire - and needing mitigation and health treatments - is federal. I was talking about funding forest health and mitigation on national forests. There are scattered inholdings, but the ratio of landowner acreage is pretty lopsided.

[frorider]

Smoke has been pretty much a non issue in SW Lake Tahoe basin (Meyers, Freel Pk and west) since fire started a week ago. A couple of afternoon and morning periods with enough smoke to make you not want to recreate outside. Some of those online smoke pattern maps have had no connection to reality.

[bodywhomper]

what adds some interesting complexity is that many of the watersheds in the western sierra include reservoirs, with the land of the impounded water often owned by local water agencies. Those agencies work within some sort of coordination capacity with USFS. Many of those agencies have been publicly discussing forest health in their watershed, speaking the same language as that Sierra NV Conservancy report. The current water bond on the state ballet includes $$ for "watershed" management. Also, the sierra nv conservancy often gives grants related to water and water issues.

the current winds that are resulting in red-flag warnings in the northern sierra have given a reprieve in my neck of the woods from the smoke. finally!

[old goat]

Is it remotely possible to remove or control-burn brush in any significant percentage of California's (or any other state's) forests? I understand getting rid of the ladder fuels on the forest edges near civilization, which will keep low intensity fires from reaching the houses, but when a big crown fire gets going doesn't it just spread from crown to crown, brush or no brush? While it would be lovely to return the forest to it's pre Columbian state--old growth with widely spaced trees (covered wagons used to be able to pass between them) with a floor of grass that stays green all summer--it seems like we've passed a point of no return. Too much brush and small trees to remove, except by big fires that kill all the trees, and too many houses in the way. Just asking--I don't claim to know.

Anyone been up Mt Lola way? Looking at the NWS prediction looks like the smoke alert doesn't go that far north. I was thinking of hiking up there tomorrow (oops, looks like I mean later today.) Don't know why I'm worried about the smoke--between 4 or 5 summers working in the coal-handling department of a steel mill without any dust protection (our job was to turn coal into coal dust and burn it in the coke ovens) and decades of wood working without dust collection or a respirator, my lungs are already fucked.

[Meadow Skipper]

Is it remotely possible to remove or control-burn brush in any significant percentage of California's (or any other state's) forests? I understand getting rid of the ladder fuels on the forest edges near civilization, which will keep low intensity fires from reaching the houses, but when a big crown fire gets going doesn't it just spread from crown to crown, brush or no brush? While it would be lovely to return the forest to it's pre Columbian state--old growth with widely spaced trees (covered wagons used to be able to pass between them) with a floor of grass that stays green all summer--it seems like we've passed a point of no return. Too much brush and small trees to remove, except by big fires that kill all the trees, and too many houses in the way. Just asking--I don't claim to know.

You're on to one of the major problems facing California (and other) forests. The fuel (brush and little reproduction trees) accumulation is so thick in some places that you can't really burn it in place without damaging the large trees that you want to save. But it can be cut, piled, and burned...for a lot of $$$, which doesn't seem to exist.

Crown fires need ground fuel and ladder fuel to make a sustained run. You can get flares up without those, but it won't go far without them.

But I think you're right in that we've reached a point of no return in some areas - there isn't the $$$ or political/social will to treat forests to return them to a pre-Columbian state. That, and some forests (like spruce, lodgepole, and chaparral) will always burn catastrophically - they aren't the type for those legendary mellow underburns. In fact, those legendary, mellow underburns are pretty much common only in Ponderosa/Jeffrey forests and some open savannah-types like piñon/juniper that gets burned on a fairly regular basis. Aspen stands, Douglas-fir stands, and spruce forests are generally the result of stand-replacement fires or some similar wide=spread disturbance. (I'm pre coffee right now, so I may be forgetting some critical issues/forest types)

Dr. Stepen Pyne, the eminent fire social scientist (very worth reading if you're interested) has been saying that we aren't going to "win the war" with fire, but that we're going to have to learn how to live with it. I think he's probably right.

[LightRanger]

^^^ Good insight.

Just saw this linked on yubanet:

[char]

You're on to one of the major problems facing California (and other) forests. The fuel (brush and little reproduction trees) accumulation is so thick in some places that you can't really burn it in place without damaging the large trees that you want to save. But it can be cut, piled, and burned...for a lot of $$$, which doesn't seem to exist.

Crown fires need ground fuel and ladder fuel to make a sustained run. You can get flares up without those, but it won't go far without them.

But I think you're right in that we've reached a point of no return in some areas - there isn't the $$$ or political/social will to treat forests to return them to a pre-Columbian state. That, and some forests (like spruce, lodgepole, and chaparral) will always burn catastrophically - they aren't the type for those legendary mellow underburns. In fact, those legendary, mellow underburns are pretty much common only in Ponderosa/Jeffrey forests and some open savannah-types like piñon/juniper that gets burned on a fairly regular basis. Aspen stands, Douglas-fir stands, and spruce forests are generally the result of stand-replacement fires or some similar wide=spread disturbance. (I'm pre coffee right now, so I may be forgetting some critical issues/forest types)

Dr. Stepen Pyne, the eminent fire social scientist (very worth reading if you're interested) has been saying that we aren't going to "win the war" with fire, but that we're going to have to learn how to live with it. I think he's probably right.

This is why I don't understand why we continue to put fires out in Wilderness Areas. Not only should these places be left alone, there is no way to treat them, and every year of firefighting there just makes the problem worse. So why in the hell are high risk operations to insert firefighters still occurring? Just enough political will to put out the big bad fire, but not enough to actually address the problems? And further, all that is occurring is pushing the catastrophic fire off to another day anyways despite the millions spent to put fires out. I understands that some wilderness is small, or watersheds are threatened, but it doesn't matter, some day it will burn and we are just making it worse.

Edit- I know this is changing in lots of places and California is an entirely different ball game wrt people, WUI and politics. Still gets me fired up though.

[DasBlunt]

This is why I don't understand why we continue to put fires out in Wilderness Areas. Not only should these places be left alone, there is no way to treat them, and every year of firefighting there just makes the problem worse. So why in the hell are high risk operations to insert firefighters still occurring? Just enough political will to put out the big bad fire, but not enough to actually address the problems? And further, all that is occurring is pushing the catastrophic fire off to another day anyways despite the millions spent to put fires out. I understands that some wilderness is small, or watersheds are threatened, but it doesn't matter, some day it will burn and we are just making it worse.

Edit- I know this is changing in lots of places and California is an entirely different ball game wrt people, WUI and politics. Still gets me fired up though.

The video above is the reason.

[char]

The video above is the reason.

King fire is in a wilderness area?

[frorider]

http://m.onearth.org/article/forest-...olicy-reversal

So does this mean, I asked him, that the keystone of wildfire science and policy for nearly two decades is a first casualty of global warming?

"I would agree with that," Hubbard said. "And this is not a policy shift because we thought we were headed in the wrong direction. It is a financial shift."

But tight budgets and a hot climate aren’t going away anytime soon. So the Forest Service’s new policy continues to shift the burden of global warming to future generations: their forest fires will be bigger and more costly because we refused to confront the new realities facing us now.

[strawjack]

Alpine has their snowmaking guns lined up to..umm...put the fire out if it comes near.

[char]

http://m.onearth.org/article/forest-...olicy-reversal

They did this in 2012 as well.

[that dude who did that thing]

You're on to one of the major problems facing California (and other) forests. The fuel (brush and little reproduction trees) accumulation is so thick in some places that you can't really burn it in place without damaging the large trees that you want to save. But it can be cut, piled, and burned...for a lot of $$$, which doesn't seem to exist.

Crown fires need ground fuel and ladder fuel to make a sustained run. You can get flares up without those, but it won't go far without them.

But I think you're right in that we've reached a point of no return in some areas - there isn't the $$$ or political/social will to treat forests to return them to a pre-Columbian state. That, and some forests (like spruce, lodgepole, and chaparral) will always burn catastrophically - they aren't the type for those legendary mellow underburns. In fact, those legendary, mellow underburns are pretty much common only in Ponderosa/Jeffrey forests and some open savannah-types like piñon/juniper that gets burned on a fairly regular basis. Aspen stands, Douglas-fir stands, and spruce forests are generally the result of stand-replacement fires or some similar wide=spread disturbance. (I'm pre coffee right now, so I may be forgetting some critical issues/forest types)

Dr. Stepen Pyne, the eminent fire social scientist (very worth reading if you're interested) has been saying that we aren't going to "win the war" with fire, but that we're going to have to learn how to live with it. I think he's probably right.

That's very well-said/well-written as an explanation of the problem.

I spend a lot of time with people in the forest business, both commercial foresters and USDA Forest Service employees. Also spend a lot of time with folks committed to natural resource conservation. They all recognize the problem, how serious it is, how much it needs to be solved, how much could be gained by solving, and how politically impossible it is to solve it.

If we want to save the western forests in something like their current state, we need a truly massive federal and state program with huge resources to do so. This could be a new Works Progress Administration type effort, that could put millions of people to work. In doing it, we could find new products, new markets, new ways of living with and in our forests. But it would take the kind of money that is usually only spent on the DOD and elections.

The only thing I'd correct is the notion that the pre-columbian forest consisted largely of climax stage groves of large, widely spaced trees. There was certianly a lot of that, but a healthy forest, one not messed with too badly by man, exists in all stages simultaneously. It' snot that a paticular forest "should be" predominantly Ponderosa rather than Doug Fir. In the intermountain west, different species will often follow each other in different forest stages. Even a healthy forest sees an occasional hard burn, as well as other events that can fundamentally alter that stretch of forest.

But we won't see the kind of effort it will take to remediate 100s of millions of acres of western forestlands. So instead, we'll see massive fires, and in 50-100 years we will have very few forests where the typical tree is more than 50 years old. A few hundred billion dollars a year, is a fair estimate of what it will take to avoid this outcome. I don't see that happening in our political climate.

[east or bust]

Alpine has their snowmaking guns lined up to..umm...put the fire out if it comes near.

Wait, really?

[bodywhomper]

maybe we just need another gold/silver rush in the sierra w/ massive deforestation; essentially another "refresh".

[Meadow Skipper]

That's very well-said/well-written as an explanation of the problem....

...The only thing I'd correct is the notion that the pre-columbian forest consisted largely of climax stage groves of large, widely spaced trees. There was certianly a lot of that, but a healthy forest, one not messed with too badly by man, exists in all stages simultaneously. It' snot that a paticular forest "should be" predominantly Ponderosa rather than Doug Fir. In the intermountain west, different species will often follow each other in different forest stages. Even a healthy forest sees an occasional hard burn, as well as other events that can fundamentally alter that stretch of forest...

I don't disagree. When I wrote that I was headed out the door for work, and didn't have the time to go into the long rant that the topic usually induces in me. Lucky for all.

[ill-advised strategy]

Wait, really?

I was part of something like that in Sun Valley once. What was probably most effective was being able to stage and maintain big portable tanks all over the hill and run quick turnarounds with type 1 helicopters.