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Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity

So if huge wildfires are not a modern phenomenon and have not been caused by built up fuels from past fire suppression activity, what has led to the apparent increase in wildfire activity in the Western United States over the past twenty years? Anthony Westerling, a researcher from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, co-authored a paper in July 2006 that systematically documented the extent of recent changes in wildfire activity for the first time. What they found was,

"...that large wildfire activity increased suddenly and dramatically in the mid-1980's, with higher large-wildfire frequency, longer wildfire durations, and longer wildfire seasons. The greatest increases occurred in mid-elevation, Northern Rockies forests, where land-use histories have relatively little effect on fire risks, and are strongly associated with increased spring and summer temperatures and an earlier spring snowmelt."

And in relation to the demand by some to increase logging activity in order to reduce wildfire risk the researchers found that,

"...while land use history is an important factor for wildfire risks in specific forest types (e.g. some ponderosa pine and mixed conifer forests), the broad-scale increase in wildfire frequency across the United States has been driven primarily by sensitivity of fire regimes to recent changes over a relatively large area.

The overall importance of climate in wildfire activity underscores the urgency of ecological restoration and fuels management to reduce wildfire hazards to human communities and to mitigate ecological impacts of climate change in forests that have undergone substantial alterations due to past land uses. At the same time, however, large increases in wildfire driven by increased temperatures and earlier spring snowmelts in forests where land use history had little impact on fire risks indicates that ecological restoration and fuels management alone will not be sufficient to reverse current wildfire trends."

1. The BLM reverses after lawmakers raise the issue of censorship over findings on logging after fires

Thursday, February 09, 2006

By MICHAEL MILSTEIN

The Oregonian

The federal government on Wednesday swiftly restored funding for an Oregon State University study of logging in burned forests after lawmakers said a freeze of the money could leave "the impression of scientific censorship."

The move came hours after OSU asked the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to reinstate the funding -- suspended last week -- and U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., said he would hold a congressional field hearing to review the research.

Walden, a leading lawmaker on forest issues who heads the House Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, is sponsoring a bill with Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., to speed actions such as logging and replanting on lands burned by wildfires.

The Bush administration supports the bill, which has brought national attention to the question of how to deal with lands swept by Western wildfires each summer.

OSU entered the spotlight last month when Daniel Donato, a College of Forestry graduate student, and five other scientists from the university and the U.S. Forest Service published results of a study of forests burned by the 2002 Biscuit fire in southwest Oregon. Their one-page report in the journal Science concluded that logging sets back recovery of burned forests.

The findings provoked swift and wide debate, and came under attack by professors in the College of Forestry who say logging and replanting speeds recovery of burned forests. Those professors, joined by three federal scientists, asked Science to halt publication of the report after it had survived a review by outside scientists.

The journal did not, but the appeal was viewed by some as a request to suppress controversial research.

OSU leaders took that point on more directly Wednesday. A joint statement by Sabah Randhawa, OSU provost, and Bill Boggess, president of the faculty senate, said the request to withhold the research was inappropriate.

The statement, sent to OSU faculty, congratulated Donato and his colleagues for reaching the pages of Science, a prestigious journal. It also reaffirmed "a culture of open query and expression, where diversity of opinions is valued and individuals are free to express themselves without the fear of censorship."

A three-year, $307,000 federal fire science grant paid for the OSU study. One year with about $93,000 of funding is left.

Last week the BLM escalated the furor surrounding the study when it suspended the funding to OSU. It said in part that research findings published in Science appeared to violate prohibitions on lobbying by referring to Walden's and Baird's bill.

Inclusion a mistake

The editor of Science said this week that the reference was left in by mistake and should have been removed.

The BLM said it acted only to enforce the terms of the research funding. However, another congressman on Walden's committee, Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., questioned whether the BLM stopped the funding because the study findings ran against the Bush administration's position on logging.

Walden said in an interview Wednesday that he was not bothered by the OSU study, which provides only a snapshot of a few years in the forest's recovery. He said his bill would promote and fund further research into how forests respond to wildfires and other damaging events.

"The more science and the more research, the better," he said.

"The fact that somebody may have a little different result than somebody else is not worrisome to me," Walden said. He said he and Baird "support academic freedom, and we support research of all kinds."

Politicizing the issue

The two congressmen told BLM Director Kathleen Clark in a letter Wednesday that they respect the need to ensure that research is not politicized, but that freezing the funds "may lead to the perception that the agency is only politicizing it further."

They said the move "may even leave the impression of scientific censorship by the BLM."

Besides the question of improper lobbying, BLM officials said OSU scientists had failed to consult the BLM before publishing their results and failed to include a disclaimer saying their conclusions did not represent government opinion.

OSU told the agency in a letter Wednesday that the university team had presented its results to a BLM official in December and explained it was submitting the findings for publication.

The university apologized for not including the disclaimer and said it would do so in the future.

The BLM, facing mounting pressure and criticism, responded within a few hours by restoring the funds and saying any costs during the suspension would be covered. BLM officials said "it appears there was a miscommunication" on the requirement to consult the agency before publication.

"All sides agree that the research and science should continue," said Chris Strebig, a BLM spokesman.

OSU's intentions

Luanne Lawrence, OSU's vice president for university advancement, said the university would have found a way to pay for finishing the research even if the BLM had not restored the money.

Walden said Wednesday he would hold a hearing in response to a request from Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., for lawmakers to learn more about the OSU study. OSU professors with competing views have testified at past hearings of his panel.

Environmental groups have criticized Walden's and Baird's bill for promoting aggressive logging after wildfires. The congressmen said the goal is to let land managers make decisions quickly so logging and replanting -- if they're going to be done -- happen promptly.

They said the OSU study may support the idea of more rapid action because it concluded that logging two years after the Biscuit fire damaged trees that were resprouting on their own and littered the ground with tinder.

Baird, in an interview, echoed concerns by some at OSU who criticized the study for taking its conclusions too far.

"I, frankly, am chagrined by the editorial standards on this because of what I see as going well beyond what the data allowed," said Baird, a former professor and chairman of the department of psychology at Pacific Lutheran University. "That to me is a matter of scientific integrity."

Baird has hammered the Bush administration, claiming it uses science for political gain and saying research should never be stifled for political reasons. But he said the OSU report did not state the limits of the study before extending its findings to other forests.

"You can't just say, 'Is a medication good or bad?' " he said. "You have to say, 'Is it good or bad administered to certain people at certain times under certain conditions?' The authors didn't say that."