Seeking expert opinion: thinning vs prescribed burns

[profdant139]

Almost all of us on this forum are avid users of the national forests. Some of us favor extensive logging. Some of us don't want the forest altered in any way. I understand both of those positions.

My in-between view (which is worth precisely nothing) is that in the real world, there is a significant danger of catastrophic fire, especially in an era of bark beetle infestation and global warming. (I know that opinions differ as to the cause of warming, but there is no factual doubt that things are warming up, for some reason.)

So between clearcutting and doing nothing, there is (of course) a middle ground, and that is what the national forest rangers are already doing, more or less. Instead of preventing all fires (which eventually creates an unsustainable fuel load), they are using prescribed burns and thinning.

We have visited several state demonstration forests managed by Cal Fire, and they are mostly controlled with thinning, rather than prescribed burns. Those forests look very healthy, to my non-expert eyes.

The national parks mostly use prescribed burns. That seems to work ok, but a lot of timber goes up in smoke, and there are risks of wildfire, and there are areas of the parks that don't get burned very often, leading to fuel overloads. Many forests in the national parks look crowded and unhealthy, in my non-expert opinion. (Example: the forests along Tioga Road in Yosemite, packed with weedy and stunted conifers.)

So (finally) this is my question -- if you are an expert on forest management, which method do you favor, and why? Or is this a "false dichotomy," which is not an either/or question that depends on the circumstances?

If you are not an expert, feel free to express your feelings. But I am really hoping to learn something from our members who actually know something about timber management on public lands.

I know what you are thinking -- what difference will this civil exchange of ideas make? Here is my answer -- almost every forest management program is open to public comment. If we (the collective "we") learn something from this discussion, it will enable us to participate more meaningfully in the public comment process; and maybe we will thus have a greater impact on the decision-makers than if we were just expressing our individual wishes.

Thanks for reading this long posting (sorry about that!), and I am looking forward to some well-reasoned analysis!

[ppine]

time2roll wrote:
Only way to get it right is to just stop managing and accept what nature brings.
JMHO

Take a good look at Yosemite. It has been protected for 150 years. The forests in the Park are in the worst shape of any place in the western US. Mile after mile of standing dead. Fire suppression and the exclusion of logging has created a tangled mess and many recent large scale fires.

[ppine]

Tom/Barb,
I studied forestry at UW. The West Side is definitely different than other drier forest types in eastern WA and other part so of the western US. Large fires on the West Side occur infrequently, but can cover a lot of acreage due to the accumulation of very large amounts of organic matter on the forest floor. In old growth forests, it is usually not possible to travel through them except by walking on fallen dead trees.

Over 90% of the nutrients in a tree are in the foliage. Decaying organic matter adds little in the way of primary and secondary nutrients to the soil profile. Decompostion ties up primary nutrients especially N making it unavailable to the plants through nitrification.

Your idealized view of Douglas fir/western hemlock West Side forest is overstocked with a large amount of organic matter on the forest floor. It is not what a managed stand should look like.

[dieseltruckdriv]

Well, living very close to the very first timber sale in national forest history, I have to say that proper management is possible, and it is not as negative as some would have people believe.

An article from a state university.
Anyone who has been to the Black Hills might find it hard to believe that nearly the entire forest has been logged, but but it has, responsibly.

The news releases some organizations put out would try to convince people that logging means clear cutting, but that isn't normally the case.

[Naio]

What the heck? If that's the only fire you know about west of the Cascades, then I don't feel that this can be a productive conversation.

[Tom_Barb]

Naio wrote:
I do see a lot of major fires in the western pnw, where the old growth forest looks like that. I see the fires in the young stands, which is 95% of the coastal forest now.

That is the point.

There has been one major fire west of the cascade range that burned off a bunch of land near Newhalem 3 years ago, but it was terrible dry. and the fire burned in very steep terrain. I know of no other.

East of the mountains OH Hell yes! every year.

[Naio]

I do see a lot of major fires in the western pnw, where the old growth forest looks like that. I see the fires in the young stands, which is 95% of the coastal forest now.

That is the point.

[Tom_Barb]

Naio wrote:
This is what PNW forests are supposed to look like.

Notice all the downed wood that is rotting to create new soil. Leaving most of it to rot, with occasional fire that liberates other nutrients and, as someone said allows different seeds to germinate, is what is required. Note also the large old trees (and their thick layer of ancient lichen) that trap moisture.

Removing wood in any form, whether clearcutting or thinning, destroys the soil. This can be to a greater or lesser extent depending on what equipment is used, but the fact is you are taking a lot of carbon out of the system and where is that going to be replaced from?

We got into the fire suppression game because people thought that if they suppressed all the fires, then they could remove the wood themselves and use it for lumber. That has not worked out. It has led to billions of acres of forests that are fire prone just because they are young.

Young forests are made of kindling. Trees with thin trunks, lots of brush, a forest floor that is missing its foot-deep layer of damp rotting wood, a canopy that is too thin to retain the moisture and shade the ground.

I don't know what the solution is. I suppose we could desalinate a lot of ocean water and hose down the forests every couple weeks to replicate the water retention that old growth parent trees would have provided. That would be insanely expensive and probably have some kind of negative effect on the oceans.

Little known fact: When clear cutting is done a certain amount of slash must be left on the ground to protect from erosion. And the law requires the area be replanted with in 4 years.

[agesilaus]

Supposedly the original forests on the continent were such that settlers could drive their teams and wagons easily in between trees. Of course those trees were behemoths. And I've read that uncut tropical rain forests are somewhat similar.

On the east coast you can see a small patch of original forest at Joyce Kilmer park near the GSMNP. It's south of the NP. It is steep landscape which explains the tree's survival. It has 5 and 6 ft diameter trees tho. Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest

[Tom_Barb]

Naio wrote:
This is what PNW forests are supposed to look like. .

Actually only in the rain forest of the coastal reason. that moss and vine maple requires tons of rain. Thus you don't see major fires in that area.

[Tom_Barb]

Wild out of control forest fires can be prevented by proper forest management practices.
Thinning alone will not do it. when you thin and leave the slash, you invite fire to clean up for you.
When you thin out trees, you must also limb the standing trees so that any fire on the forest floor can not catch the forest canopy and destroy the standing trees, to finish the job control burns clean up the slash, leaving no fuel to burn.
It requires the complete job be done, But DNR is not funded to do all that is required.

[Naio]

This is what PNW forests are supposed to look like.

Notice all the downed wood that is rotting to create new soil. Leaving most of it to rot, with occasional fire that liberates other nutrients and, as someone said allows different seeds to germinate, is what is required. Note also the large old trees (and their thick layer of ancient lichen) that trap moisture.

Removing wood in any form, whether clearcutting or thinning, destroys the soil. This can be to a greater or lesser extent depending on what equipment is used, but the fact is you are taking a lot of carbon out of the system and where is that going to be replaced from?

We got into the fire suppression game because people thought that if they suppressed all the fires, then they could remove the wood themselves and use it for lumber. That has not worked out. It has led to billions of acres of forests that are fire prone just because they are young.

Young forests are made of kindling. Trees with thin trunks, lots of brush, a forest floor that is missing its foot-deep layer of damp rotting wood, a canopy that is too thin to retain the moisture and shade the ground.

I don't know what the solution is. I suppose we could desalinate a lot of ocean water and hose down the forests every couple weeks to replicate the water retention that old growth parent trees would have provided. That would be insanely expensive and probably have some kind of negative effect on the oceans.

[time2roll]

Only way to get it right is to just stop managing and accept what nature brings.
JMHO

[Naio]

In the PNW forests I worked in, thinning was something logging companies paid the national forest for the right to do. Thinning was just another logging contract.

This meant that the forest managers were under a lot of pressure to provide thinning contracts, which would be income for the forest service.

It also meant that the thinning was done by companies who didn't have any particular interest in conservation, and were motivated by profit.

It's true that an old growth forests the trees rarely burn, just the underbrush. And in young forests the trees burn.

How to get from one to another is difficult. For one thing, the logging practices of the past couple hundred years have destroyed the soil, and most of it has washed away. When replanting, it is difficult to even find a pocket of soil to put each tree in.

It's interesting that you find the thinned forests pleasant to walk in. What sort of ecosystem did you grow up in? Are they more like the forests where you grew up? I find them extremely creepy and I basically feel like I'm walking in a Walmart. Widely separated young trees are not something that occurs in nature in the PNW.

[ppine]

IN order to get to the right density of stocking in western forests, it will require logging and thinning of green trees. People need to get over this idea that we can simply "clean up the dead trees and clear out the understory." That leaves the fundamental problem which is too many live trees per acre. Logging is required first before prescribed fire can be safely used.

[Tom_Barb]

steelhunter wrote:

profdant139 wrote:
tom and barb and steelhunter, if you both are logging professionals, do you have specific opinions about thinning versus prescribed burns?

To put it another way, what's past is past -- clearly, total fire prevention did not work. And clear-cutting does prevent fires, but it is a pretty extreme remedy. So that is why I am trying to evaluate the various middle-ground solutions. I am guessing that the answer is not so simple.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

Both methods have a place in managing timber areas. It depends on a variety of factors.

With that I'll agree, there are many tools in the forest management tool box than just one thing or two.
In the project we did in the Okanogan national forest in the 70s and 80s we thinned where needed, limbed up as required, and did the control burns to clear all slash off the forest floor.

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