Forest Fires And Greenhouse Gas Emissions - We Fail The Forest When We Oppose All Harvest

One of the ways the pop-environmental movement is most successful at assuring plenty of greenhouse gasses are emitted to the atmosphere is to hinder attempts to treat forests for forest health.  The successes go beyond increased greenhouse gas emissions.  In the United States and Canada, at least, decades of neglect in terms of treating for fire reduction have created a situation where forest wild fires burn so hot they vaporize streams, and everything living in them and, actually smelt things like mercury from the ground, sending it into the airstreams to settle in lakes, streams, bogs and lungs.

Modern forest fires tend to be more intense than most were in historic times

Forest fires are, of course, nothing new in North America.  American Indians routinely burned forests, plains and anything else that could be burned to increase berry yields, attract tasty critters like deer, and other game animals, burn out enemies, create clearings and for a variety of other reasons.  When Isaac Stevens arrived in Washington Territory in 1853 fresh off a triple threat trip on which he surveyed routes for a potential transcontinental railroad, signed treaties with Indian tribes and, on arrival took office as first Governor of the territory one of his first observations was to the effect that the whole region seemed to be on fire.

But wildfires, into the early years of the 20^th Century, were generally different from wildfires today because the forest was different.  Today’s forests, especially in the American and Canadian intermountain west, are far more densely populated with trees, than they were when the pioneers first arrived on the scene.  Even more important, the fuel loads at forest floor level and up are immensely greater than they were 100 years ago so fires are much more prone to climb the fuel ladder from forest floor to the crowns of the trees and erupt into conflagrations that leap from tree to trees and are very difficult to suppress.

Isaac Stevens meets with the "Nez Perces" in 1852 or '53.  Note the state of the forest in terms of fuel loads.  The Stevens expedition included an artist charged with accurately rendering a visual record of the trip.

The modern forest is overloaded with fuel stock and too many trees making the forest a prime candidate for catestrophic fire

We know 100 + years of fire suppression is the big reason we have larger and more destructive wildfires.  That is not a reason to ignore the forest in the hopes things will go back to normal if we just bury our heads in the sand, or ashes, long enough.  We have the technology to restore the forests to more historic conditions but, thanks to the pop-environmental movement, we all too often lack the will to accomplish the task; the movement would rather see a fire unnecessarily burn an old growth tree than see a well managed thinning regimen reduce the intensity of a fire to the level where larger trees can withstand the fire event. 

The problem with large wildfires is they not only put the forest at risk, they emit massive amounts of pollutants into the air.  A single wildfire can emit many times the greenhouse gasses, particulates and other pollutants many entire industry sectors emit in entire years.

Dr. Thomas Bonnicksen is one of the world’s leading experts on forests and forest health.  In recent years he has developed a model for assessing the consequences of forest fires called, simply enough, the Forest Carbon and Emissions Model.

In 2009 Bonnicksen published the third in a series of examinations of emissions resulting from forest fires in California titled Impacts of California Wildfires On Climate And Forests:  A Study of Seven Years of Wildfires (2001 – 2007).

On summarizing the findings of his work Bonnicksen said, “The wildfire crisis is becoming more serious each year. Fires are getting bigger, more destructive, and more expensive. In 2001, California wildfires burned one-half million acres. In 2007, 1.1 million acres burned, and an estimated 1.4 million acres burned in 2008 destroying 1,000 homes. This was the most destructive fire season in the state’s history and 2009 could be worse.”

Discussing the emissions resulting from the fires Bonnicksen commented, “From 2001 to 2007, fires burned more than 4 million acres and released an estimated 277 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from combustion and the post-fire decay of dead trees. That is an average of 68 tons per acre. These wildfires also kill wildlife, pollute the air and water, and strip soil from hillsides. The greenhouse gases they emit are wiping out much of what is being achieved to reduce emissions from fossil fuels to battle global warming.”

Putting the impacts of fires in context, Bonnicksen pointed out, “The emissions from only the seven years of wildfires documented in this study are equivalent to adding an estimated 50 million more cars onto California’s highways for one year, each spewing tons of greenhouse gases. Stated another way, this means all 14 million cars in California would have to be locked in a garage for three and one-half years to make up for the global warming impact of these wildfires.”

Much of the damage done by unnecessarily intense forest fires in California and, across the rest of the United States and Canada can be reduced by a rational and well managed treatment program aimed at enhancing the health of the North American forests.

Well meaning, but misguided, demands that forests be left to their own devices only result in more destruction of the forest resource, huge amounts of unnecessary pollution and the waste of vast amounts of time and money better spent on ends with more likelihood of success.