Larry Caldwell wrote in message t...
In article ,
writes:

However, It's not a new idea and I have been pushing it for 10 years.
Everyone wants fire resistance in our forests but don't see the bigger
picture of drought resistance. They often go hand in hand and should
be linked in the treatments. A drought resistant forest should also be
fire resistant when treatments are complete.

I have been wondering how the general public is going to accept all the
smoke. If they want to minimize fuel loading they are going to have to
burn pretty frequently, particularly if there are some really flush years
that cause heavy fuel buildup, if there is a windstorm that puts a lot of
fuel on the ground, or an ice storm that does the same. They may be able
to burn some sites on a 20 year rotation, but I bet lots of sites require
a 10 year burn cycle. The cool fires they want are also the ones that
generate the most particulates and partial combustion products. If you
do a controlled burn on 10% of the forests in Oregon and Washington, you
would be smelling the smoke in Iowa!

I don't think they have come to the realization that burning that much
forest would pollute the airshed for the entire North American continent.

Total agreement here. The smoke issue has been quite on the front
burner, so to speak. The smoke from fires in the Lake Tahoe basin has
been bothering people for years. So much that they even proposed doing
some summer burning there until Los Alamos squelched that one.
Cool burns are the kind wanted by those who inacted the Sierra Nevada
Framework but that where it's fatal flaw has always been. How do you
burn small portions of a huge pile of kindling without losing the
whole thing? The public hates smoke when it's from wildfires but
complain loudly when it controlled burning in their "back yard". The
Regional Forester hasn't yet amended the Sierra Nevada Framework to
adjust the amount of fuels removal and to reduce the massive amounts
of burning that was mandated by the SNF.

Larry