Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Worst ahead for fires in West
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,...183125,00.html
Worst ahead for fires in West Experts: Complex factors at work By Theo Stein Denver Post Environment Writer Sunday, February 16, 2003 - The worst is yet to come for fire-prone areas of the Rocky Mountain West, the nation's top fire historian says. But forest thinning and restoration programs are helping Westerners rethink their uneasy relationship with one of nature's most spectacular and important ecologic processes. "I think it's probably working its way out," said Arizona State University professor Stephen Pyne at a symposium on the role of science in ecosystem management in the American West. "Lots of communities are already taking steps to reduce fire danger in their neighborhoods. We're watching the crest of this wave, and the next five or six years will see the worst of it. Then I think we'll increasingly see people start to view fire as a routine problem instead of a crisis." But like the other speakers on the panel at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, Pyne agreed that Westerners have a rough road in front of them. "We don't have one fire problem in the West; we have many fire problems in the West," said Pyne, a Fulbright scholar whose books have made him among the most respected experts on the relationship between people and wildfire. Climate change will bring warmer weather and frequent droughts to the already dry West, amplifying fire cycles and overwhelming federal and state programs designed to limit the danger to rural residents, said University of Idaho professor Penelope Morgan. While the cause of climate change is still debated in political circles, Morgan is among the majority of scientists who believe the fossil fuel economy is making it worse. "Human-induced climate change is very real and will have a major impact on fires," said Morgan, who pointed to one study that showed Canada has already experienced a dramatic surge in acreage burned during the past few decades, which have been the warmest in the past 1,000 years. The underlying reason the West burns so furiously is simple: Forests become choked with flammable debris because it's too cold or too dry for the dead wood and downed trees to rot. But fires themselves are the product of complex interaction among precipitation, forest growth, wind and human activities. National firefighting policies have largely eliminated the small- and medium-sized fires that used to clean out dead and downed wood during presettlement times, Morgan said. Those policies set the stage for the spectacular conflagrations that have hit the West roughly every two years since Yellowstone burned in 1988. "One of the most interesting paradoxes is once we suppress a fire, the next one often burns more intensely," Morgan added. Wildfires are only one contact point in the slow-motion collision between society's demands and ecological reality in the arid West, said Gary Machlis, a senior scientist with the National Park Service. But the intensity and frequency of big fires has made them a major political issue. Adapting to the environmental limits is a process that will bring disruption and dislocation, Machlis said. "We may be in one of those exceedingly brief periods in history which will influence future natural resource policies for a very long time," he added. University of Colorado historian Patricia Limerick said scientists can help society change gears by providing policymakers with a range of options that show the true costs and benefits of their actions. "When shifting paradigms, it's important to use the clutch," Limerick observed. One of the dangers confronting policymakers is the temptation to look for simplistic solutions to complicated problems, said University of Washington professor Jerry Franklin, who conducted pioneering ecologic studies following the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980 and the Yellowstone fires of 1988. For example, thinning to reduce fire danger may be smart policy for ponderosa pine systems, but not high-elevation forests. And he criticized a Bush administration plan to let loggers cut big trees in payment for thinning forests. "That's like saying you have to destroy the village in order to save it," Franklin said. "It's absolutely inappropriate." |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
Despite one of the worst fire seasons in the park in 50 years, it's been a benign summer in the West | alt.forestry | |||
Mexican ag. fires and health? | Texas | |||
Getting Ahead of the 'Hoppers | Texas | |||
Neglect feeds future fires | alt.forestry | |||
Napolitano's hints place forest care ahead of partisan issues | alt.forestry |