11/14/2009 10:00:00 PM REPORT: When the smoke clears, forest land finds balance
Joanna Dodder/ The Daily Courier Ecological Restoration Institute Forester Doc Smith analyzes a core sample from a ponderosa pine tree living near Marapai Road south of Prescott. It shows tighter tree rings in recent decades as the forest became more crowded with trees.
Joanna Dodder/ The Daily Courier At left, Ecological Restoration Institute Ecologist David Huffman shows "Walk in the Woods" participants how fire rings stopped in 1869 on a fire-scarred piece of tree from the Arizona Strip. He said heavy livestock grazing started at that time, taking away grass that carried ground fires.
Alan Hague had heard people worry about how prescribed burns would hurt the landscape.
Then he gained first-hand experience when Prescott National Forest officials ignited the 500-acre Bean Peaks burn near his Groom Creek cabin in September.
"The fears that burns annihilate everything - that just wasn't true," Hague told about 35 citizens standing in the burn area during a public "Walk in the Woods" tour this past Monday south of Prescott.
The Ecological Restoration Institute (ERI) at Northern Arizona University and Prescott National Forest officials led the tour, which showed the public how the forest south of Prescott looks different after treatments such as timber sales and prescribed burns.
Groom Creek Fire Chief Todd Bentley asked Hague to describe his experience with the Bean Peaks burn.
Hague said he already is seeing more wildlife passing by his home such as deer and javelina, although he wasn't thrilled that the javelina also "ate his flowers on the way through."
Now that the surrounding national forest is safer, the Groom Creek Fire District is working with the national Firewise program to help residents thin out vegetation in their yards, Bentley said.
***
ERI and forest officials frequently mentioned the need for fire in ongoing efforts to restore forests to more natural conditions, after decades of overgrazing and wildfire suppression in the 1900s.
"Burning is an essential part of these ecosystems, and we really haven't finished the ecosystem restoration job until we burn these areas," said Jody Stevens, the forest health team leader for the Prescott National Forest.
"Ponderosa pines are just uniquely genetically programmed to survive and thrive in low-intensity fires," said Doc Smith, senior program coordinator at ERI. He has a master's in forestry from NAU.
Before European-American settlement, the Prescott Basin contained only about 15-25 trees per acre and the forest burned every 2-15 years, Smith said.
"The reason these forests were so open was because of frequent fires," Smith said.
At the tour's first stop in Groom Creek, Forester Kurt Wetzstein of the Prescott National Forest described how a Forest Service timber sale reduced the number of pine trees in the area from about 200 per acre to 35 per acre in 2005-06, then a year later the agency conducted a prescribed burn.
"Previously, it was a continuously vertical line of fuels," he said. That can produce a dangerous crown fire that destroys too many trees and is hard to stop.
While maybe 12-25 vegetation species once inhabited the area, it now has about 90-120 species after a good ground fire, Smith said.
"And they're a lot more vigorous," he said.
Most of the trees in this particular area appeared after the early mining industry clear-cut the area in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Wetzstein said.
"These trees are all about the same age so in about 100-150 years, they're all going to die," he said.
So he was excited to see a small sapling coming up.
Once an area is restored, the Forest Service ideally needs to burn again in 3-7 years, Wetzstein said in response to a question.
***
At the second stop along Marapai Road, the forest on one side of the road looked starkly different because the Forest Service thinned out vegetation there. One side averaged 80 trees per acre with an average tree size of 16.5 inches in diameter, while the other side averaged 240 with an average tree diameter of 8.5 inches.
Smith drilled into a tree in the untreated area and pulled out a core sample. The rings on the sample were tighter in more recent decades, indicating the tree grew slower and slower as the forest became more crowded, Smith said.
ERI Ecologist David Huffman brought along chunks of other trees from the Arizona Strip and the Prescott National Forest. He showed everyone how the fire rings on the Arizona Strip sample came to a complete halt in 1869 when livestock started grazing there, eating up the grass that once carried ground fires.
Several million acres of forest remain at risk because they haven't been thinned out, ERI Forester Bruce Greco said.
"We know how to restore forest ecosystems," he said.
He asked if the public was ready to accept fire or lose their landscapes.
"What's the tradeoff?" he asked. "Are we willing to accept some smoke?
"What are we going to leave for the generations to come?"
Groups across Arizona now are starting to work on landscape-sized thinning projects, such as the Four Forests Restoration Initiative that is planning how to restore 2.4 million acres, Greco said.
Prescott National Forest officials are getting ready to start work on a plan to restore 55,000 acres of the Prescott Basin that hasn't been treated yet, Stevens added.
Reader Comments
Posted: Thursday, November 19, 2009
Article comment by:
STOP THE SMOKE
Prescribed burn smoke is making my family sick. It is killing my grandchildren & no one will do anything to stop it.
Posted: Monday, November 16, 2009
Article comment by:
breathe easier
"just what are the "downsides" to prescribed burns"
Oh, I don't know... little things like respiratory distress. Lemme sit on your chest for 12 hours and you'll get the idea.
Posted: Monday, November 16, 2009
Article comment by:
No name provided
I AGREE GO, TEAM. LETS HEAR THE DOWNSIDE. ALSO, THE MAN WHO CHOOSES TO LIVE IN GROOM CREEK SHOULD NOT PLANT FLOWERS. IF YOU LIVE IN AN AREA THAT SUPPORTS WILDLIFE THEN IT IS A NO BRAINER TO NOT PLANT FLOWERS.
Posted: Monday, November 16, 2009
Article comment by:
T-Bone
the point here being there are virtually no cons from a natural perspective. The forest needs the burns to thrive, period. this is billions of years of living with the natural cycle of fires. where european civilization has only interrupted these cycles within the past 200 yrs.
the only con is to human habitants and their increasingly elaborate housing that is built in and around the forest.
if you want to make this into a pro/con debate, it should be in relation to prescribed burns for human settlements, this isn't exactly a partisan issue in terms of forest health, these are purely facts...
Posted: Monday, November 16, 2009
Article comment by:
Go, Team!
Hmm. Methinks Curious may have a vested interest in the prescribed burns and/or this newspaper. Look, I seldom even check back to read responses to my rare posts; it's a fluke I did so today. I have neither the time nor the inclination to fulfill the Courier's research and writing obligations, in this forum or otherwise, but I'll offer anyone with burning curiosity a few leads. Try a quick perusal of past article comments for a plethora of downsides and objecting voices. A decent Internet search will reveal scientific evidence that these burns cause damage to the respiratory systems of humans and the root systems of desirable forest vegetation at substantial distances from the flames. Interviews with health, environmental, forest and fire experts should yield additional reasons for Smokey the Bear to stop playing with matches. Now, I'll go about my work and hope some talented reporter on the Courier's payroll will take the proverbial baton and run with it. And, no, I won't be checking back to see what you or anyone else thinks of my position that the Courier has yet to write a balanced story on this subject, though I'll certainly enjoy reading such an article if one is ever published.
Posted: Sunday, November 15, 2009
Article comment by:
curious
Well, "Go Team", here's your chance: just what are the "downsides" to prescribed burns that the Courier has persistently failed to detail? Hmm?
Posted: Sunday, November 15, 2009
Article comment by:
Go, Team!
Yet another one-sided story that, at best, merely hints an opposing view may exist. Yes, I understand the article topic was theoretically a forest tour, but it reads like the pro-burn half of a high-school debate competition. The Courier's persistent failure to detail the downside of these prescribed burns is insulting to its readership, and self-defeating. In an era when print journalism is gasping for survival, amid 24-hour "news" shows that spoon-feed their own biased pabulum to an increasingly-illiterate society, every story that expends ink and newsprint should adhere to the highest standards possible. Otherwise, what will differentiate newspapers from television and enable the once-proud print tradition to continue? Come on, reporters. Score one for the home team: an unbiased article genuinely exploring the pros and cons of prescribed burns. You can do this, but will you? Or will the Courier continue its slouch into an anemic pamphlet unworthy of loyal readers?
