The Future of Forests...is People

 David Wear, USFS, predicts large declines in forest area in the US as more and more land is developed for housing.  Over the next 50 years the US population is forecast to double again to 500 million, mostly along the coasts. 
 

Most of the RPA interval projections by the USFS are driven by economic analyses.  Increased wealth greatly increases the impact of any increase in human population, because wealthier people build bigger houses, shop more, and need more roads.  More people will need more food, leading to higher food prices that threaten to undo the conservation reserve program, putting reforested land back into food production.  But higher prices for timber or biomass would actually increase forested area!  With a higher value on trees, timbered lands might be worth too much to develop....

I conclude that the US needs a healthy forest products (including, somehow, forest biomass) industry to push back against the teeming urban hordes.

Finally, after months of waiting, Thursday, April 12 was burn day at Mason Farm Biological Reserve.

It has been very dry here and Tuesday was a Red Flag day, but Thursday dawned cool and not-too-windy.

A little bit more wind would have been helpful to oxygenate the burn more.  Trees have already leafed out, decreasing below-canopy advective and convective air movement.

There were no problems with the fire lines, and the burn was finished by 5 PM.

For more information about natural fire regime in Southeastern Piedmont forests:

Frost CC, Walker J, Peet RK. Fire-dependent savannas and prairies of the Southeast: original extent, preservation status, and management problems. Wilderness and natural areas in the eastern United States: a management challenge. Nacogdoches, TX: Stephen F. Austin State University, School of Forestry, Center for Applied Studies. 1986:348–357.

Wilderness in the Inland Pacific Northwest

Ben Ahrens: Cultivating Intuition Through Meticulous Self-Tracking

The last word on quantified personal health info!

Best Summary of A New Kind of Science

Wolfram's blog.

Summer in Spring 2012

"This March, we started with twelve days of April weather, followed by ten days of June and July weather, with nine days of May weather predicted to round out the month"
image from Dr. Jeff Masters

Pleistocene Climate Change Context

A roadmap of the last 50,000 years helps put the modern global warming in context:

This awesome graph, and many others, can be found here. Includes a good discussion of the Eemian interglacial and other interglacials in comparison with the modern Holocene.

Catestrophic Fire in the West

What if wildfire risk were catastrophically worse than we have imagined? Dr. Littell (University of Washington) walks us through just such a scenario in this USFS webinar. He starts by pointing out that the recent increase in wildfire area is not unprecedented. The traditional story has been that large "mega-fires" have increased in recent years, but Littell's reanalysis and recalculation of historical records found that the natural fire regime from 1910-1940 may have matched the last thirty years of large fires. (cf: The Big Burn) In both time periods perhaps 97% of the area burned was the result of less than 3% of the fires, the mega-fires.
Dr. Littell considers whether the dip in the middle is actually due to the triumph of fire suppression, or whether it is climatically driven:


What happens if it gets even warmer? Littell goes on to calculate fire probabilities based on temperature and precipitation and projects the results in a model of a 1 degree C climate change future:
Percentage Increase in Area Burned with +1C. White areas did not have a significant relationship between area burned and temperature.

7 types of Igneous Rocks

Fire Burns Hotter After Absense

Reintroducing fire to long-unburned Southeastern Pine Savannas can kill the "fire dependent" Long Leaf Pine while sparing fire sensitive species that have invaded the Savanna. It seems the pines loose their adaption to fire over time. Their roots grow into the thick duff layers of pine needles they themselves produced. When a fire finally starts, either by accident or through restoration efforts, the usual wave of fast-moving "scorching" flames are followed by a second, deadly wave of smoldering fire in the deep pine duff. The duff is thickest around old pine trees so the smoldering fire preferentially kills older "fire dependent" trees.

The human health effects of smoldering fires are also much worse than open flames.

Varner et al 2005 Restoring Fire to Long-Unburned Pinus palustris Ecosystems: Novel Fire Effects and Consequences for Long-Unburned Ecosystems