Fires help fuel global-warming debate

Forests are both victims of global warming and a
potential solution.

TACOMA NEWS TRIBUNE

WASHINGTON — It was a monster fire — 175,000 acres of tinder-dry timber just south of the Canadian border in north-central Washington.

In places it burned with an intensity rarely seen, crowning through stands of Douglas fir, ponderosa pine and lodgepole pine weakened by a bark beetle infestation.

“It was clearly a firestorm,” said David Peterson, a research biologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab in Seattle.

At the height of the blaze, 2,300 firefighters fought it — including crews from New Zealand and Mexico and soldiers dispatched from Fort Lewis, Wash.

Last year’s Tripod Fire, the largest in Washington state in more than a century, smoldered through the winter, and several small spot fires have kicked up this summer.

Peterson and other scientists say the Tripod Fire could be a sign of things to come in the Western forests. Rising temperatures brought on by global warming add stress to trees, making them more susceptible to bugs and disease and stimulating the growth of underbrush and other fuels.

Some studies suggest the number of acres scorched by wildfire could increase fivefold by the end of the century.

Caught in the middle

Even as fires burn across the West this summer, the nation’s forests have become entwined in the larger debate over climate change. They are both a victim of global warming and a potential solution in helping reverse the trend, by sopping up huge amounts of greenhouse gases.

With all the talk of carbon sequestration, biofuels and corporate average fuel economy, forests have been mostly overlooked on Capitol Hill. By some estimates, the forests could absorb 500 million tons of carbon dioxide a year — about one-third of the carbon dioxide the United States produces annually.

“If you are looking at greenhouse gases, forests are a great thing to focus on,” Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell said in an interview.

Yet with most things involving federal lands, controversy is already brewing. Bureaucrats, scientists, timber-industry officials and environmentalists are sniping over how best to manage the forests in an era of global warming.

Based on nearly a century of detailed record-keeping on many of the national forests, Kimbell said there is no question temperatures are rising, the forests are drying out, underbrush is thickening and bug and disease infestations are mounting.

Since 1986, the number of major forest fires has quadrupled and the number of acres burned has grown sixfold. Nearly 50 percent of the Forest Service’s budget is spent on fighting fires.

“Fire managers say they are seeing behavior they have never seen before,” said Kimbell, who began her career as a forest ranger in Oregon and Washington.

Though Kimbell said there will always be forest fires, the best way to help contain them is by clearing out the underbrush and thinning the stands. About 13 million of the Forest Service’s 193 million acres have been cleared and thinned.

Later this year, the Forest Service is expected to unveil a new global-warming-related forest-management plan. It could involve planting additional acres, thinning existing stands and burning the leftover debris, or slash, to produce electricity. In Montana, some school districts are using forest debris to fuel their boilers.