SOS Forests

Jungwirth on Forest Restoration and Climate Change

Climate change or not, restoration forestry is essential to saving our forests. Lynn Jungwirth of the Watershed Center in Northern California has been an important leader in educating the public on restoration forestry and in implementing restoration activities in her neck of the woods.

The follow excerpts are drawn from Lynn’s March 3rd testimony before the US House Subcommitte on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands. Her remarks are quite excellent.

For the full text see [here]

Testimony of Lynn Jungwirth

For the U. S. House of Representatives, Committee on Natural Resources, Sub-Committee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands

Hearing on “The Role of Federal Lands in Combating Climate Change”

March 3rd, 2009

I’D LIKE TO THANK the committee for the opportunity to provide testimony at this important hearing. My name is Lynn Jungwirth and I am the Executive Director of the Watershed Center, a small community forest organization in the town of Hayfork, which lies in the middle of the Trinity National Forest in California. Since 1993, my organization has worked at the nexus of healthy forests and healthy communities. I’m privileged to work with the “Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition”, a group of over 40 organizations working in local community forestry activities in the west. …

Healthy, resilient forests sequester carbon. In the Trinities, we started 12 years ago, thinning overstocked stands both for hazardous fuels reduction and to improve the quality of the spotted owl habitat. Subsequent measurement has show increased growth rates in the remaining trees. The carbon sink is increasing. What is not so obvious is that forest restoration can also provide biofuels for transportation, reduce carbon intensive energy use in the industrial sector through combined head and power biomass plants, and reduce the carbon intensity of electrical power by co-firing coal plants with wood pellets and using woody biomass for electrical generation (a common strategy in the European Union). Four of the five strategies in the McKinsey and Co. report can be addressed through forest stewardship activities.

Climate Change and Wildfire: Social, economic and environment issues

There is no discussion in the McKinsey and Co. report on the GHG emissions from wildfire. However, some studies suggest wildfire and forest burning account for about 30% of global GHG emissions. Here in the United States, we average about 100,000 wildfire starts a year. About 50% of those are from human activity, about 50% from lightning. The precise quantification of GHG emissions from wildfire is still in debate. The California North Coast Air Quality Management District used Air Resources Board methodology to estimate the GHG emissions from two fire events in Trinity County – the 2002 Megram Fire (100,000 acres) and the 2008 Trinity Fire Complexes (200,000 acres). The estimates were 1.5 million vehicle year equivalents for the Megram Fire and 2 million vehicle years for the 2008 Trinity Fire.

Vehicle years provides an urban frame for GHG emissions. For rural communities, however, the frame is weeks of smoke so thick you can’t see across the street, increased chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in our elders, salmon streams full of sediment, rivers and ponds filled with debris, the decline of our tourism/recreation industry, the loss of our precious timber resources, and, this year, the death of 11 firefighters. These are not the fires of our childhood when low intensity fires would “skunk around” in the undergrowth, herded by local ranchers and the Forest Service. Those fires were fires of renewal. Today’s fires are those of ecological, social and economic destruction.

The Trinity Forest

The Trinity Forest is in the Northwest Forest Plan for the Recovery of the Spotted Owl. The primary driver of management activities in the Trinity Forest is preserving biodiversity, especially those species associated with old growth forests. The Spotted Owl plan led to a dramatic reduction in logging and the subsequent destruction of our economy (today the unemployment rate in Hayfork is 21.3%). At that time,(the early 1990s) the theory was that a forest protected from logging and a landscape of reserves and corridors would protect the species. Today, Jerry Franklin and Norm Johnpson, the architects of that plan, encourage management in these vulnerable dry forests to reduce fire intensity and protect old growth forests. Their subsequent studies have shown increasing die-off in old growth stands due to changed hydrology. In 15 short years, climate change has dramatically changed strategies for endangered species recovery and old growth protection.

The forest restoration activities done today in the Trinity Forest are often called hazardous fuels reduction, but are actually much more sophisticated than a simple fuels prescription. Care is taken to enhance wildlife habitat, protect fire resistant trees, and minimize soil compaction and disturbance. Experience (and science) has taught us that the initial thinning must be followed by a prescribed fire and the area must be maintained by periodic burnings overtime. While these thinning and burning activities themselves produce some CO2 equivalents, recent studies indicate that such pre-treatments can reduce the CO2 equivalent emissions of intensive wildfire by up to 70% in some stands.

There is still much debate among the scientific community as to the carbon abatement values of such forest management (because of the carbon released during the thinning and prescribed burn and the uncertainty about whether treated areas will actually experience wildfire within a number of years). However, there is little debate (and significant evidence) that such treatments reduce the intensity and often stop, wildfires.

There is, likewise, debate regarding the removal of fire-killed vegetation after one of these fire events. The concern is that such “logging” negatively impacts the soil carbon and soil productivity. The people of Trinity County have now experienced “re-burns” in areas where fire-killed trees were not removed after the 1987 and 2000 fires. When stands of fire-killed trees dry for 8-20 years and then burn again, the fire is intense and resistant to control. The soil volatilizes along with the trees. There is no question that nearly 90% percent of the tree carbon and most of the soil carbon is released in this second burn. Ecosystem conversion often follows. The forest moves back to meadows, then brush fields and then, burning again, remain in brush. In the words of Tom Jimmerson, an experienced forest ecologist who lived and worked in the Trinity Mountains and Coast Ranges of California for years, after studying a re-burn in the Siskiyou Mountains, “We just blasted this area back to the stone age.” Some have said it would take significant investment in rehabilitating these sites, once they have been converted, if we want to reforest them.

A few cases studies were examined in a 2007 report for the California Energy Commission. In “Biomass to Energy: Forest management for wildfire reduction, energy production, and other benefits” the authors (Ganz, et al) modeled thinning, transporting, and converting biomass into electrical power in the Sierras and compared those models to the “no-treatment” models. Their findings show clear life cycle climate change benefits, including a 65 percent net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. They also show a 22 percent reduction in the number of acres burned by wildfire and a dramatic drop in fire severity, showing a $246 million savings in wildfire damage and $13 million in fire suppression costs. They predict that even greater reductions could be anticipated by strategically locating thinning projects in areas of high hazard. They also showed that about $1.58 billion in power revenues, assuming an 8.3 cent kilowatt hour with a negligible amount of fossil fuel consumed in the harvest and production of that power. …

One of the major protocol challenges is trying to account for the emissions benefits of integrated, cross-sectoral projects, such as forest restoration projects that enhance forest health, reduce wildfire risk and emissions, and provide woody fuels for bioenergy that offsets fossil fuels. …

Beyond Offset Markets

For the past ten years, the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition has brought to congress two fairly detailed discussions: 1) a line-item by line-item analysis of an integrated forest restoration budget, and 2) a proposal for performance measures and accountability that would lead to integrated forest restoration implementation. Moving from appropriated dollars to payment for ecosystem services will take time, but help to foster an investment in services that will contribute to resilient communities and landscapes, while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Traditional appropriations

The annual appropriations for the federal land management agencies should continue to support the missions and programs of the agencies, while focusing on how to integrate climate change and other ecosystem services issues and developments into these programs. This is a strategic set of issues for the agencies and policymakers. One day, perhaps, we will see a line item dedicated to integrated restoration with clear direction for its use. …

For the past 15 years, my organization and others like it have operated federal forest restoration and hazardous fuels programs. The job creation potential of federal land stewardship and restoration is tremendous. The proper investment of those dollars can create a world class, highly skilled, knowledge based workforce. Management for ecosystem services is knowledge intensive and requires a workforce committed to place.

Those jobs and skills include:

* Ecosystem surveys and data collection;

* data analysis;

* GIS analysis tools;

* collaborative facilitation;

* road stabilization;

* road removal;

* in-stream habitat improvement;

* wildlife habitat improvement;

* riparian protection structures;

* boundary line surveys;

* forest thinning;

* prescribed burning; and

* effectiveness monitoring.

This highly skilled “restoration” workforce can also be cross-trained for fire fighting, increasing the number of locally available, skilled workers for initial attack in fire emergencies. The restoration workforce will be able to put fuels treatments on the landscape to pre-prepare for fire suppression activities and thereby reduce the costs of fire suppression. They will also help in determining the proper use of fire during the year, and help implement those decisions.

Restoring the federal forests of the west, in order to protect and enhance carbon sinks and to make the forest more resilient in the face of climate change has other benefits to rural economies as well. The by-products of forest management (brush, smaller trees, etc.) can provide fuel to replace fossil fuels. But, scale is the issue. A network of small, community-scaled combined heat and energy plants will not require huge investments in transmission lines (up to 3MW of power can be transmitted over local lines). Such facilities also allow a community to diversify its economy, adding dry-kilns, green-houses and other heat users.

Likewise, as more local renewable power becomes available and as forested landscapes remains green and healthy, other green economy sectors may more eagerly locate in rural America. They will not relocate so easily to a landscape that looks like an ashtray. …

After a forest burns in a stand replacing fire, the adjacent community loses many economic options. When the 1987 fires burned 67,000 acres in the Trinity Forest we recomputed the “allowable sale quantity”. It dropped from roughly 160 mmbf to roughly 40 mmbf. There are few stewardship opportunities in a fire-killed forest, aside from the erosion control efforts immediately after the fire. If the forest is federal, the fire-killed fuels are currently not removed, new trees are not planted, and the land is left to recover without the hand of man. So the community is left with no forest to manage and no forest products for decades. It is in our best interest, for many reasons, to help the forest accommodate fire, and not succumb to it.

Beyond the Trinity Forest

Community groups throughout the west have been working against the odds to restore America’s forests. We helped forge the agreements that led to the National Fire Plan. That agreement included five strategies: Fire Suppression, Forest Restoration (pre-fire and post fire), Hazardous Fuels Reduction, Community Assistance, and Accountability.

This integrated approach, which honors all the ecosystem services of the forest, including the service fire can provide, must be the basis of national climate policy as well. It speaks to the larger issue of maintaining our truly “green” infrastructure. Through our work with endless local collaborative groups we have learned that the social process is the key to creating good solutions and meaningful agreement regarding forest restoration.

The role of federal lands in combating climate change can be a national policy decision. How to achieve that, while maintaining habitat and economies, must be figured out and agreed to at the ground level. Top down will not work in this instance. …

The Trinity Forest is a nice little forest. It is over a million and a half acres in the Klamath Knot, one of the most biologically diverse areas on the planet. Please don’t manage it for carbon. Manage it to be resilient. Manage it to prepare for the impacts of climate change. Manage it to be here for another 400 years. If you do, the carbon sink will come. The GHG emissions from wildfire will drop. The biofuels can be developed. The renewable energy will be developed and sustained. The owl and the coho will have a chance at survival. And so will we.