Woodland NOTES - Vol. 14, No. 1 - Fall/Winter, 2002-2003

In this issue:

• Fire in Forest Ecosystems of the Inland West

• Culture and Stewardship: Nez Perce Forest Management and Use

• Tons of Slash?

• Forestryimages.org

Fire in Forest Ecosystems of the Inland West
Yvonne C. Barkley

Fire in the forest! Though a natural part of the ecosystems of the Inland West, wildfire is one of the most feared, most fought, and most controversial components of our physical environment.

Idaho is part of a multi-state region termed the Intermountain or Inland West. Encompassing a large portion of the interior western United States, this area was born and raised by fire. Characterized by wet, cloudy winters and dry, sunny summers, the landscapes of the Inland West were shaped by volcanic eruptions and frequent wildfires. Forests in the Inland West are mainly coniferous. Vegetation patterns are complex and variable, responding to soils that have moderate to low productivity potential, are nitrogen limited, and are commonly shallow. In the Northern Rockies, rugged topography and differences in microclimates increases this complex mosaic of conditions.

Our recognition of fire’s role in an ecosystem come from studies of past vegetation, identification of charcoal layers in soil profiles, fire scars on trees, the even-aged character of some forests, and records of explorers. Up until the beginning of the last century, fire frequented the forests of the Inland West at regular intervals and was a natural component of what are termed fire-based ecosystems. The historical benefits and uses of managed fire included hunting, grazing for domestic livestock, clearing of forest for agriculture, producing ash to fertilize fields, favoring certain plants species over others, assisting in the harvesting of crops, and eliminating undesirable plant species.

Fire is one of the few disturbances that regularly kills mature plants and plays an important role in structuring plant communities and providing new openings that have the potential for vegetation change. Fire has complex effects on plant survival, growth, and reproduction. Many species are stimulated by fire, which enhances sprouting, flowering, and seed germination. For other species, post-fire conditions create excellent situations for seedling establishment by providing a combination of open space, increased light, nutrients, and moisture, and temporarily reducing the numbers of small, seed-eating mammals. Many plant species that depend on fire for reproduction can be driven to extinction if fires are suppressed. The plant community that occupies your forest today is one that is constantly in transition, with each species responding to changes in the local environment in their own particular time and manner.

Fire varies in terms of how often it occurs (frequency), when it occurs (season), and how fiercely it burns (intensity). Combinations of these elements define an area’s fire regime. A fire regime is a generalized description of the role fire plays in an ecosystem. Systems for describing fire regimes may be based on the characteristics of the disturbance, the dominant or potential vegetation of the ecosystem in which ecological effects are being summarized, or the fire severity based on the effects of fire on dominant vegetation.

Natural fire regimes provide a multitude of benefits to the forested ecosystems of the Inland West. Natural fire regimes help species that are best suited to a particular ecosystem maintain a competitive advantage over less suited species. Less competition reduces stress, which in turn reduces outbreaks of insects and disease. Fire stimulates understory vegetation, which is important to wildlife and biodiversity, and helps maintain or provide opportunities for some niche-dependent species. Natural fire regimes also provide a stimulus for the reproductive cycle for many plants while preparing suitable seedbeds for new seedlings. The Inland West, with it’s slow rates of decay and decomposition, also depends on wildfire for recycling biomass and nutrients by redirecting carbon and nutrients back into forms usable by growing plants.

Two general fire regimes are recognized. A stand maintenance fire regime consists of low to moderate intensity surface fires at short intervals (2-25 years). This type of fire regime maintains an ecosystem of relatively uniform, possibly all-aged stands of dominant tree species, and is typical of conifer forests dominated by ponderosa pine and western larch. This type of fire regime kills competing vegetation, consumes small to moderate amounts of surface fuels, and, with little or no accumulation of fire-killed materials, reduces fuel loads. A stand-replacing fire regime is one that has moderate to high-intensity fires that occur at long intervals (50-500 years) and is typical of coniferous forests dominated by species such as lodgepole pine. With stand replacing fires, practically all vegetation is killed to the ground and most surface fuel and varying amounts of crowns are consumed. Accumulations of fallen, fire-killed trees can become a serious fire hazard for several decades. A radical change in species composition is possible. Successive burns at short intervals may convert the area to fire-adapted species or shrubs, and a mosaic of different ages and species compositions is common.

Fire regimes that are unaffected by suppression are extremely rare today. Today’s fires are very different from those in the past. Today we must take into consideration what fire will do to our altered ecosystems. The Fire Effects Guide (sponsored by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group Prescribed Fire and Fire Effects Team) recognizes that a natural fire regime cannot be perpetuated in unnatural communities. The introduction of exotic insects, diseases, and plants, the alteration of the characteristics and processes of traditional plant communities, and the conversion of increased acreages to agricultural and urban use have all changed the environment surrounding and influencing our forests and rangelands.

When fire is suppressed for periods of time that are greater than the natural fire regime, changes in forest structure and function occur. Large amounts of live and dead organic matter begin to accumulate, resulting in dangerous fuel accumulations which may result in catastrophic fires. When stand-replacing fires occur in areas that evolved with stand maintenance fires, a number of negative effects can occur. The magnitude of rain-on-snow events increases, which, in turn, increases erosion and soil-mass movements. Catastrophic fires increase the incidence of windthrow, while excessive heat transmitted to roots, cambium, and/or crowns further reduce a tree’s resistance to insect and disease problems, drought stress, and nutritional imbalances.

Fire suppression can increase the number of more shade tolerant species (such as Douglas-fir and true firs) in a stand, which replace more adapted and shade intolerant species such as pines and western larch. By changing the immediate environment, these shade tolerant species begin to alter traditional plant communities. Where there once was a savanna-like ponderosa pine forest, interspersed with clumps of aspen and deciduous shrubs, you now have a thick Douglas-fir/grand fir forest. Competition for light, nutrients, and moisture increases, not only because of increased stand densities, but because shade-tolerant species tend to require and use more moisture and nutrients than the species they replaced.

When shade tolerant species replace shade intolerant species you begin to see other forest health problems. Douglas-fir and grand fir are not as well adapted to drier sites as ponderosa pine, and consequently suffer physiological stress when subjected to the hot, dry summers of the Inland West. Stressed trees are more likely to succumb to insect and disease problems, such as root rot and bark beetles. Insect outbreaks can reach epidemic proportions and spiral out of control when less adapted species provide increased food to sustain insect populations.

Forest ecosystems are extremely resilient and in the Inland West are historically adapted to disturbance by fire. It’s natural. From the standpoint of a fire-based ecosystem’s structure and function, fire is a good thing. After a burn, there is nothing to fix. The forest will follow it’s own course towards a new structure. On the other hand, man has greatly altered forest ecosystems by suppressing fire, changing species compositions, and living in or adjacent to the forest. When homes, property, and sometimes even lives are lost, wildfire becomes an issue. When it comes to fire in the forest, some see the time after the burn as the end of a good book, while others see it as the beginning of the next chapter.

Culture and Stewardship: Nez Perce Forest Management and Use
Ron Mahoney and Aaron Miles

In 1992 we published a special edition of Woodland Notes to help initiate the Idaho Forest Stewardship Program, our state program that is part of a national effort to incorporate individual and community land ethics into improved, sustainable management of private forests. In an article entitled What is Stewardship? I wrote (with Yvonne Barkley) that "Stewardship is an attitude, a dedication to doing the best we can for the land, whether it be the entire globe, the nation, or our own private land". Recently, I have been working on several programs with forester Aaron Miles, a Nez Perce tribal member, and I was fascinated by his comments on how the Nez Perce view land use, and how their culture helps establish their ethics of responsible stewardship. I thought back to my own mixed culture and began to wonder how my own heritage affects my personal view of stewardship and how that comes across in what I write and how I practice forestry. Like many Americans of European decent, I have a mixed heritage of immigrant ancestors that came for opportunity. They fled Germany where they had no chance for land ownership, and left famine in Ireland, Scotland and Wales in search of land to feed their families. Some developed small family farms, some started early sawmills and made the first covered wagons, and others worked in big city factories. I know I tend to see the forest as a garden, beautiful but needing tending and ultimately utilitarian, and this is evident in my advocacy of active, sustainable management and use. It might be enlightening and useful to further explore how our diverse American cultures affects each forest owner and manager, and there have been a lot of efforts and published works by those of European decent in this regard. Here in Idaho, and across the Pacific Northwest, we have an opportunity to learn how culture and history affect and define what forest stewardship is, and guide management and use, of indigenous people that remain on some of the lands of their ancestry. The Nez Perce Reservation includes about 60,000 acres of forest land that is managed and used for the benefit of tribal members. While some of their activities, such as logging and planting trees, may be more recent, others sustain ancient traditions and an unbroken chain of cultural influence of forest stewardship. In learning what Aaron Miles has to tell us about Nez Perce culture and forestry, perhaps we can improve on what our European cultures alone provide us as we steward our own forest lands in a region where some of the original stewards remain. ~ Ron Mahoney

As an undergraduate student at the University of Idaho in Forest Resource Management, many of my professors would prompt ideas and thoughts of what forest resource management would look like if my tribe (the Nez Perce) was the land manager of public land within its ceded territory of the former reservation. The reasons for choosing public lands rather than private or even tribal trust lands are the critical circumstances, the tremendous amount of rules and regulations, and the scrutiny that federal land managers face from environmentalists, the timber industry, and whatever political faction the public could produce. Many federal lands in the Pacific Northwest today were former reservations of Indian Tribes who sold the title of the land to the U.S. Government but held these exclusive and certain rights to those lands:

"The right to fish at all usual and accustomed areas with the privilege of hunting, gathering, and pasturing their horses in common with the citizens of the territory," [paraphrased] is within the Article III section of the Treaty of 1855 signed by headsmen of the Nez Perce and Governor Isaac Stevens. This section is a formal recognition by the United States and the Nez Perce Tribe of the Nez Perce way of life and the rights needed to fulfill such a way of livelihood.

Today, the Nez Perce Tribe protects, enhances, and mitigates for loss of habitat, plants, and fish and wildlife species that may have been extirpated due to dams or changes in habitat. Without the species that were here before the coming of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the Nez Perce Religion of Wahlusut (7 Drums) and way of life is jeopardized. In the ceremonies of Wahlusut, the hunters and gatherers, men and women respectively, are responsible for serving them for sustenance. It is very much similar to communion in Christian religions in that the wine represents the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ and the bread represents the body of Christ. Similarly, the animals and plants that are a part of the Wahlusut ceremonies represent the sacrifice unto man so that man could survive. The Tribe continues to speak on behalf of those plants and animals sacrificed for our existence.

Often times the media influences public perception of "Tribes" and "tribal people" as preservationists or hands-off environmentalists. This misunderstanding is quite contrary to tribal beliefs and traditions among tribes nationwide and namely the Nez Perce. The Nez Perce people have always manipulated or managed their environment to maintain, sustain, and propagate both seral and climax plant communities. For example, a commonly known species called camas was selectively harvested by Nez Perce women. The digging stick they use is designed only to harvest one camas bulb at time. They never created a tool to mass harvest the bulbs but rather a tool that would allow them to selectively pick only a few genetically dominant bulbs while taking mostly the genetically inferior bulbs. This stimulated a bumper crop for the following year after deliberately burning the landscape on the Camas Prairie, the Heart of Nez Perce Country.

Part of the problems in restoration for the Tribe exists with people in federal agencies and conflicts with their trust responsibility to the Tribe and the land. They may not fully understand the land and tribal cultures, being relative newcomers to the Pacific Northwest over a short period of evolutionary time. Other problems to tribal land resource management include fragmented ownership patterns and obstacles such as roads and fences. The poor land management practices of the past such as fire suppression, high-grading timber resources, and exploitative development still haunt the managers of today. The tribe continues to work on solutions and shares in the conservation burden brought on during the time of unregulated exploitation of the Pacific Northwest as part of the Union.

The Tribe often finds itself in the same category as those ranchers, farmers, miners, loggers, and others who have been here since the mid 1800’s as "Lords of Yesterday" as author Charles Wilkenson puts it best. These are people who depend on the resources such as timber, water, mining, agriculture, and others for their economic stability and spirituality. Because larger corporate America views these occupations as outdated, dying cultures futilely trying to hang on to their very existence, we have not figured out a way for all of our livelihoods to coexist with one another, and survive the onslaught of new people with contrary values.

Will today’s land managers be able to honor those people who have "first in right, first in time" and uphold the laws that dictate the West? For without the rancher, farmer, or Indian, what would the West be? We all continue to strive to maintain our ways of life not just for the current generation but 7 generations removed from us. It is my hope that cultural barriers can be broken so that we can fight the bigger fight to save the ecological integrity and diverse cultures of the West. ~ Aaron Miles, Nez Perce Tribe Natural Resources Manager

Tons of Slash?
Chris Schnepf

Slash & Coarse Woody Debris. With all the recent fires, many people are focused on removing all dead forest organic debris (also known as "fuel"). Reducing fuels is critical within 30-100 feet around homes and structures to reduce fire risk. Beyond that, removing woody debris can be taken too far. A large body of research supports leaving organic debris in forests to aid nutrient cycling and improve soil structure and function.

There are two types of forest organic debris: 1) slash – materials smaller than 3" in diameter; and 2) coarse woody debris - material larger than 3" in diameter. Roughly half of a conifer’s above-ground nutrients (e.g., nitrogen and potassium) are stored in the needles and branches. But larger diameter materials are also important (especially as they decay) for moisture reservoirs, improved soil structure, beneficial fungi habitat (e.g., mychorrizal fungi), and wildlife habitat.

Fire wardens and foresters commonly talk about the amount of slash or coarse woody debris in terms of "tons" or "tons per acre". Many forest owners are not sure what a ton of slash or woody debris looks like. There are two common ways of measuring organic debris: photo series estimation and transect sampling.

Photo Series. Fire wardens and others who inspect woody debris and slash loading commonly use photo series (a series of photographs of sites where organic debris has been measured) to guide their estimates. With this method, you simply find the photo that most closely matches what you see on the site and estimate accordingly. An excellent series of these photos is available through the Idaho Department of Lands in a publication titled Photographic Series: Appraising Slash Hazard in Idaho. The publication has over 50 color photographs of varying amounts of different kinds of slash after logging on hemlock, grand fir, cedar, and ponderosa pine forest cover types. In addition to estimates of tons per acre of slash and coarse woody debris, the description for each photo also rates the fire potential of the material shown on the site (e.g., rate of spread, intensity, torching, crowning, resistance to control, etc.).

Transect Sampling. If you would prefer to measure coarse woody debris or slash directly, you can use the planar intersect technique. For coarse woody debris, that involves counting sound and rotten pieces of wood (above ground) that intersect 50 or 100 foot transects (see Figure and Table 1) In counting those pieces:

• Logs are rotten if they can be kicked apart.

• The transect must intersect the central axis of the log to count that log (the transect can’t just catch the log’s corner).

• Splintered logs are mentally molded together to estimate diameter.

• If the same piece crosses more than once it is counted each time.

• Look above your head for suspended slash. Snags (standing dead trees) are not counted.

You then assign a weight to each piece of wood according to its diameter (see Table 2). Adding those weights together estimates the tons of coarse woody debris per acre for that transect. Anywhere from 1-3 randomly placed transects per acre are then averaged together to estimate tons of debris per acre for the site. To be precise, these numbers must also include a slope correction, but as long as the slope isn’t more than 50%, it won’t increase the estimate by more than 12%. A high degree of precision isn’t usually necessary except for research efforts, because we are typically looking at a fairly broad range of acceptable tons per acre of coarse woody debris (e.g., 7-14 tons/acre on Douglas-fir habitat types). This method does not count snags. If your tons per acre seem low, but you have a lot of snags on the site, you may be fine, as snags will eventually fall and add coarse woody debris to the site.