NJFFSA16
10-14-2002, 02:55 AM
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - When Biscuit - the nation's biggest
wildfire this year - was on its hind legs and roaring last July,
anyone looking at the towering plumes of smoke in southwestern
Oregon could only wonder how anything could survive the inferno.
Now that most of the flames have cooled, however, a closer look
at the nearly 500,000 acres within the containment lines reveals a
landscape typical of wildfire: More than half either did not burn,
or burned at low intensity, leaving mature trees green, standing,
and better off.
"When a fire burns, unlike what is seen in cartoons, not every
tree is killed, not every plant is killed, not every acre is burned
to nothing," said Eric Christiansen, fire behavior analyst on the
elite federal management team that stopped Biscuit from roaring
into Oregon's Illinois Valley.
While the fire put the 17,000 people in the valley on evacuation
alert as it burned five cabins and threatened others, in the long
run it maintained the well-being of individual species and the
Siskiyou National Forest as a whole.
"The worst thing that we could have is to be so enamored of our
forests that we eliminate the processes that change them," said
Tom Atzet, the U.S. Forest Service ecologist for southwestern
Oregon.
Charred rings on old trees show fire returns to the area burned
by Biscuit every 70 years on average on the wetter west side and
every 50 years on the drier east side, he said.
Just how that fire burns depends on the mix of weather, fuel and
terrain, Christiansen said. A windy, hot and dry day, combined with
steep ravines filled with heavy brush, fallen logs and tightly
packed trees, means flames twice the height of the timber and
temperatures up to 2,000 degrees.
But you would hardly notice the fire that comes through sparse
timber in flat rocky ground on a cool humid day with little wind.
Even patches of grass survive.
Both those scenarios can be found on Biscuit. As conditions
changed through each day and across the landscape, the fire
intensity changed, creating a mosaic of different results.
A satellite map for assessing rehabilitation efforts showed 19
percent of the Biscuit fire area, about 95,000 acres, was unburned;
41 percent, about 205,000 acres, burned at low intensity, leaving
green trees standing and healthy while clearing out brush and small
trees.
Only 15.7 percent, about 78,500 acres, burned at high intensity,
leaving little but ash and charcoal behind, and 22.6 percent, about
113,000 acres, burned at moderate intensity.
A good place to see the phenomenon is Babyfoot Lake. The fire
burned hot on steep slopes around the lake, but at the shore, where
the water cooled and humidified the air and a towering cliff cut
the wind, half the shoreline did not burn. Centuries-old pine and
Douglas fir stand as proof that fire can't fully flex its muscles
here.
The same phenomenon served to spare much of the vegetation along
the Illinois River, home to salmon and steelhead, said hydrologist
Jon Brazier.
The Forest Service has yet to analyze just how past logging may
have affected fire behavior, an issue in the debate over how
forests should be managed to reduce vulnerability to wildfire.
But logging may not prove to be much of a factor. There has been
little cutting here since the 1980s, and the burn analysis of the
1987 Silver fire, which burned nearly 100,000 acres in the same
area, showed little difference between wilderness and areas that
had been logged.
At a cost of nearly $150 million, fighting Biscuit looks
expensive. But another way to look at it, Atzet said, would be to
imagine Congress appropriating $150 million to do prescribed burns
restoring fire to its proper place in the ecosystem.
"In an ecological sense, we just invested $150 million," Atzet
said.
For example, the kalmiopsis bush, for which the Kalmiopsis
Wilderness where the fire started is named, depends on fire to kill
the white fir that competes with it for water, sunlight and
nutrients, Atzet said.
The thin bark on white fir gives it less protection from fire
than ponderosa pine and Douglas fir, with thick bark. Surviving
trees do better than ever.
Dwarf mistletoe, a parasite that stunts Douglas fir, gets
knocked back by fire, said Ellen Goheen, a Forest Service plant
pathologist.
"Mistletoe creates huge brooms in trees," she said. "Those
brooms act as wicks, taking ground fire to a crown fire."
Spaced out more widely by fire, trees are less susceptible to
root diseases, such as deadly Port Orford cedar root rot, which can
be passed root-to-root, she added. Heat kills the spores.
Darlingtonia - an insect-eating plant also known as cobra plant
- will likely expand their command of hillside bogs now that
competing plants on the edges have been killed, said Siskiyou
ecologist Diane White.
Chemicals leaching out of the ashes can stimulate acorns to
sprout into oak trees, giving them a head start on pines and firs
waiting for the spring. Madrones will sprout from the bole - the
underground connection between the trunk and the roots - after the
top of the tree is killed.
Knobcone pines not only need the heat of fire to open their
cones, but their seeds love the mineral soil exposed when fire
burns off the duff - needles and bark built up over the years.
"It's important that part of the system be burned at high
severity," said Atzet.
Siskiyou wildlife biologist Lee Webb said some animals surely
got trapped by the fire and died, but he never saw one in eight
days of walking the fire. None of the 250 species found on the
Siskiyou have been driven off by the fire, though some fared better
than others.
Blue birds and olivesided flycatchers will flock to the burn,
either for insects to eat or nesting cavities. Deer and elk herds
will likely increase because the fire expanded meadows and
sprouting trees and brush will provide more food.
But the Northern spotted owl, a threatened species responsible
for practically shutting down logging on Northwest national
forests, will likely do worse.
The fate of the 47 pairs of spotted owls whose range falls
within the fire boundaries is not known yet, but satellite mapping
indicates the fire killed about 53,000 acres of old growth forest
considered suitable for owl habitat - one-seventh of the total owl
habitat on the forest, Webb said.
"Nothing is good or bad for wildlife," as a whole, Webb said.
"We've got 250 species out there, and there is a range."
---
On the Net:
Biscuit Fire: http://www.biscuitfire.com/
(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
wildfire this year - was on its hind legs and roaring last July,
anyone looking at the towering plumes of smoke in southwestern
Oregon could only wonder how anything could survive the inferno.
Now that most of the flames have cooled, however, a closer look
at the nearly 500,000 acres within the containment lines reveals a
landscape typical of wildfire: More than half either did not burn,
or burned at low intensity, leaving mature trees green, standing,
and better off.
"When a fire burns, unlike what is seen in cartoons, not every
tree is killed, not every plant is killed, not every acre is burned
to nothing," said Eric Christiansen, fire behavior analyst on the
elite federal management team that stopped Biscuit from roaring
into Oregon's Illinois Valley.
While the fire put the 17,000 people in the valley on evacuation
alert as it burned five cabins and threatened others, in the long
run it maintained the well-being of individual species and the
Siskiyou National Forest as a whole.
"The worst thing that we could have is to be so enamored of our
forests that we eliminate the processes that change them," said
Tom Atzet, the U.S. Forest Service ecologist for southwestern
Oregon.
Charred rings on old trees show fire returns to the area burned
by Biscuit every 70 years on average on the wetter west side and
every 50 years on the drier east side, he said.
Just how that fire burns depends on the mix of weather, fuel and
terrain, Christiansen said. A windy, hot and dry day, combined with
steep ravines filled with heavy brush, fallen logs and tightly
packed trees, means flames twice the height of the timber and
temperatures up to 2,000 degrees.
But you would hardly notice the fire that comes through sparse
timber in flat rocky ground on a cool humid day with little wind.
Even patches of grass survive.
Both those scenarios can be found on Biscuit. As conditions
changed through each day and across the landscape, the fire
intensity changed, creating a mosaic of different results.
A satellite map for assessing rehabilitation efforts showed 19
percent of the Biscuit fire area, about 95,000 acres, was unburned;
41 percent, about 205,000 acres, burned at low intensity, leaving
green trees standing and healthy while clearing out brush and small
trees.
Only 15.7 percent, about 78,500 acres, burned at high intensity,
leaving little but ash and charcoal behind, and 22.6 percent, about
113,000 acres, burned at moderate intensity.
A good place to see the phenomenon is Babyfoot Lake. The fire
burned hot on steep slopes around the lake, but at the shore, where
the water cooled and humidified the air and a towering cliff cut
the wind, half the shoreline did not burn. Centuries-old pine and
Douglas fir stand as proof that fire can't fully flex its muscles
here.
The same phenomenon served to spare much of the vegetation along
the Illinois River, home to salmon and steelhead, said hydrologist
Jon Brazier.
The Forest Service has yet to analyze just how past logging may
have affected fire behavior, an issue in the debate over how
forests should be managed to reduce vulnerability to wildfire.
But logging may not prove to be much of a factor. There has been
little cutting here since the 1980s, and the burn analysis of the
1987 Silver fire, which burned nearly 100,000 acres in the same
area, showed little difference between wilderness and areas that
had been logged.
At a cost of nearly $150 million, fighting Biscuit looks
expensive. But another way to look at it, Atzet said, would be to
imagine Congress appropriating $150 million to do prescribed burns
restoring fire to its proper place in the ecosystem.
"In an ecological sense, we just invested $150 million," Atzet
said.
For example, the kalmiopsis bush, for which the Kalmiopsis
Wilderness where the fire started is named, depends on fire to kill
the white fir that competes with it for water, sunlight and
nutrients, Atzet said.
The thin bark on white fir gives it less protection from fire
than ponderosa pine and Douglas fir, with thick bark. Surviving
trees do better than ever.
Dwarf mistletoe, a parasite that stunts Douglas fir, gets
knocked back by fire, said Ellen Goheen, a Forest Service plant
pathologist.
"Mistletoe creates huge brooms in trees," she said. "Those
brooms act as wicks, taking ground fire to a crown fire."
Spaced out more widely by fire, trees are less susceptible to
root diseases, such as deadly Port Orford cedar root rot, which can
be passed root-to-root, she added. Heat kills the spores.
Darlingtonia - an insect-eating plant also known as cobra plant
- will likely expand their command of hillside bogs now that
competing plants on the edges have been killed, said Siskiyou
ecologist Diane White.
Chemicals leaching out of the ashes can stimulate acorns to
sprout into oak trees, giving them a head start on pines and firs
waiting for the spring. Madrones will sprout from the bole - the
underground connection between the trunk and the roots - after the
top of the tree is killed.
Knobcone pines not only need the heat of fire to open their
cones, but their seeds love the mineral soil exposed when fire
burns off the duff - needles and bark built up over the years.
"It's important that part of the system be burned at high
severity," said Atzet.
Siskiyou wildlife biologist Lee Webb said some animals surely
got trapped by the fire and died, but he never saw one in eight
days of walking the fire. None of the 250 species found on the
Siskiyou have been driven off by the fire, though some fared better
than others.
Blue birds and olivesided flycatchers will flock to the burn,
either for insects to eat or nesting cavities. Deer and elk herds
will likely increase because the fire expanded meadows and
sprouting trees and brush will provide more food.
But the Northern spotted owl, a threatened species responsible
for practically shutting down logging on Northwest national
forests, will likely do worse.
The fate of the 47 pairs of spotted owls whose range falls
within the fire boundaries is not known yet, but satellite mapping
indicates the fire killed about 53,000 acres of old growth forest
considered suitable for owl habitat - one-seventh of the total owl
habitat on the forest, Webb said.
"Nothing is good or bad for wildlife," as a whole, Webb said.
"We've got 250 species out there, and there is a range."
---
On the Net:
Biscuit Fire: http://www.biscuitfire.com/
(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)