Scientist: Fires in Sierra Nevada to worsen
By Kathryn Reed
No one thing can be blamed for the proliferation of catastrophic fires, but there are some things that could be done to help combat them.
“So much is driven by politics. As a scientist, I’m not sure I have much control, Hugh Safford said.
Safford, a regional ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service, gave a talk Aug. 4 at the South Lake Tahoe Library about what is going on in the Sierra Nevada when it comes to managing the forest as well how fire and climate change play a role.
Suppression and the lack of fire are equally devastating to the ecosystem, he said. He believes more fires should be managed instead of immediately extinguished. This will create a more natural forest that is healthier. He’s also an advocate of controlled burns.
Hugh Safford, a USFS ecologist, talks about fire and the ecosystem of the Sierra Nevada on Aug. 4. Photo/Denise Haerr
Fires are burning hotter than ever before because there is so much fuel as well as other changes like air temperature.
“Sixty-eight percent of the conifer stands have not burned since 1900,” Safford said.
Areas used to burn about every 10 years. They did so with less intensity and consumed small swaths.
The increase in overnight temperatures is having a huge affect with the growth of fires and the inability to quickly contain them. Humidity is not rising overnight with the higher temps, which means the fires are not dying down at night. This is when crews could get a handle on a fire. It is difficult for firefighters to work at night because of the lack of visibility.
“Precipitation is growing, but the snowpack is going down. That is driven by temperatures,” Safford said.
He said the indicators are that temps will increase 5 to 9 degrees by the end of the century. That would be like Davis having summer temps equivalent to Phoenix’s. For Lake Tahoe it will be like being in Nevada City.
“Poison oak will be here, oaks, algae in the lake. It is going to be a very different place,” Safford said.
The higher temps also mean less dew is forming. That little bit of moisture is what some animals rely on as their water source.
Fire is also impacting wildlife because animals’ homes are destroyed and won’t be “rebuilt”. The heat intensity is such that trees won’t grow because there are no seeds to naturally sow, and most often replanting has failed.
What ends up growing are shrubs. If shrubs are what burned, then it’s grass that sprouts. The landscape is changing because of catastrophic fires. That in turn impacts everything associated with what was once a forest of trees. This includes water quality and clarity.
Safford would like to be more experimental when it comes to dealing with managing the forests. He said his agency plans too much and doesn’t take enough risks. He also acknowledged those plans get challenged with lawsuits without ever being put to the test to see if they work.
THE DROUGHT IS ABOUT TO END! Right now it is dumping big time in Portillo, Chile. Furthermore, it has been cloudy at least half of the days this summer. Based upon my four decades of living in Tahoe, I believe this means it is going to storm big time in Tahoe this winter. If that happens, this doomsday Global Warming article is about to become irrelevant.
http://sfist.com/2015/07/23/godzilla_el_nino_now_being_called_s.php
The points that are valid are about the management and over preservation of forests from natural fires which creates a dangerous forest that burns larger and out of control. Look at old photos and you will see that the forests were very thin historically up until the turn of the last century. Everywhere in the state the fire fuels are dominant and ready to burn and the state and federal agencies should be thinning and allowing natural burning in the non-fire season much more than now. This would help avoid the major fires and save the millions upon millions spent trying to put them out.
Although climate change may be making drought here worse, even if the drought lessens, climate change isn’t going away. And a big winter (we’ll believe it when we see it – notice how forecasts have been even less accurate in recent years) and a lot of rain (not snow – see those WARM ocean temps?) won’t solve our fire issues that have been decades in the making.
Thank you for this article, Kae. People need to start taking this seriously. We live in a forest and it’s going to burn, one way or another.
Steve just because it’s going to snow does not mean global warming isn’t real.
Also this article isn’t really about climate change. It’s about how our fire suppression methods have lead to an un natural amount amount of fuel build up in the forests, and the dangers and challenges that means for our community.
Actually, mis-guided liberal policies are to blame for these fires.
The Western U.S. has a geological history of drought, flood and fire. In fact, every ten (10) years on average, fires would burn throughout California. These fires weren’t devastating, they merely cleaned up the dead underbrush and weak fauna, replenishing the soil with nutrients and eliminating the dead wood.
In the early 1900’s, fire suppression started in earnest in California. As a result, there are standing forests that haven’t had a normal fire in over 100 years. Logging in California has all but been prohibited. The combination of these two policy events have left us with a tinderbox waiting for a spark, like lightning.
If you want to look at the geologic record, just look at Fallen Leaf Lake. In the early 1800’s, it wasn’t the lake it is today, it had trees growing in it. Today, there are tree stumps in Fallen Leaf Lake. So you can see it was drier in periods pre-dating the industrial revolution. This FACT begs to ask the question, what caused Global Warming in the early 1800’s?
Once again, the liberal narrative has an answer for everything, and fires burning in the west are all caused by Global Warming.
Nice to see an intelligent discussion without name calling. AB.. I agree there have been much drier periods pre-dating the industrial revolution. Fallen leaf is local proof of that. I think climate change is a quite normal planetary process. Humans are nothing more that a surface nuisance..soon to just vanish.
Just google the donner snow pack chart. Big winters come and go with no evidence of trending less snowfall in mans recorded history here: http://www.thestormking.com/Weather/Sierra_Snowfall/sierra_snowfall.html
Tahoebluewire: Sorry, but the real story is more complicated and complex.
For example:
Mike Dettinger, a climatologist and research hydrologist at the Scripps Institute of the U.S. Geological Survey, said Christy is picking and choosing data while misleading people about what climate change scientists are actually saying.
For one, he said, snow depth is not as good a measure of the winter weather conditions as water content and density.
The number of inches or feet of snow on the ground can mean a variety of things, he said, depending on if it is fluffy powder or compacted, wet snow.
Recent studies by Scripps scientists have found that over the last 50 years the southern Sierra snowpack has gotten larger while the northern Sierra pack has shrunk. Although they have predicted the overall state snowpack would decrease over time as a result of climate change, nobody has claimed that it has happened yet, Dettinger said.
What’s significant in terms of global warming, he said, is the fact that the snowpack has declined over three quarters of the western United States, an area that includes Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico. Scripps researchers, in coordination with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists, have concluded that 60 percent of that downward trend is due to greenhouse gases.
“There is a popular conception that the snowpack has declined everywhere, but that is not what the science says,” Dettinger said. “What we’re saying broadly is that across western North America there have been declines in spring snowpack.”
TBW, in other words, size does matter, it is a scale thing. Zoom in and you can mislead folks all you want. Look at more relevant scales – guess what, the snowpack over a broader area of the west is in fact decline – even if it is not doing so in one zoomed in area. Oh btw, this took about 30secs to find.
Rick
One other fact pertaining to the water level of Fallen Leaf Lake now compared to the distant past is the fact that it was dammed in the 1930’s.
Rick I am familiar with the water content in relation to snowpack issue. I was looking for a nice color chart to demonstrate snowpack. Science does have evidence that meteorites have unleashed far more greenhouse gasses than humans ever could. Big planetary cycles and huge stellar events. My level of worry if human caused warming raises the ocean 20 feet and the mean temp 5 degrees is minimal. I just read a study that many species are and will be taking over the newly exposed permafrost areas above the arctic circle. Meaning..good for the brown bears, bad for the polar bears. Normal species responses to changes in climate. I think what irritates a lot of people is when climate change fans portend to tell the rest of us exactly what the next 100 years looks like based on 100 years of modern science. The Sierra Nevada was formed 600 million years ago for reference. That’s like looking at stock market trends for a week, then trying to predict market fluctuations for the next ten years.
” In fact, every ten (10) years on average, fires would burn throughout California.”
Fire return intervals vary a lot more than you seem to think they do.
You failed to prove or provide decent support for your thesis.
‘Nice to see an intelligent discussion without name calling. AB..’
Well… one person fell for it. Congrats.