 Welcome to another seminar series from the Blue Mountain Natural Resources Institute. I'm the Institute Manager, Larry Hartman. The Blue Mountains Natural Resources Institute is a part of the Pacific Northwest Station of Forest Service Research and is also funded by the Pacific Northwest region of the National Forest System. Our territory includes all of the Blue Mountains, including 10 counties in Oregon and 4 counties in Washington. The Institute achieves its success by working with its partners, which include federal, state, tribal, and local government agencies, as well as industry, environmental organization, private landowners, and educational institutions. The Institute does three main types of activities. First, we offer educational activities and technology transfer, including seminars like this one. And we do research management tours, publications, videos, and we even sponsor conferences. Second, we conduct applied research, which is designed to meet real-world resource management problems. Third, the Institute serves as a neutral forum for discussing environmental issues, so that people or organizations with differing opinions can get to understand one another better. This presentation exemplifies the Institute's goal, putting science to work. It's part of our ongoing commitment to bring science results to resource managers and to the general public. This seminar series is entitled Fire Ecology and Management in the Blue Mountains, which explores the role and function of fire in the ecosystem. The first of the five sessions looks at two subjects, historical and present conditions of the Blue Mountain Forest and reintroducing fire into ecosystems. I hope you enjoy it. You notice that my title slide did not show up, so I'm using an older one, but I do want to talk about historical and present Blue Mountain Forests. I'm going to try to choose my language rather carefully. I said historical. I didn't say natural. Natural has some kind of a goodness context. Historical has no goodness context. For instance, Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. That's a bad context for the French and a good context for the British. That's history. So with that, if we could have the lights please. The Blue Mountains, can you guys see that in the back? The Blue Mountain topography, geology and vegetation is quite variable. This is looking, when it's in focus, right there. Looking across, looking glass brick, into the Wallows with Elgin down over there. For those of you who are around this country, it's continuous forest land. Compared to this situation, this being Mount Emily right here, with a forest and non-forest pattern. We call that inherent diversity because these are shallow soil areas that will not grow trees. We also have this situation at Table Rock. Deeply dissected plateaus where we have Savelton fir on the north slope and Bluebunch wheatgrass on the south slope. And finally this situation, undulating topography with a forest, non-forest pattern. Now, my entire outline has been written on a computer. There's a printout. When I get going here with two slides going very fast, there's no way to be able to take notes. So just sit back, relax, and let me entertain you please. And let me follow my notes at the same time. All of these are influenced by climate. Cascade range, our cascade range and coast range, the marine climate comes up through the Columbia River and does not get about 1,500 feet before it hits the Blue Mountains. From there it goes up to 5,000 feet. It has interesting characteristics, and I'm not going to talk about temperature and precipitation. The characteristics are minimum temperature fluctuations. Minimum maximum humidity, maximum winter cloud cover. And when we get to leaf overwintering insects in the clouds, that can be important. It has the wettest snow and the highest precipitation. Continental climate rises 3,000 feet over the coast range, 6,000 over the cascade, and watered across the Great Basin. It is just the opposite, if you will. Maximum temperature fluctuations, minimum humidity, least winter cloud cover, outer snow and lowest precipitation. In the middle, this is mixed. And a person first looks at that and says, well, that's nice. However, it is in this mixed climate where the tussock bob, the spruce bud worm, and the mountain pine beetle have been most devastating. It is here where large-pole pine has its greatest occurrence. It is from here up where sagebrush and juniper quit and give way to grassland. So this does have some kind of significance that I cannot very well define for you at this time. Well, some of these climatic characteristics are important. Cold-air drainage creates climax, large-pole pine. Frost heaving is characteristic of the non-forest vegetation, the natural openings, shallow soils. Cloud cover seems to be very important. For instance, that is at 7 o'clock in the morning and that's 2 o'clock in the afternoon, same day. Now, this tends to be significant when we understand the tussock bob and spruce bud worm over winter in the crowns of the trees. So the clouds in the climate and that sort of thing tend to be somewhat important. But storms are one of the most important characteristics of climate because around here they start fires. Thank you. And since this is a seminar on fire, I thought maybe I should show you some fires. Jim H.E. the eminent fire ecologist in Oregon and Washington he picks fire regimes this way. The red high severity fire regime looks like that. The moderate severity fire is something like this. By definition, the overstory trees are not killed. All the regeneration is killed, most of the saplings are killed and some of the poles, pole-sized trees, the small ones. And then we have the low intensity under burns represented by the green line. Flame length not exceeding three feet. These are his definitions. You notice that even three feet of flame length can sometimes be important. So I'd like to discuss three kinds of forest situations. Ponderosa pine, both a single species and one that is replaced by fir. Large and grand fir ecosystem and large pole pine. So I'd like to start with ponderosa pine. This is the range, this is where ponderosa pine fits in the general fire diagram. Predominantly low intensity frequent fires, some moderate intensity and a few catastrophic fires. A typical climax ponderosa pine, that is pine that will replace itself. Now, with Idaho rescue, some bitter brush and 20-year-old regeneration. Which looks like this 35 years later. Which looks like this 35 years later. I knew I'd do that once from the top. 1957 to 1992, the bitter brush is being basically shaded out. These are 45 years of height growth on those small trees. What is characteristic about climax ponderosa pine is low stockability. Very low stockability. It is where forest give way to grassland or sagebrush. It's the dry end of the forest land. The point is that historic fire thinned these stands and killed the small trees. It burned the Idaho Fescue. But today we have such dense tree canopies that the fire is held close to the ground. We have higher fuel accumulations so that Idaho Fescue now is often killed. By the same fires that used to release it by killing some regeneration. So basically this is the historical situation in climax pine. Frequently burned every 8 to 10 years. Now, with 80 years of fire suppression, we have built up fuel from 3 tons to only 10 tons per acre. But some plants like Idaho Fescue are killed today. Next I'd like to talk about ponderosa pine that is successional or serial to grand fur. This means that ponderosa pine colonizes the site and eventually gives way to fur. And we'll see sort of how that works. It changes the fur without underburning and the fuel loading increases. Same area 1958-1987. This tree is now down and dead. That tree used to be over here. So this is what we mean by successional ponderosa pine. It was underburned at 8 to 12 year intervals looking something like this. And this is a real sticker because the same year after the fire went out it looks like that. And then like that. So that after just 6 years there is no evidence that that fire burned. And yet look at the stocking level control that it did. This is a reason underburning has been so misinterpreted. Because you can't see it 2 or 3 years later. Much less 100 years later. So what did this do? Among other things there was no down dead woody material. Instead the down material burned up. That's how trees got fire scarred. This happens to be about as far as it was fire scarred. But there is regeneration where that log was. And you notice that that log burning killed the pine grass. This is how historically ponderosa pine regenerated. When these logs burned up it killed the pine grass made of seedbed. These trees could grow for 2 to 5 years almost uninhibited by competition. And of course the ground fire coming across here would not burn that area. That is a historic system of ponderosa pine regeneration. In addition you can probably suspect that even an 18 inch focus up here. Fire flame length will cause stocking level control. It will kill the trees. For example this is ponderosa pine and Douglas fir. 40 years old in 1964. In 1974 and 1989. Plus 25 years ladies and gentlemen of dynamic growth of that stand. This stand is now 65 years old for those of you in forestry. That is halfway through a 160 year rotation for ponderosa pine. Without stocking level control. Historically under burning maintained stocking level control. The moral is that we have to thin stands if we want heightened diameter growth for any reason. Large trees are 60 years old, smaller trees are 40 years old. They were thinned with spacing of 110 trees per acre. Resulting in this situation. That tree changed from 0.8 to 2.8 inches diameter growth per decade. We changed from 7 to 14 species of ground vegetation. And we changed from 180 to 550 pounds of herbage. With stocking level control. If we want to maintain nesting habitat to the affiliated woodpecker. We have to have stocking level control. Dr. Evelyn Bowles suggests their preferred tree are ponderosa pine 32 inches in diameter. And I think I just showed you 65 years of diameter growth. It is not quite right going to make affiliated woodpecker nesting habitat. Another effect of under burning was tree species selection. By killing grandfather and leaving ponderosa pine. The ponderosa pine 2 inches in diameter has a quarter inch of dead bark. Which insulates the cambium from the fire. This grand fur 3 inches in diameter has live photosynthetically active bark. That can be killed by temperatures exceeding 145 degrees Fahrenheit. Recall from your old chemistry that is below the boiling point of water. And just a little bit lower than the temperature of a flame. The result is this. 10 years and you can see the height growth of the grand fur. And the fact that that ponderosa pine has died. Now some people have said well grand fur is off site when it colonizes under ponderosa pine. Please show me how the grand fur with this kind of growth is off site. Well this leads to a problem. Time is 1958 and that arrow points to that ponderosa pine. The picture was taken to show the orchard grass seeded in that skip trail. After the first selection cutting in old growth ponderosa pine. It's been about 30 years since a fire burned through here. That grand fur regeneration is about 20 years old. This is after the second selection cutting. The arrow still points to that tree but it happens to be cut. You notice that that is 15 years later. The next slide is going to be 15 years after that. Just prior to the third selection cutting. Are you ready for this? Two years later the stand looks like that. Fuel loading is also increasing. 1963, one down three. This is about three tens per acre and that adds about five to it. And by then that tree and that tree and that tree are down. It's gone from five and should be focused. To 35 tons per acre. Now some of these are how ponderosa pine regenerated. But enough of these creates enough fuel to change this ponderosa pine ecosystem from an under burning to a crown fire system. There is no historical preference for that change. That is something we have created by fire suppression. I didn't say it's good or bad. I simply said that is the way the biology is. That's an interesting point. Some people think biology is good or bad. I just agree with that. I think that biology is, period. It's not good or bad. It just happens. Get on with your talk friend. The pine pine grass, this system right here, can be considered a fire survival plant community. It survived fire by developing in a way that under burning, kept it thin, prevented fuel buildup, prevented ladder fuel and prevented crown fires on a rather dry site that might take 50 to 100 years to recolonize with ponderosa pine following a crown fire. So this is a fire survival mechanism. The last factor is genetic selection of ground vegetation, pine grass and elk set. That is one year later. And please note that legumes have colonized the site. Cianotha also is colonized by under burning and sometimes it produces a little nitrogen and occasionally some wildlife habitat. But the interesting anomaly here is that pine grass and elk set developing under periodic burning developed a resistance to grazing, not because they were grazed but because they were burned. This is a niche that livestock have filled, feeding 54,000 people their entire year supply of beef, 114 pounds cut and wrapped from the Blue Mountains alone. This is a niche that was never occupied by wildlife. I'm not saying cows are good or bad. I'm just pointing out that there are some anomalies and perhaps all the niches in the entire world have not always been filled. So now to the music for us. This is the most complex, large tier, a successional deferred, Douglas Ferd, Grant Ferd and Savalpen Ferd. It has some low intensity, some modern intensity and some high intensity. It's really mixed up, it's confused. Unfortunately, that happens to be two thirds of the Blue Mountain forests but we'll have to deal with it a little bit. Crown fire, of course, is the red. Modern severity under burns. That is modern severity by definition and some low intensity under burns. The result is large dominance. First international symposium on large whitefish Montana demonstrated that there was one thing everybody agreed on. Large requires fire. Japan, Russia, China, France, Norway, United States, East or West, large requires fire. I'm going to try and don't crush you with that this evening. Sometimes it's under burned. But after the under burns stopped, this is a large stand, it's about 40 years after under burning and the same thing 20 years later. Now this tree and that tree are those two. This is how much fur has grown in 20 years, replacing the large. Perfectly historical situation. For the pattern and extent of historical disturbance can be observed by photographing, if you will, looking at large distribution in October in the fall of the year. This is a 140 year old stand of large, that's looking best. 140 year old stand of large that was under burned twice. This is a big sink area north of Le Grand. The big sink is right here. It's about a half mile in diameter. Also a 140 acre year old stand, 140 year old stand of large. At about 3,000 acres. You might consider that the historical range of disturbance track size might not be a target for current day men. This is a track to 4,000 acres, 220 year old large southeast of Le Grand and we're looking over into the Starkey Valley here. This is another 220 year old stand of large in the Northern Blue Mountains, giving way to grand fur. And this is a complex pattern of large at the Starkey Experimental Area where we have the large, grand fur, latch pull pine, ponderosa pine savanna and natural openings. A close up of this looks as we see here. The large, first blood worm, damaged grand fur, natural openings, pine savanna. Okay, down down here. This is a situation of succession in an uneven age stand of savalpin fur and this is a situation of uneven age stands in grand fur. The down logs are large. So we have succession proceeding to where the large dies out and we have an uneven age stand. This is perfectly normal and according to the book and it is also primary spruce blood worm range. Grand fur, over storing, under storing and mid storing. And it is, yes. Primary spruce blood worm range. Superd to the spruce blood worm. This is an area four years after defoliation. It's the grand fur Grouse Huckleberry on Chicken Creek with a smaller half of the stand. The regeneration killed. What happens is the spruce blood worm overwitters in the crowds of the trees and the little two millimeter hummers get up there and start eating current year's leaves. And after a couple of weeks they're four millimeters and they get down into here and a couple more weeks they're six millimeters and they're down into here and by the time they get to the regeneration they're down there an inch long. Pretty hungry, same number. So they have quite a voracious appetite and they do some stand damage. Twenty-two minutes. The same situation. Okay, that one. The same situation occurred in savalpin fur. This is Trump Creek on the grand district and even thin stands on Dooley Mountain have been damaged by the spruce blood worm. Whole stands are affected such as we see here. This is life bull pine and an old burn and these are salvage cuts and grand fur. And even a whole basin. This is North Fork John Day Wilderness. This whole basin has been affected by the spruce blood worm. Just as we see a whole basin in larch. You suppose there's a connection between those two? You suppose there's a connection with how a four or five thousand acre area can burn and come up with the same age larch? Burn evenly. If it was not predisposed to burning by creation of abundant fuel caused by the spruce blood worm we think this is directly related. We strongly suspect now that larch in the Blue Mountains is a spruce blood worm fire large situation in grand fur on one to 200 year intervals 60 to 120 year intervals because that's what we see in the larch age class. 240, 140 and 80. So now to larchpole pine the anomaly as I like to call it it's up here with the high intensity burning. Why do I call it an anomaly? Because the concept is fire burns up the larchpole it dies the larchpole recolonizes it and gives way to fur. That's what the book says. Let's look at larchpole pine in the Blue Mountains. It's a special case for three reasons. Number one, these larchpole pines were rapidly to begin with two to two and a half inches diameter per decade and I'll show you why that's an anomaly. Then notice that there are no snags down here there's some dead larchpole from suppression but there are no dead snags. And thirdly, larchpole pine characteristically burns two or more times a grand watershed 80 year old larchpole pine adjacent to 200 year old grand fur. How could this larchpole pine burn in that same pattern twice and not burn up the grand fur? That's the anomaly. Explanation. All growth grand fur looks like this with about 40 trees per acre over 20 inches in diameter it burns. But you don't burn through an inch and a half of bark through wet sapwood and completely consume a tree. Instead you leave snakes. This is where the anomaly starts becoming fun. This is an 80 year old larchpole pine big huckleberry. Where are the snakes? Did you ever think about that? Where are the snakes in here? This is mortality larchpole. There are no snakes in that. Here's a larchpole grouse huckleberry. Where are the snakes in that? Here's a larchpole pine grass. Where are the snakes in that? That's a clean forest floor. How come? Because it burned more than once. That's how it comes. The second burn consumed the snakes. I'm getting a hit on myself. The concept is that larchpole reaches a size to be killed by the mountain pine beetle. It kills it. Now you talk about flammable. This can burn adjacent to grand fur if the grand fur is nice and wet, the grand fur won't burn up. That's how we get the repeated larchpole pine 80 year old stands adjacent to 200 year grand fur. Without flier this happens. That was 1961. 20 years later after the mountain pine beetle it looks like that. Stagnated regeneration. The old trees grow at 2 inches diameter per decade. These are growing at 0.4 inches diameter per decade. How come? Lightning ignites the stand. The beetles have killed the trees and killed the seed source. Now the regeneration is there. The regeneration burns up. Finally a wave of larchpole comes in and this wide open area of the fur can't colonize. I don't know why larch didn't but it didn't. Larchpole comes in and colonizes the site like that. This is how larchpole can have two or more cycles adjacent to fur. When we look at the hysterical historical extent of larchpole this is desolation creek. 80 year old larchpole in patches covering 5,000 acres. It also includes climax larchpole pine and cold air settlement, Kelley Basin. And of course the famous Anthony Lakes burn. This is Waltham spacing trial in larchpole pine. And this of course was the area that the town and creek fire burned in. So in summary I've discussed the relationship of fire to ponderosa pine, both climax and serral. The great big grand furs of Alpenburg and larchpole pine. Fire severity from frequent low intensity under burns to monstrous things that the smooth spud worm could probably create. From climax ponderosa pine without stocking level control looks like Jupiter first grown better than the pine is here. Look at the high growth of that juniper compared to the pine. You see the dates? 31 years, 29 years. Serral ponderosa pine look like this 30 years after fire suppression just prior to the first selection cut after the first selection cut after the second selection cut. The larch grand fur system 80 year old larch a lot of that in the Blue Mountains I wonder if we had a spruce spud worm attack 80 years ago Aspoid Wickman you might find out which eventually becomes an uneven age stand in grand furs of Alpenburg So the distribution of larch this is Wolf Creek suggests spruce spud worm again north for John Day Wilderness spruce spud worm damage and larch are probably closely related and finally the special case of Latchpole I love this picture in the eerie fog of confusion fire our beetles fire growing in grand fur twice its age would simply suggest that the historical biology and fire in the Blue Mountains is a rather complex situation this is south of your pile 80 year old larch 120 year old larch Latchpole pine some natural openings some clear cuts some ponderosa pine all of which we have a let me get I have to read this now natural history is complex from which we have inherited 80 years of fire suppression and a commodity oriented concepts of forest health represented here by this conglomerate vegetation spud worm damage fur under large natural openings Latchpole pine colonies and ponderosa pine I hope we can all shake our minds loose I do not use the term forest health because I have no idea what it is but stand conditions are worth talking about thank you very much for your attention you just stay up here and you can answer the questions the way we will operate here is we will take two questions from this audience and then we will go to the remote sites and take two from each remote site until we get around the horn there and then after Fred and Tom talk then we will have another period of about 30 minutes if we need it to go around some more for some extended questions so go ahead Fred any questions from this audience just be sure you push the button and its role possibly in terms of drought and wet periods because of how that influences vegetation and possibly the fire succession I wish I could the question was what effect does climate have on insect populations and fire until Boyd Wickman was totally baffled when he tried to collect spruce spud by the spruce bud worm this spring I probably would have answered that in some way or another but I cannot answer that I do not know and I don't think Boyd knows what the climate situations have been with the spruce bud worm we have supposedly had some dry years with lots of fuel by the spruce bud worm and we haven't had a fire that is contrary to theory I cannot adequately answer that question I don't know what the relationship is I don't know if there is a relationship any other questions does anyone from the outlying areas have any questions for Fred okay pretty quiet Fred maybe we'll get some later for you then go ahead so Fred you showed a mosaic that last slide and you mentioned that that mosaic was caused by commodity oriented type of economy here is that mosaic is it so artificial that you how does that mosaic relate to what you would suggest in terms of the vegetation pattern that we should be aiming for in our management here well that's one reason I wanted to read this because I tried to choose my words carefully natural history is complex from which we have inherited 80 years of fire suppression that is a kind of management and a commodity oriented concepts of forest health that means that if the spruce bud worm damages a stand it's bad because it's killing trees that we want to take home now that is a commodity oriented approach is a spruce bud worm bad the spruce bud worm doesn't think so we think cows are good but I'm not sure if the spruce bud worm thinks cows are good we have some historical concepts of how the vegetation developed and with those we can now program what we would like to see in the future whether we want to go back to historical situations is another question if we don't want to go back to historical then we may have to work fairly hard stocking level was controlled by maintaining by burning about every 10 years we do not maintain stocking level control every 10 years we've let the stands get ahead of us so they're stagnated now that's biology whether that's good or bad it's good hiding cover for deer and elk it doesn't make too late woodpecker habitat what do we want how do we get there is the real question thanks Fred we're going to switch to the other outreach locations now and see if we have any questions from Burns does anyone at Burns have any questions if you do push the button in front of you and ask Fred the questions nobody at Burns has a question at this time let's go to Wallawe then I have a question having some pretty good turnouts at the different places no questions at Wallawe okay let's go to Ontario does fire help does Doug first start from seed would you repeat the question please does fire help does Doug first start from seed does fire help Doug first start from seed fire helps provide a seed bed for Douglas fir just like ponderosa pine and it tends to damage the ground vegetation which reduces competition for the first few years so in that way it helps Douglas fir it is not required for Douglas fir regeneration we see far too many Douglas fir trees becoming regenerated in stands that have had no fire treatment so it is not required but it is a help anybody else in Ontario have a question okay we'll go on to Blue Mountain over in Pendleton and we're not sure if we'll have anybody there oh we do have somebody there good going you guys didn't all go to the rodeo we have a question any questions over there Fred the pictures you showed and the amount of fire that you indicated came through periodically how does that maintain these figures of 20 pieces of large woody debris per acre that is currently being discussed the 20 pieces per acre being discussed is a wildlife habitat requirement there's no historical precedent for that in under burn maintained ponderosa pine now there's no reason why they can't ask for that is wildlife habitat but it has no historical precedent so that would give an indication then that there would be a different species distribution by maintaining that kind of habitat in relationship what was historically present that's true when we hassle through the wildlife habitats in the Blue Mountain one thing we had to finally accept was historical conditions of wildlife habitat were pretty darn bad we have significantly better wildlife habitat today than we did in 1850 we had under ponderosa pine virtually no dead and down material standing trees were often burned so that the wildlife habitat conditions in 1850 and this is supported by some of the explorer's records were worse than they are today that means that we have better habitat today and we can probably hopefully maintain better habitat than the fire survival system of ponderosa pine Piliated woodpeckers for example they like to feed in standing snags with carpenter ants under burning does a whole lot of damage to those standing snakes it burns them up there's some evidence that we have twice as many piliated woodpeckers today with fire suppression as we did at the turn of the century the same may be true with gothawk then too is the described habitat that is desirable for it in relationship to some of the early vegetative composition that you've been describing that may be true that may be true any other questions from Blue Mountain two questions is your outline available for ednet communities and the second one is how does fire ecology affect forest hydrology the outline will be available there will be proceedings from this symposium and it will be available what I have available right now is each slide where it was on and what I had to say about it so that will be coming in regard to fire and hydrology that's a very interesting question best answered I think by looking at the endiatte watershed study just prior to the Wenatchee fires of 1970 they finished their fourth year of calibration of that entire study and then they were going to log it at different intensities the fire burned up the entire study the first year they had an increase in water production chemistry the second year they barely had a significant increase in water and chemistry and the third year on they could not demonstrate a significant difference that's about as close as I can get to you a significant difference in either water chemistry or water production did that answer your question okay yeah thanks let's go on to John Day then and see what's at John Day if they have any questions there I have a question I understand that after 80 or 90 years of fire suppression we built up organic forest floors and that when we try to burn under burn these stands that kills the roots of the large trees we're trying that we expect to survive the under burn is that the case is that a very common problem that can be a problem that study was done in the pumice area of central Oregon where most of the nutrients are in the top two inches of the soil and where the ground vegetation seldom produces more than 150 pounds the reason I'm saying that is that the soil conditions in the blue mountains are quite different here we have pine grass producing 600 pounds of verveage where the top 12 to 18 inches of the soil is sort of an A type horizon and there's a tremendous amount of pine grass roots in there which would have to be competed with by Ponderosa pine we have seen some reduction in pine growth with under burning in some cases and no reduction in pine growth through the root damage and others the most reduction in pine growth we get is directly related to damage to the foliage 10% of the foliage is damaged as at least 10% reduction in diameter growth so that we need more studies to demonstrate that under burning under prescribed conditions will in fact damage the roots of Ponderosa pine in the blue mountain setting so in case anyone wonders I am standing I'd like to start off by reading a message from the chief one of the first and most essential facts about forest fires is their commonness year by year they spread over vast stretches of country and every spring and fall accounts of their ravages are brought to public attention few forest regions escape and by far the greater part of the whole forest area of the United States bears the marks of fire yet the forests have not disappeared they have suffered enormously and their losses from this cause increase rather than diminish as time goes on but the forests are still standing in more or less health and value over great areas that have been burned over tens and hundreds of times goes on a little farther in this note the important point is that forests forest once destroyed is rarely destroyed forever note the word destroyed if this were not true it is safe to say that scarcely an acre of timber would now be standing on this continent forests like nations endure only at the expense of a constant succession of births and deaths among individuals which compose them and those are notes from our chief Gifford Pinchot about 1898 so about 100 years ago forest fires were still a problem later he goes on to say that we really need to work with the public to get them to understand the ravages of fire so right then we began as a forest service to kind of remove a process, a very essential process as Fred has talked about from the system it's kind of good to be on the east side every time I come over I know that my sinuses will dry out and I could breathe the webs between my toes and fingers kind of disappear so it is kind of nice and I'm going to take another change I usually talk about more about science than I plan to tonight I'm going to talk a little philosophy and to illustrate the difference between say science and practitioners I just wanted to give you a little story about a balloonus so for eastern Oregon they found themselves lost in the fog and when they came out a wheat field and they looked down and they saw these two people there and yelled down hey down there where are we the two people looked up and one guy said you're 30 meters straight up and one of the guys in the balloon says that is a scientist the other guy looked at him and said how do you know he says because his answer was highly precise but totally useless so I'm going to what I'm going to give you is not highly precise and I hope not totally useless I'd like to talk a little bit about some of the ideas that we have about fire and the problems of getting fire back into the ecosystem I think by Fred's talk that's haha haha stay away from it it's obvious that fire affects every ecosystem process if you look at the organism it affects reproduction it affects growth and it affects survival mechanisms and every almost every species in the pacific northwest is adopted to fire or as at least comfortable with fire in the system you know you don't see the deer running around during fires like you see our firefighters running around you know what you see is species that kind of maybe a humble acceptance of fire as a process they developed and they evolved with fire and it's no wonder that if it's taken out of the system that there are going to be consequences that relate to the composition the structure and the forest processes that we expect to see so that when you talk about composition structure and process a lot of you will recognize right away that those are the three characteristics that Reed Nos and his article talks about as making up biodiversity and what we've been focusing on as a society has been more the structure look at how we've worked with old growth and we've talked about old growth being something that we want to preserve we talk about the composition of old growth but very seldom do we talk about preserving the processes and if you had to rate the three composition structure and process what is the most important of the three you can recreate structure you can recreate composition but process is something that's very difficult to create so we need to focus on the processes and the rates of change and that's the kind of thing that's going to get us towards the diversity and resilience and productivity in ecosystems that probably when you're talking philosophically of values that we want in the long run if I had to characterize what was the most important process categorically in the ecosystem I would say change and fire is just one of the many changes and the Pacific Northwest I would venture to say that it is probably the most important process or agent of change and there's another little passage I'd like to read that Daniel Bodkin talks about in a little okay a little article so that shows up on the screen right okay sideways okay backwards okay well he wrote about the natural myth that we look at things in nature as being relatively stable and preservable those who helped save Hutchison forest in 1954 thought they had put aside an ecosystem that had persisted for untold ages and would continue unchanged into the future the forest had reached a state of harmonious balance that would if undisturbed quote continue to perpetuate itself century after century said an ad run by the firm that helped purchase the land but Hutchison forest was anything but constant by the late 60s the towering oaks were not regenerating below them was a dense thicket of young maples so everywhere and we've seen across the United States that's the kind of thing that we can expect whether it's what Fred had been talking about or what Jim Agee has been talking about all the fire ecologists in the Pacific Northwest the idea of constant change and testing the species that are out there almost on a yearly basis and that's what gives us the resilience that we really value in the long term so when we talk about bringing fire back into the system I think technically we're beginning to know how some of the things that that Fred has shown us I think we're beginning to scratch the surface as far as understanding here's an article by Robert Munch much that's how it's pronounced the big picture, fire management in the 90s very good article about fire in the system and how it's to be used here's one by Probst & Crow integrating biological diversity and resource management indicators for monitoring biodiversity it talks about change in the forest a hierarchical approach by Reed Knoth wild and prescribed fire impact and improvement for wildlife Judith Johnson another good one here's one by our beloved Tom Quigley about east side forest health and protection the issues in the situation so when you talk about science we're scratching the surface at least we begin to know the regimes so when we look at the frequency the intensity, the duration the extent of fire we're beginning to understand that fire varies by all these factors depending on where you are in the ecosystem and I don't think that that's a big problem I think that we can get there we're beginning to understand that the rate that a system processes fuels whether it's building them as far as growth rates or decay or decomposition and the roles that insects and animals play you saw in Fred's talk the decomposition by ants, bacteria and other animals in the ecosystem I think that the science is there we could at least begin and we have to know other things in terms of probabilities like the probability of a dousing rain I mean everyone that's worked in fire management knows the human beings that put out the fire in the long run it's the weather systems we have to know about the typical humidities in the area the probabilities of winds the kind of temperatures that we could expect in every classified ecosystem on a monthly or maybe bi-weekly basis so that we have some idea of the probabilities of the natural world around how the biological world interacts and I really don't think that that's a problem so what I come to is a problem is the human beings and what we the way we look at the processes and the way we handle rates of change let me give you some example the crime rate in the U.S. has steadily gone up and how does that go up does it go up from increase from 10 to 30 percent in one year not really it probably goes up one or two percent a year murders are what about 30 percent in some cities about 30 percent for contacts between human beings I don't know exactly how they do that but it's kind of inched up there it's kind of like taxes you know they creep up a little bit at a time and they get to a point where all of a sudden we notice them when they're at a level that it cross the threshold somewhere in our mind and so the way we look at things that in nature that change rather quickly is quite a bit different Hugo for example the change in the wind patterns that Hugo created we call that catastrophic look at Yellowstone the change that it creates in a matter of several weeks we call catastrophic the recent floods in Mississippi we call catastrophic and their eruptions because we cannot accept a fast rate of change well to me taxes are catastrophic they've crept up on us and they're just as important in the system as maybe these events that we look at as being catastrophic it's just that we don't accept the rate of change when it's beyond something that we normally experience now that's keeping us in a way from reintroducing fire back into the system the way we want we can't go back to the kind of fire regime that we imagine once existed in the system except a step at a time it's got to creep into our being in a way like taxes do or like the crime rate just a little bit at a time and if we think that fire will be ever allowed and I have a word about that in the summary to play the role that it once played I think we're kidding ourselves people don't accept smoke people all over the country don't accept smoke west side east side yet we know that historical levels are much higher than they are now people who live in the forest interface are not going to accept fire so the kind of things that we might once have allowed in the system are not going to be allowed in the future maybe really what we need to do is change people's attitudes say back from the time of Gifford Pinchot when we started looking at fire as kind of in a value system that fire was something that was negative remember I highlighted the word destroyed really when you think about it the forest were not destroyed by fire they were perpetuated you're talking about something that renews or gives a rebirth to the situation when looked at say on a historical basis now as Fred said the levels that we've allowed fuels to accumulate are really probably what the catastrophe is not the idea of reintroducing fire into the system at a rate that's maybe a step at a time some of the things that you see happening around the forest service for example this summer on the Ciskew National Forest for example we've had ten years of drought and the fire management people have been really active in going after fires for the last eight years I mean it's been like an important imperative to get out there and suppress those fires because fuel loads or fuel conditions are really they're really dry there's a lot of fuels out there and it was really important to get out there now this last summer we've had the wettest season we've ever had and there has been very few lightning storms so what happens when there's a fire is that here the people are geared up to go out they haven't been out all summer so that one little lightning strike and you have fifteen helicopters and two hundred people on the fire but that's the kind of thing that happens we still have a knee jerk reaction to the kind of things that happen besides that the fire that we had was in the silver fire that has a periodicity of about fifty years and it burned only about four years ago was there any real risk in allowing that fire to do its thing in that system with fire planning things that were going on this summer I doubt it did we really need to spend that much money to go out there and eliminate a process that we really need as part of the ecosystem another way of thinking about things we need to look at the consequences of our activities very immediately now how many of you here that live in the western United States saw what was going on in the Mississippi where are they building on the flood plains you know and you don't have a lot of you don't have a lot of sympathy for them when you think about fire the whole terrain the whole ecosystem is fire's flood plain so fire can occur in any system at differing rates and we don't quite accept the consequences let me give you an idea of what kind of a short poll that I did with 800 fire managers from all over the western United States I asked them how many of you believe that you have complete dominion over fire as a natural process I asked them to raise their hands and no one raised their hand I said okay well let's back off a little bit how many of you believe that you have 90% dominion no one raised their hands 80 no one I got down to 50 and a few people from California raised their hands and I thought okay I could live with that but it went down to 30% before more than a majority in that room raised their hands as far as their belief about how much of a controlling factor they were with fire in the ecosystem then I said okay the next question is what do you believe the public believes how many of you feel that the public believes that you have complete dominion now a few people raised their hand how many believe that the public believes that we have 80% well by the time I got to 80 and 70% most of the people were raising their hand so there is a difference in between what they think they could do and the kind of dominion they have over fire and what they think public perception is and out of that is going to come some lack of trust we need to be a little bit more square with what fire does in the ecosystem and what control we have I think now Yellowstone is a good example the human perception about what happened in Yellowstone when the press got in there was immediate and negative here is a catastrophe have you all read the articles in like National Geographic American Forest now and the complete reversal of the appraisal of the situation let me see a show of hands okay so you understand that once the information gets out and once we start looking at things objectively rather than politically we begin to understand fire as a process and it was kind of interesting at the same time we were dealing with with Yellowstone I was working with a society of American foresters group and we had a guy from the weather bureau there he says you know I don't understand it he says you guys really get criticized for this let burn policy and the National Park Service got criticized for this let burn policy and I understand it's not quite a let burn policy but you really get a lot of criticism and he says in the weather bureau after Hugo laid the state flat we told everybody that we had a let blow policy and we don't get any crap and so again this idea of the control that we have over natural systems and that's why I mentioned that earlier that we say when we say we're going to allow fire to play its natural role let me just end with three statements let me paraphrase a kind of an old phrase that people have heard fire will happen there's a corollary to that but I won't say it number two is species depend on it and the last thing I want to leave you with is that we don't have control over it thanks any questions for Tom from LeGrand yes I have a comment about control over the fire because I think it's kind of puzzling that we say fire suppression when you look at these fires like the Anthony Lake fire and the TP View fire and the Silver Creek fire and Oregon I don't think they were suppressed and I think the men get out and do a great job of fighting fires but it's usually a condition of nature that stops the fire anyway so suppressing the fire seems a little bit incorrect here's how I look at that when I was a kid I used to go out to the backyard sometimes and I'd turn on the faucet really slow and I would put my hand over the end of the hose and I knew that I could hold that water from coming out for so long but the pressure keeps building the fuels keep building the fuels keep drying and the fuel ladders keep going and pretty soon when your thumb comes off that hose it's not going to be the same pressure you turned it on with it's going to be something that is much higher pressure than what you've seen and some of the things that we've seen lately in terms of fire intensity or severity and extent are a result of us being able to at least hold our hand on those small events for a long period of time but then it gets to the point where it's like okay if you want to be teleological nature is saying yeah you don't have control another question is the conditions in the forest are very different from say 20 years ago or 30 years ago when these fires did what they were supposed to do now if we introduce fire we're introducing fire into a totally different type of situation in the forest than it was 40 years ago so that when you're talking about just like Fred explained when you're talking about letting fuels to acre to 20 tons per acre the effects are not going to be the same on the composition structure or the rates of the processes and so in re-introducing fire you're going to have to be very careful about how you do it you can't just step back and say okay the part that 30% control that we do have if that's what it is we can't just step back and say okay we're going to ignite the forest and let it go in the condition it's in you highly like soil and water and fauna destroyed flora too so we can't just step back and let it go I think that we owe it at least to the system to kind of let it let it go in a step at a time if we can do that now there are some things that we have to be very careful about we're talking about letting fire back into the system in the springs when fuel moistures are relatively high again there's no historical precedent for that we have to expect that the kind of things that are going to happen to the biological community are not the kind of things that used to happen when fire occurred at a later state you know some of the lilies for example that occur in the system are exposed at that time and may have their reproductive structures some of the ground nesting birds some of those things so do we introduce fire in the system we're going to have to learn the rates and the physical conditions like the back of our hand in order to do it right and it's going to take a lot of experimenting and monitoring all parts of the ecosystem any other questions for Tom from agran is fighting fire currently cost effective in it from an economic commodity perspective I have no idea I don't deal with the economics the reason I bring that up is I'm a lay person I'm not a professional force or anything but I hear economic analysis is about timber sales and their cost effectiveness are below cost sales and I don't really understand that very well and I wonder how the equation of fire fighting costs versus commodities saved worked out I thought you might know something I can't even begin to answer you I'm sorry let's go on to the outreach stations we're on burns right now do you folks have any questions in burns for Tom we can come back to you if you have anything we'll go to panel then I had a specific question towards prescribed meadow burns more specifically how would if you had a species of patriciums in a meadow how would that be affected if you were to go in and do a burn and the reproduction growth and survival processes of that patricium species or species I'm a west sider can you answer that later Fred I don't can you hold that one Fred knows a little bit about that species I don't certainly any other questions from Pendleton Fred do you want to come up and get hooked up and maybe we can handle both of those at one time is there a third are you turned on there Fred I hope so in regard to burning the meadows I do not have any personal knowledge from around here but I did have the privilege of attending the society for ecological restoration second annual meeting in Orlando Florida where they demonstrated rather conclusively that 60% of the T&E species require burning for their survival they had two field trips out to show these species and how they are dependent upon fire now specifically for the patricium I don't know what I would caution a person is when you burn the meadows what was a historical system and are you duplicating that or are you going to burn it at a different season of the year that's about the only comment that I can make but in regard to wetlands and fire there is plenty of good evidence to demonstrate that a number of species demand burning for their survival I can get you the references if you'd like yeah I would like the references thank you okay anything else there from Pendleton here we'll go to Wallowa any questions at Wallowa yes I hear almost all ecologists nowadays saying we need to reintroduce fire into the ecosystem and that fuel loads are approaching 20 to 35 tons per acre which sounds pretty plausible why then don't you folks promote thinning from below of the less fire tolerant species to allow promotion of fire in the future as well as conversion back to the mid-serial structured over story that's a great idea and I think that's what a lot of people are starting to do in terms of looking at the total fuel in the system thinning from below the susceptible species and and getting some of the fuels that would ordinarily be there after mortality off the ground my attitude about that is that that is one alternative I'd like to put it this way fire maintained ponderosa pine generally was a single canopy uneven age but a single canopy with fire suppression with serial ponderosa pine we've changed from one tree species to three pine douglas fir and grand fir we've changed from one structural level to a multi-structural level with introduction of grand fir and douglas fir we have added to the diversity of that system not only structure and tree species but we have added indian paint fungus foamy pine eye scolitis a number of other insects which whether they're good or bad doesn't make any difference they increase the non-vertebrate diversity in that stand ponderosa pine going to fir is far more diverse in species and structure than the underburn maintained ponderosa pine now this is not whether a person likes it or not this is simply what is happening what we do about it is a social situation a social decision under burning canopy go ahead I'm not suggesting that we convert to a monoculture I think it's pretty evident that over story ponderosa pine western large and big bark douglas fir the over story species do very well in low intensity fires I'm suggesting if we reduce the fuel loading to a level where we can allow the low intensity fires again that we can control the insidious insects and disease you're speaking of now while allowing for diversity yes we can do that that's correct I love the flexibility of the biological world it is magnificent and I think I would add that when you're talking about total diversity 80% of the diversity of any ecosystem throughout the world is usually in the class insecta so we're sitting here with a lot of baggage talking about you know fred has been talking about letting the values drop right now not necessarily talking about whether we're interested in what commodities or what religious values or whatever but looking at ecosystems as a whole and the kind of things that we're talking about is okay why would we value insects any less than we would value Douglas fir as you know as a society it's obvious that those are kind of things that we have to think of we have to think of them kind of on an equal basis before we start applying the values as part of the ecosystem we have a better chance of coming up with a well rounded system of values if we try to back off and say these things exist what are we going to do with it I didn't say about it I almost did what are we going to do with it see I even have that bias and I try to get away from it any other questions I haven't heard any mention about weeds and we have napweeds and we have the yellow star thistle that's pretty general over our areas and dead things and I don't see how we can bring in generalizations about fire without including the dangers of that thank you I was hoping somebody would say something about that there are dangers to reintroducing fire that's the reason I tried to imply that the underburned ponderosa pine was a fire survival system whether we happen to think that was great or not is not the question it is a fire survival system with other introduced plants that weren't here yes we do increase species diversity with napweed because it adds to the species diversity we don't like it but that's a different question what happens with fire with some of those introduced species is something else we might not like but that is a human value system how does that fit in with the biology of the entire community ecosystem okay let's go on then to John Day and see what John Day has a day of question I would have a question not a question but may have a comment for Tom there talked about we're talking about wildfire and so forth maybe we need to change as an organization need to change our somatics and call some of these things just fire rather than so forth and maybe it will go over easier with the general public yeah there's a lot to somatics and it always cracks me up to listen to fire management when they talk about a lightning strike that if it's within prescription it can be called how do they do that again it's like anybody here for fire management it's called prescribed natural fire there you go thank you and if it's out of prescription it's a wildfire and so those are the kind of things you're talking about and I think what I would rather do is change the focus to the consequences of whatever the process is it's going on and not so much worry about the politics but somatics do help one question for Fred what about tarweed you mentioned some of the other species and we talked a little bit in some prescribed burning over here about tarweed and possibly catching it before it started to seed early in the spring and that seems to be a little bit of a problem I have no knowledge of fire relationships in tarweed and I looked up all kinds of information and that's one weed we cannot find anything on and I just want to know if you had any information one place you might look is some of the Native American literature about some of the agricultural work they did tarweed was an important species to them and they did a lot of burning in order to get tarweed because you might try that source any other questions from John Day we'll go on then to Ontario any questions in Ontario tonight better luck next time alright good seeing you guys there alright that kind of covers the sites that we've got participants this evening does anybody else have any at large questions for Tom or Fred anybody from one of the outlying reaches go ahead and push the button and we'll punch you in here if you'd like us to anybody from LeGrand ok we have some questions from LeGrand ok I have a question Fred you might be able to answer this it has to do with seed viability and how long seed will remain viable I'm not talking necessarily about lodgepole I'm kind of familiar with that but particularly about large how long can we expect that on a site in the soil at to germinate I wish I had a good answer for that the large symposium was quite variable anywhere from two years to 20 years so that's the only answer I can give you I really don't know one thing that I've always been curious about knowing the vagracies of large seed production I wonder where in the world the seed source was to produce these 140 and 240 year old stands of large that we have in the Blue Mountains today when they cover 5 to 10,000 acres that is a biological mystery that I haven't gotten even close to so your question about large seed is very well taken but I have no idea other question yeah I've got a question I guess for both of you can each maybe take a shot at it it's maybe a two part question is that during the period of the 80's the Blue Mountains were hammered pretty good by large what do you want to call them catastrophic fires stand-replacing fires, historic fires but large fires and I think in many of the communities in eastern Oregon that appears to be the reasons for the outgrowth of the Blue Mountain Natural Resource Council and a lot of the partnerships that have developed and I think the thrust of that was to try to determine what was broke and how can we fix it not so much what was the history and I think thanks to your work Fred and Charlie there's a lot of work that's taken place Chris Averageworth I think there's a lot of answers about what was historical but where are we going to go my comment on that is we presume something was broke because we didn't like the outcome my attitude is I'm not sure anything was broke I think we being short-lived critters here we're looking at a 60-year cycle of spruce budworm that 60-80-year cycle that's going to produce large stands of larch we might not like the way it's done burning up 10,000 acres of forest land and 50 homes in the meantime you little grand folks remember the fires that burned out here about 15 years ago there was a lot of frightened people and this isn't even good timberland out here that it burned through it's not I like your attitude I don't think of it as what is broke I think of it as what is happening and do we like it and if we don't like it what can we do about it I think the worst thing that can happen would be that we treat every acre according to some prescription that may have been dreamed up as part of say the natural range of conditions I remember talking to some people in Santa Rosa at the Biodiversity Conference and I talked about natural conditions and they said dinosaurs are natural we can't have those back so that we need to look at the landscape as having a varied mosaic of conditions especially here on the east side and we can't have the kind of things that are happening right now with option nine or with the east side screening process that people have talked about that are more or less prescriptions for the whole region of the whole you know that's the kind of thing that we have to stay away from and if we look at range of say historical conditions as a guide that's all it out to be because I think when we look at that closer and some of the things that I've been seeing the last week I've been looking at that reviewing that east side screening process and I see that we look at say late and old growth in relatively narrow ranges and I think when we look at that over time we're going to see that the basins have been all over the map from zero to a hundred and we're not going to like what we find out I think when we monitor and I think that kind of thing that little article that Bodkin wrote about you know what we expect to see based on natural or historical rates is not what's going to happen so the variability I think the variability is you know from zero to a hundred percent and a lot of basins so it's like let's try to do what we think we could do but have the humility to step back and say that nature's going to kick us in the butt sometimes I think we better wrap it up now folks I'd like to have you help me welcome or thank Fred and Tom for their contribution this evening let's do that now and then I'll go ahead and give a little wrap on schedules to mesh with our schedules so we are going to be looking at a lot of different aspects of what the fire effects have from the soils to air to on the animals and then the wrap up is going to be on October 12 we'll have a panel discussion and we're going to be visiting the question burn or not to burn and how can we use that in management today again your agendas will be coming this week and for those of you who haven't signed the sheets please do that we'd like to have a record of the attendance on the mailing list for later on for other seminars as well sign those every week if you would so to the outlying remote sites we really appreciate your coming tell a friend and bring them back next week it's going to get better from here on but I think that Fred and Tom gave a great introduction tonight on using fire in the system and the historic views of what fire did so thanks again we'll see you later