Washington: Warming and Wildfires - Enhanced Transcript

Published: September 2nd, 2009 in Impacts, United States, Pacific Northwest, Trends, Climate, Extremes, Drought, Wildfires, Snow & Ice, Flora & Fauna, Policy, Weather, Landscapes
Originally broadcast on: September 2nd, 2009 on PBS's The News Hour with Jim Lehrer

Direct link to this post:

I. Beetles and Fire
II. Warming and Fire
III. Snowmelt and Fire

IV. Forest Management Response

Time

0:36
0:46
0:53
0:58
1:31
1:34
1:36
1:43
1:58
2:07
2:31
2:30
2:58
3:12
3:23
3:42
3:47
3:54
4:12
4:38
4:52
5:17
5:23
5:36
5:46
5:58
6:06
6:39
6:50
7:02
7:06
7:15
7:21
7:51
8:06
8:38
8:45
9:09

Beetles and Fire

0:36

Heidi Cullen (for Climate Central): This entire forest east of the Cascade Mountains has been put at risk by tiny pine beetles, eating their way into the tissue of trees.
- Recent western tree-kill by bark beetles has been the worst recorded.
- Tree-kill by bark beetles has recently spiked in Washington State.
0:46

Susan Prichard: I find it amazing that such a small, non-descript little beetle can reek such havoc on forest systems.
0:53

Heidi Cullen: Susan Prichard studies beetles as a forest ecologist at the University of Washington.
0:58

Susan Prichard: Each of these yellow sap concentrations is an actual site where a mountain pine beetle has bored into the bark of the Lodgepole Pine… and then it will lay eggs and its larvae will actually feed on the cambial tissue, the living tissue of the tree. So here, each one of these centers is an example of the tree trying to pitch out the beetle. So the actual sap of the tree has resins that are toxic to the beetles and then also they physically push the beetles out of the tree, if the tree is successful.
1:31

Heidi Cullen: Wow, this tree is literally just fighting for its life.
1:34

Susan Prichard: It is fighting for its life.
1:36

Heidi Cullen: Beetles thrive in warm weather. Milder winters, earlier springs and longer summers mean more beetles.
1:43

Susan Prichard: So, there is a climate link for mountain pine beetle for sure. And what we're noticing in Washington State even today is that in the last twenty years, with warmer climate, warmer documented climate, there has been an increase in incidents of mountain pine beetle.
- The American West is getting warmer.
- Warming climate is helping bark beetles spread in the West.
1:58

Heidi Cullen: Prichard and other scientists say if the beetles kill enough trees, eventually, more and more of the forest is vulnerable to intense wildfires.
- Bark beetle outbreaks may influence forest fire risk.
2:07

Susan Prichard: And in the late 1990s, a predictable event occurred, mountain pine beetle started to have a large outbreak and after the outbreak occurred over about ten years there were accumulations of both dead spruce from spruce beetle and dead lodge pole pine from mountain pine beetle, that were susceptible to a big fire event.
2:31

Heidi Cullen: Prichard believes this outbreak set the stage for what happened three years ago, when the so-called Tripod fire swept through the Okanogan-Wenatchee forest.
- Tripod Fire Satellite View
2:30

Heidi Cullen: In 2006, the Tripod Complex fire, ignited by a lightning strike, burned some 180,000 acres, costing Washington State tens of millions of dollars. Local residents are bracing themselves for more fires like this one.
2:58

Rita Kenny: With the Tripod fire, for us it's just so scary for us to think, for that to repeat again…. We had ash falling from the sky, it was landing on the car, you had to brush your car off. Walking through downtown, the visibility was probably 20-25 feet….
3:12

Heidi Cullen: Rita Kenny owns a mountain sports store in the quaint Washington town of Winthrop. Her worry: more wildfires will drive away the bikers, backpackers and skiers.
3:23

Rita Kenny: You know it certainly has a huge impact on business…. I think the biggest concern for us is that they are catastrophic fires, meaning when they start, they are going to go all summer long, and they are going to encompass large areas. And the fires do burn so hot so that the trails may not open for a couple of years. So, it limits our recreation and it's just unsafe.
3:42

Peter Goldmark: When I see a fire like that, it's a very painful experience and you want to put it out.
3:47

Heidi Cullen: Peter Goldmark manages all of Washington State's public lands. His concern: the long term consequences of fires.
3:54

Peter Goldmark: It's destructive to the habitat, it's a huge health impact on all residents around. And it's scarring that landscape for nearly a century on the east side of the mountains where precipitation is very low and recovery is very painful. It's very destructive.
- Wildfire smoke is a public health threat.

Warming and Fire

4:12

Heidi Cullen: Fires like Tripod erupt during dry, hot months, a more and more common weather pattern for Washington State. Average spring temperatures have risen nearly three degrees since 1950. Natural variability makes some years cooler or hotter, but records show an overall warming trend. Following a cool spring, this July was among the hottest; and unusually low rainfall has left much of the state in a drought.
- Spring is getting warmer in Washington State.
- Summer is getting warmer in Washington State.
4:38

Peter Goldmark: This part of eastern Washington, where my ranch is and where the Tripod fire was over three years ago, it's been historically dry here, and has been on the nation's wildfire map for being one of the area's most endangered.
4:52

Heidi Cullen: In fact, more than 800 wildfires ignited in Washington, well above the yearly average. Among them: the more than 10,000-acre Oden Road fire, in the Okanogan-Wenatchee forest, in late August. Since the late Eighties, far more land has burned compared to the previous two decades, a pattern seen across the West.
5:17

Heidi Cullen: But back in Winthrop, not everyone agrees warmer temperatures are causing the spike in fires.
5:23

Doug Mohre: After living here for sixteen years one of the things I've noticed is fires in the Methow Valley are basically like rain in Seattle.
5:36

Heidi Cullen: Doug Mohre owns Sheri's Sweet Shoppe near Winthrop's one and only stop sign. For him, the Forest Service's practices are causing fires to get bigger.
5:46

Doug Mohre: The forest service no longer fights fires, they manage the fires…. Once the fire gets to a certain size, they're more interested in controlling where the fire goes and where it burns as opposed to putting it out.
5:58

Heidi Cullen: Roger Townsend, a disabled logger who lives in the nearby town of Twisp, blames more fires on a decline in the timber business.
6:06

Roger Townsend: The Sierra Club and the environmentalists, they think they're protecting the forest. But by protecting it, keeping the loggers out, letting the disease and the bugs go rampant, they're done more damage than they've done good. I consider myself a conservationist, but you have to use common sense and it's a crop. You've got to take care of it. And if you don't take care of it, nature's going to, and catastrophic wildfires are a result.

Snowmelt and Fire

6:39

Heidi Cullen: But scientist James Agee says research shows there is a link between climate change and the spike in wildfires. He is an emeritus professor of forest resources at the University of Washington.
6:50

James Agee: We know that under either warmer or drier air conditions that both live vegetation and dead vegetation—that is, live and dead fuels—become drier.
7:02

Heidi Cullen: The timing of mountain snowmelt is crucial, Agee explains.
7:06

Heidi Cullen: When the snow melts in early spring—arriving one to three weeks earlier—the fire season lengthens, giving forest vegetation longer to dry out.
7:15

Heidi Cullen: In fact, records show years with early snowmelt have far more wildfire than years when the snowmelt is late.
- Much more wildfire burns in the West during years with early snowmelt.
- Scientists project earlier spring snowmelt in Washington State.
7:21

James Agee: If you think about the opportunity let's say for a lightning strike to hit… drying fuel, in these drier conditions… we can get up to maybe 20-30% more fires occurring on that landscape…. Part of this is just kind of a natural, annual variability. But what we're anticipating is that in the future that is going to be shifting towards a pretty consistent earlier snowmelt, and a pretty consistent longer fire season, and because of that much more area burned and much more severely burned area.
- Scientists project wildfires to double the average area burned each year in Washington State, or more.
- Scientists project sharply increasing wildfires in the American West.

Forest Management Response

7:51

Heidi Cullen: Clearing away dry vegetation—that is, potential fuel—is one strategy to tamp back fires. It's part of Becki Heath's mission for the U.S. Forest Service and the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.
8:06

Becki Heath: The dry forest strategy takes a look at about two million acres of our forest that we consider to be in a dry vegetative type like this ponderosa pine, where the vegetation has been accustomed to frequent fire and where it's necessary for us to thin, remove the smaller trees that are competing with the large, healthy trees and under-burn again to clean the forest floor to provide a more resilient situation for the trees to grow in.
- US Forest Service: Fire & Aviation Management
- International Journal of Wildland Fire: Effect of thinning and prescribed burning on crown fire severity in ponderosa pine forests.
8:38

Heidi Cullen: Lands Commissioner Goldmark says better forest management can have economic benefits, and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
8:45

Peter Goldmark: I took a new initiative to the legislature and asked their concurrence and their agreement on my biomass initiative, which is basically an effort to convert woody biomass—and that's either slashed piles from logging or material that's in the forest that is dead or dying as a result of beetle kill or drought, and remove that material out and turn it into fuel.
- Woody plants can be turned into low-carbon fuel.
9:09

Heidi Cullen: It will take far longer than one fire season to know for sure if the moves to cope with warming, beetles and wildfires will make a differences. Meanwhile, the recent upsurge in fires has altered the forests and the lifestyles of the people who enjoy them most.