[MCN] Excellent Interview with U of M Fire Ecologist

[Matthew Koehler]

This interview with Philip Higuera, a professor of fire ecology at the
University of Montana, is excellent. It was conducted by Joe Eaton, who
teaches at the University of Montana School of Journalism. Unfortunately,
this piece didn’t appear in any Montana media outlets, but rather was
printed in CityLab, which is run by The Atlantic.

Imagine how different the discussion and debate about wildfires, public
lands management and logging would be if experts and facts like this were
part of the discussion. Well, in defense of the environmental movement,
we’ve been bringing up the same facts both this year, and in many wildfire
seasons over the past few decades.

The West Is on Fire. Get Used to It.

*A fire ecologist explains why this summer’s wildfires are so dramatic, and
why the West will have to learn to live with a more severe burning season.*

By JOE EATON <https://www.citylab.com/authors/joe-eaton/> SEP 11, 2017

SOURCE:
https://www.citylab.com/environment/2017/09/the-west-is-on-fire-get-used-to-it/539352/

The West is burning, and there’s no relief in sight. More than 80 large
wildfires are raging in an area covering more than 1.4 million acres,
primarily in California, Montana, and Oregon, according to the National
Interagency Fire Center <https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/nfn.htm>. Taken
together, that’s a wildfire larger than the state of
<http://www.census.gov/geo/reference/state-area.html>Delaware.

California has declared a state of emergency as wildfires burn outside Los
Angeles and threaten giant sequoias
<http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-railroad-fire-update-20170906-story.html>
in
Yosemite National Park. In Oregon, the Eagle Creek fire is tearing through
<https://www.wired.com/story/photo-of-the-week-a-hellish-vision-of-portland-oregons-famous-gorge-in-flames/>
the
scenic Columbia River Gorge. Seattle, Boise, and Denver are socked in under
a haze of smoky air and ash that experts predict could linger until the
first snowfall in the mountains.

But nowhere are the fires more devastating than in Montana, where more than 1
million acres of forest burned
<http://helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/more-than-million-acres-have-burned-this-summer-state-fire/article_17e6c8ce-93e3-11e7-9fec-eb8fa6dd55c1.html>
this
summer, and more than  467,000 acres are currently burning
<https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/nfn.htm> in 26 large fires that line the
mountainous western side of the state.

Philip Higuera <http://www.cfc.umt.edu/personnel/details.php?ID=4147>, a
professor of fire ecology at the University of Montana, is used to seeing
smoky air from his office window in September, but nothing like the thick
smoke filling Missoula Valley right now. He recently spoke to CityLab about
the fires raging across the West, what we can do about them, and why this
year’s big burn might be the new normal.

Breathing the air in Missoula today feels like chain-smoking Chesterfields.
Schools aren’t letting the kids out at recess, and public health
authorities are saying active adults and children should avoid outdoor
exertion. It’s easy to get the impression that this is an extraordinary and
unprecedented fire season. But you study forest fires over a timespan of
thousands of years. How unusual or unique is this fire season?

It’s not—even in the context of the 21st century. In the Northern Rockies,
we had a very large fire year in 2012, in 2007, in 2000, and to an extent
in 2003. In this region, 1910 remains the record-setting fire season. If we
surpass that, I would be surprised. Events like these are not common on a
year-to-year scale. On the other hand, when you look at the role fire plays
in ecosystems, you have to look at a longer timescale, and these rare
events are what’s expected every once in a while.

Why is this fire season so dramatic?

The main reason there is so much burning right now is the strong seasonal
drought across the region. The term we use is that these fires are “climate
enabled.” The drought makes most of the vegetation, live or dead, receptive
to burning. In Missoula, we had the driest July and August on record and
the third-warmest July and August. With those types of conditions, we
expect widespread burning. But people underestimate the role that seasonal
climate plays in these events, and we start to grasp at lots of other
things to explain it.

Aside from the bad air, are most urban residents in fire-affected parts of
the West safe?

Aside from that really important impact, I give a cautious yes. There is a
risk. And that risk is highest in the wildland-urban interface. If you are
living there, you should know that you are living with a much higher risk
for exposure to wildfire. And part of the job of educators and U.S. Forest
Service outreach is to make that risk known. Eventually insurance companies
will also get on board. Floods are obviously on insurance companies’ radar
front and center. Wildfire is still not frequent enough that they design
programs around it.

Should people in the fire-prone West be living in places like that—in the
suburbs and exurbs out in the forested edges of urban areas?

Every place on our planet has some natural phenomenon that is not friendly
to humans. If you live on the East Coast, you are going to experience
hurricanes. If you live in the Midwest, you are going to experience
tornadoes. If you live across forested regions in the West, you are going
to experience wildfires. We need to develop in a way that is cognizant of
these processes—that is not ignorant of the way the planet, and the
environment you live in, works.

Why are these fires so hard to put out?

This goes back to why the fires are happening. The fuels are extremely dry.
And most areas burn during extreme weather conditions—the days when it’s
hot, humidity is low and there are high winds. These are the conditions in
which fires quickly double in size. They are also the conditions where it’s
most dangerous to put people in front of the fire. Also, a lot of these
fires start in very remote areas with rugged terrain, and just putting
people on the ground comes with some risk.

Montana alone has already spent tens of millions of dollars trying to
suppress wildfires this summer, and two firefighters have been killed. Is
that having any impact, or is it like driving down the expressway throwing
bags of money out the window?

When you say it’s not working, the key question is, What’s the goal? “It’s
not working” assumes the goal is to have no fires. We will fail if that is
the goal. Most of these ecosystems that are burning have evolved with fire.
We expect them to burn. We need them to burn if we want them to continue to
exist.

So it’s like trying to stop rain?

It’s like trying to stop an earthquake. Trying to stop a volcano. To me,
the goal can’t be to have no fire. That’s gotten us into trouble when we
pursued that goal. I think the metric should be how much area has burned
that we wanted to burn compared to how much burned that we didn’t want to
burn. Or closer to the nugget, how many resources were harmed—how many
houses were lost, how many people were either directly or indirectly killed?

You don’t see raging forest fires as a failure of suppression efforts?

No. Knowing how climate enables and drives these large fires, I think that
it would be impossible to put these fires out.

There is a school of thought that says we should not suppress wildfire
because it allows smaller trees and underbrush to accumulate, which leads
to larger, hotter fires later. So why not just let it burn?

I think as soon as you live in these environments you will quickly abandon
that too-simplistic view. Maybe when I was a graduate student living in
Seattle that seemed more like a possibility, but you can’t just let it
burn. That would not be wise. It really comes down to what you can afford
to burn and what do you want to protect. If the fire is in the wilderness,
that’s great. If it’s burning toward a community, that’s not so good.

There’s good fire and bad fire?

There is a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum would be the wilderness
fire that is not going to impact anyone—good fire. The fire that burns down
your house or kills people—bad fire.

Another school of thought says we should allow more logging to clear trees
and help prevent wildfires. Does that hold water?

I don’t think that holds water. That is based on the assumption that fires
are occurring because there is more fuel available to burn than in the
past. That’s generally not what’s driving this. It’s the drought. It’s true
that if cut, there is less fuel in the forests. But in a lot of cases,
there is what’s called slash—woody debris—left on the ground that will
carry fire across the forest floor, which is what you need for it to spread.

The simple answer—if you want to eliminate fire, then pave it. There will
be no fire.

Is climate change partly to blame for this year’s fires? Are wildfires in
the West set to get worse because of it?

That’s what future climate models project. We can’t say this individual
fire was because of climate change. We can’t say this year was because of
climate change. But these types of years are what we expect to see more
frequently. I heard an analogy that I think is useful. If a baseball player
is using steroids and hits a home run, can you attribute that home run to
steroids? You can’t—but you know that at some point some component of that
was brought to you by this artificial input to the system.

There was a study that came out last year, which looked at fire occurrence
in the Western United States over the last 40 years using climate modeling.
The conclusion was almost half of burning we have seen over the past
several decades can be attributed to climate change due to anthropogenic
sources. The fire season has gotten significantly longer across the West,
on order of 30 days or more during the past few decades.

What are you and your family doing to live through the fire season?

Personally, I made the decision to not live in the wildland-urban
interface. I live in the urban part of Missoula. We had one HEPA air
filter. Last week we ordered two more. That’s our adaptation.
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