Era Of Megafires

Taking place at the World Forestry Center at Forest Park, I attended an evening of presentations and a panel discussion on the nature of our nature.  The event was sponsored by The Nature Conservancy, City Club of Portland, Oregon Forest Resources Institute (OFRI), U.S. Forest Service and North 40 Productions.
The evening started with Paul Hessburg Ph. D., research ecologist from the Wenatchee, Washington area. Seeing first-hand the beautiful landscape of the area decimated by wildfire has made this a passion and a calling for him. He spoke about living in a different way, assessing fire risk on your own personal property both in the woods and around your structures, looking at public lands and the risk of uncontrollable wildfires.
Sobering numbers were brought up. Fire suppression in the United States for the year 2015 was 2.1 billion dollars and goes up every year. In 2017 it was 2.7 billion and estimates on costs of repair and replacement on the burned land was over 50 billion dollars. These numbers do not account for lost business/tourism, increased childcare for those who were dealing with school closures, respiratory problems, hospital visits, operating rooms that could not perform procedures during heavy smoke days and the list goes on.
Looking at a National Cohesive Wildfire Land Management Strategy, Hessburg talked about the complex problem with fire suppression being an incomplete solution to the overall. He highlighted several  tools available to manage areas before wildfire becomes the perfect storm of devastating proportions.
To bring the point close to home, photos taken from 100 years ago verses images that have been taken recently, show how our forests have evolved. Our forestlands used to be mosaic patchworks of diverse stands. Tall timber, new growth with areas of bare meadows and barren ground were the norm. They have changed to more thick stands of trees with tons of damaged/decaying fuel on the forest floor with smaller trees and standing dead wood that works as a laddering effect to take a fire from the ground to the crowns of the trees. Once the fire can get a hold in the canopy, it can increase in size and intensity quickly, becoming out of control. Hessburg likened the change to the realization that we are too good at growing trees, and we need more areas that have open spaces to decrease the threat of megafires.
Indigenous people saw the value in maintaining open patchwork areas in the wild lands to keep their people safe and the forests healthy. Over the years, we have filled in those bare sites and have not maintained adequate buffer areas in sensitive areas around wildlife, human life, roads and structures.
In the USDA Science Update Issue #24/ Fall 2017

Large areas of the Intermountain West are in need of some sort of landscape restoration to change fuel patterns, forest age, and forest-density conditions.

In the toolbox available to a management strategy, Dr. Hessburg pointed out the need to maintain fire safety zones around structures and roadways. Employing mechanical thinning to clean up the abundance of fuel in a forest plot. Using prescribed burns to clear out areas that are susceptible to wildfires. Managing wildfire when able to control perimeter and direction, by letting the wildfire burn to thin the forest.
The end of the seminar concluded with a panel discussion with questions from the audience.
The group came from a wide variety of health authorities, forest professionals, a mayor of a predominate logging town, and ecologists. Discussion revolved around the fact that we cannot eliminate wildfires, but we can lessen the impact and devastation of megafires.
A couple of websites were introduced to the group and you may want to do some more investigating on your own;
smokeblog website
Oregon Heath Authority