New Study Undercuts Logging After Fires
By Michael Milstein, Oregonian
June 12, 2007

Early last year an Oregon State University graduate student rattled OSU's College of Forestry -- and the forestry field -- with research concluding that logging sets back the recovery of burned forests.

New research by another OSU grad student released Monday backs up a key point of the earlier work: Logging and replanting forests after wildfires makes them likely to burn more severely in fires over the next few decades than forests left on their own.

The researchers cannot say exactly why -- perhaps logging debris fuels flames, and young trees planted close together, with branches near the ground, create a tinderbox effect. But the study undermines the long-held argument that cutting and replacing burned trees reliably wards off future wildfires.

It comes as the nation struggles with how to best manage wide sections of the West blackened each year by fires that are pushing the national firefighting bill toward $1 billion.

Timber companies and rural towns argue it's good sense to turn burned trees into lumber instead of letting them decay. But forest activists and some scientists contend the same trees are vital to wildlife and say logging takes a toll on lands left fragile from fire.

The 2002 Biscuit fire in southwest Oregon heightened the debate, though only a small percent of the burned lands were logged. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., last year pushed a bill to speed recovery actions -- including logging -- after fires, but it didn't get through Congress.

No easy answers

The new research makes clear there are no easy answers.

"There's no evidence we can log and replant ourselves out of the risk of high severity fire," said Jonathan Thompson, a doctoral student in forest sciences and lead author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

He examined satellite images and aerial photos of southwest Oregon forests burned in the 1987 Silver fire and again during the larger 2002 Biscuit fire -- at 500,000 acres, one of the largest blazes in modern history. It was the first study of its kind, and wasn't possible without the technology that evolved in the past 10 years.

Thompson found stands that burned most severely in 1987 tended to again burn intensely in 2002, whether or not they were logged. Those that were logged and replanted burned most severely of all.

The findings suggest that once a forest burns, it becomes more susceptible to repeat fires -- whether logged or not, said Thomas Spies, a U.S. Forest Service forest ecologist and co-author of the research. That could subject land to an endless round of blazes, especially as global warming extends the West's fire season.

Forests would have a harder and harder time recovering as tree seeds grew scarcer, Spies said, leaving faster-growing shrubs such as manzanita to dominate.

The cycle leaves land managers with few options to keep a severely burned area from burning again, at least within the first few decades. If trees hang on beyond that stage they may lift their branches high enough off the ground to avoid flames.

Thompson and Spies emphasized that there are good reasons to salvage burned forests through logging -- such as recovering the dollar value. But the idea that removing charred timber from the landscape and replacing it with young new trees does not make it safe from fire.

Like salvage logging, though, the new research carries its own controversy. After the Biscuit fire, Oregon State's College of Forestry became a center of debate over how much logging is appropriate on the millions of acres scorched by wildfires each year.

Research controversy

Michael Newton, an OSU professor emeritus who has long studied southwest Oregon forests, said it's no surprise that young trees planted close together will burn intensely in the heat of the summer.

The more important point, he said, is that foresters can adjust tree spacing, create fire breaks and take other steps to reduce the risk of further fires, while also bringing big trees back faster.

"The way you manage it can make the difference between a healthy stand and a thicket," he said. "The best way to grow big trees in a hurry is to plant them far apart and control the fuel beneath them."

Newton was among the OSU professors who took issue with earlier research by graduate student Daniel Donato, which suggested that forests may recover from wildfire faster if they are left alone. Newton and others argued the opposite -- that cutting and replanting brings back big trees that provide important wildlife habitat.

They argued the process of peer review -- in which independent scientists examine research before it is published -- did not catch weaknesses in Donato's findings, and tried to derail its publication in the journal Science.

They did not succeed, though they eventually published a rebuttal to the conclusions.

Newton said on Monday that Thompson's research lacked enough context to show how the logged and replanted stands had been managed before they burned. That makes a big difference in how widely the results might apply.

He questioned whether other scientists who reviewed Thompson's paper before publication pointed that out.

"That's what the peer review process is about," he said. "It's failed again."

Thompson said he discussed his results several times before publishing them, and got constructive feedback from others at OSU. Lisa Ganio, a professor of forest science at OSU, was also a co-author of the research.

Thompson is now examining the role other factors such as topography played in the intensity of the Biscuit fire, he said.

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