BackgroundGlobal forests capture and store significant amounts of CO2 through photosynthesis. When carbon is removed from forests through harvest, a portion of the harvested carbon is stored in wood products, often for many decades. The United States Forest Service (USFS) and other agencies are interested in accurately accounting for carbon flux associated with harvested wood products (HWP) to meet greenhouse gas monitoring commitments and climate change adaptation and mitigation objectives. This paper uses the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) production accounting approach and the California Forest Project Protocol (CFPP) to estimate HWP carbon storage from 1906 to 2010 for the USFS Northern Region, which includes forests in northern Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, and eastern Washington.ResultsBased on the IPCC approach, carbon stocks in the HWP pool were increasing at one million megagrams of carbon (MgC) per year in the mid 1960s, with peak cumulative storage of 28 million MgC occurring in 1995. Net positive flux into the HWP pool over this period is primarily attributable to high harvest levels in the mid twentieth century. Harvest levels declined after 1970, resulting in less carbon entering the HWP pool. Since 1995, emissions from HWP at solid waste disposal sites have exceeded additions from harvesting, resulting in a decline in the total amount of carbon stored in the HWP pool. The CFPP approach shows a similar trend, with 100-year average carbon storage for each annual Northern Region harvest peaking in 1969 at 937,900 MgC, and fluctuating between 84,000 and 150,000 MgC over the last decade.ConclusionsThe Northern Region HWP pool is now in a period of negative net annual stock change because the decay of products harvested between 1906 and 2010 exceeds additions of carbon to the HWP pool through harvest. However, total forest carbon includes both HWP and ecosystem carbon, which may have increased over the study period. Though our emphasis is on the Northern Region, we provide a framework by which the IPCC and CFPP methods can be applied broadly at sub-national scales to other regions, land management units, or firms.

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Modeling the impacts and effects of hazardous fuel reduction treatments is a pressing issue within the wildfire management community. Prospective evaluation of fuel treatment effectiveness allows for comparison of alternative treatment strategies in terms of socioeconomic and ecological impacts and facilitates analysis of tradeoffs across land-management objectives. Studies have yet to rigorously examine potential impacts to fire suppression expenditures associated with prior hazardous fuel reduction treatments. Such information would be helpful for federal land-management agencies struggling to contain escalating wildfire management costs. In this article we establish a methodology for estimating potential reductions in wildfire suppression costs. Our approach pairs wildfire simulation outputs with a regression cost model and quantifies the influence of fuel treatments on distributions of wildfire sizes and suppression costs. Our case study focuses on a landscape within the Deschutes National Forest in central Oregon that was selected to receive funding under the auspices of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program. Results suggest substantial reductions in distributions of wildfire size and suppression cost on a per fire basis. Furthermore, because fewer ignitions become large fires on the treated landscape, distributions of annual area burned and annual suppression costs also shift downward because of fuel treatments. Results are contingent on four key factors: large-scale implementation of fuel treatments across the landscape, assumed treatment effectiveness over the duration of the analysis period, accuracy of wildfire and cost models, and accuracy of projected changes to fire behavior fuel models resulting from fuel treatments. We discuss strengths and limitations of the modeling approach and offer suggestions for future improvements and applications.

Large airtanker use is widespread in wildfire suppression in the United States. The current approach to nationally dispatching the fleet of federal contract airtankers relies on filling requests for airtankers to achieve suppression objectives identified by fire managers at the incident level. In general, demand is met if resources are available, and the dispatch model assumes that this use is both necessary and effective. However, proof of effectiveness under specific conditions of use in complex environments has not been empirically established. We geospatially intersected historical drop data from the federal contract large airtanker fleet with operational and environmental factors to provide a post hoc assessment of conditions of use for the 2010–12 fire seasons in the conterminous United States. Our findings confirm previous results demonstrating extensive use in extended attack. Additionally, we show that use is generally within guidelines for operational application (aircraft speed and height above ground level) and often outside of environmental guidelines suggestive of conditions conducive for most effective use, including drop timing with respect to response phase (initial attack v. extended attack), terrain, fuels and time of day. Finally, our results suggest that proximity to human populations plays a role in whether airtankers are dispatched, suggesting that prioritisation of community protection is an important consideration. This work advances efforts to understand the economic effectiveness of aviation use in federal fire suppression.

Concern over increased wildland fire threats on public lands throughout the western United States makes fuel reduction activities the primary driver of many management projects. This single-issue focus recalls a management planning process practiced frequently in recent decades – a least-harm approach where the primary objective is first addressed and then plans are modified to mitigate adverse effects to other resources. In contrast, we propose a multiple-criteria process for planning fuel-treatment projects in the context of ecosystem management. This approach is consistent with policies that require land management activities be designed to meet multiple-use and environmental objectives, while addressing administrative and budget constraints, and reconciling performance measures from multiple policy directives. We present the process borrowing from the Trapper Bunkhouse Land Stewardship Project example to show the logic for conducting an integrated assessment of ecological and natural resource issues related to multiple management scenarios. The effects and trade-offs of the no-action scenario and proposed action alternatives are evaluated relative to silviculture, disturbance processes (including fire behaviour), wildlife habitat, noxious weeds, water quality, recreation and aesthetics, and economic contributions. Advantages and challenges of this project planning approach are also discussed.