In an effort to better inform the public about prescribed burns on the Malheur National Forest (MNF), the Harney County Restoration Collaborative and High Desert Partnership hosted a community discussion on managed fire on Wednesday, May 16, at the Pine Room in Burns.

Following introductions by those in attendance, James Johnston, a research associate at Oregon State University (OSU) and fire ecologist, gave a presentation on the role of fire in the forest.

“The Malheur National Forest, like a lot of national forests throughout the western United States, used to burn all the time,” Johnston said.

A picture of a cross-section of a tree showed the bezel scars from past fires in the forest.

“Extremely frequent fire was the norm for hundreds of years prior to Euro-American settlement of the Malheur National Forest,” he said. He explained that it wasn’t just the dry forest sites, dominated by Ponderosa pine, that frequently burned, but also the wet sites that are primarily dominated by grand fir trees.

Johnston stated that almost 500,000 acres of forest within fire perimeters burned in 2017, which was not at all a record for the past 15 years.

In answer to why are there fires in Oregon, Johnston stated it’s because of the geographical location, halfway between the equator and the North Pole, and the proximity to the northern Pacific Ocean. The climatological patterns provide precipitation in the winter and spring, then the summer months come along and dry the vegetation out, which means “ideal conditions for burning.” Johnston added that this is a really poor climate for decomposition, except for fire, which he termed as a “rapid decomposer.”

Even though fire is a rapid decomposer, it is highly discriminating in what it consumes. Johnston said that for the most part, fire isn’t decomposing trees, but rather at least 90 percent of the vegetative biomass that is consumed in a fire isn’t in a forest per se, it’s on the forest floor.

“Mostly what’s being burned, what’s responsible for those big clouds of smoke, is the stuff on the ground,” Johnston said. “Some aerial fuel is typically combusted, although that’s a small portion of the total, and when the aerial stuff is combusted, it’s the fine fuels, it’s the needles, the tiniest branches.”

Johnston said that the restoration project on the forest is designed to reduce fuels, but what’s being taken away in those operations, what’s being logged, isn’t what’s burning in the fires. He added that mechanical thinning is only half of the solution because it isn’t taking away the fuel that burns, and may actually be adding fine fuel to the forest floor.

Looking ahead to the future, Johnston said there are three elements to fire behavior: topography, which doesn’t change; the amount, arrangement and amount of moisture in the fuel; and weather.

He presented a graph showing temperature trends in Grant and Harney counties between 1950 and 2015. The graph illustrated that from 1950 to the mid-1980s, temperatures were fairly stable around the mean temperature, and then there was a rise in the average temperature. An overlay showed that fire activity on the MNF increased about the same time as the temperature did.

An audience member noted that the increased fire activity occurred about the same time as logging operations and grazing were decreased.

Relating back to the three elements, Johnston said the topography hasn’t changed, but the climate and fuels have.

“So we’re at this sort of perfect storm where, at the same time fuels have increased because we’ve excluded fire, we have also warmed the climate,” Johnston said. “So those two sides of the three-sided fire triangle have become more fire prone for us.”

Johnston did point out that the data showed on the graph was limited to fires larger than 500 acres.

A study done by OSU researchers projected that between 2020 and 2050, the climate in the MNF will be drier and warmer, meaning there will be more potential for fires.

“We have had more fire, and there’s no particular reason to believe we won’t have more fires,” Johnston said.

Potential solutions for fire include fire itself. Johnston said that by using low-severity fire, the fine surface fuels can be removed without doing a lot of harm to the over-story trees.

Following Johnston’s presentation, Tim Boyce, prescribed fire specialist with the U.S. Forest Service, talked about conducting prescribed burns.

Boyce said that by  definition, there are two types of wildland fire. One is a fire started by a planned ignition (prescribed burn), and the other is the opportunity to manage a fire started by an unplanned ignition for resource benefit.

Boyce said that it’s mostly a dry pine forest on the south end of the MNF,  with 15-year fire return intervals that historically occurred on the forest.

“Divide that into the roughly 630,000 acres that make up the district, and to maintain historic fire disturbance regime that did occur historically,  we’ve got to burn about 40,000 acres a year,” Boyce said.

Before any prescribed fires can take place, documents must be submitted explaining what effects the activity will have on the landscape. That process is done by a collaborative of different agencies and organizations discussing goals and protocol.

Then, a prescribed fire plan is drawn up that says how fire is going to be applied in that project area on the landscape. In that plan, there are 21 required elements that range from fuel, topography, firing plan, holding plan, contingency plan, prescription parameters, weather environmental conditions, medical and safety plans, and a process to follow should something happen that they have to declare it a wildfire.

The plan then undergoes several reviews before there is a go-ahead for the burn. Boyce added that they do check the weather and air quality before starting a burn so as to not impact the community.

Boyce said that on May 4, the Forest Service began a prescribed burn on 450 acres in the Silvies 9 area with the fire started by hand and aerial drops.

Boyce then walked the crowd through the process by showing before and after pictures of the prescribed burn area showing the effects mimicked what would have been a historically low-severity fire.

Even though crews do continue to check the weather and air quality, there are occurrences where the winds shift or the fires don’t burn as expected, and smoke does make it to town. He added that if there is air stagnation, a project might be shut down for the time being.

Boyce said they are trying to achieve a range of effects on the forest, including reducing the amount of fuel of the forest floor.

As for the unplanned ignitions, the management plan allows the Forest Service to treat a lightning-sparked fire like a prescribed burn if conditions are favorable.

“It’s going to be really looked at closely because again, we want to prepare ourselves the best we can for those unseen conditions and be successful,” Boyce said.