WASHINGTON - U.S. Forest Service officials and experts agreed Monday that forest managers must take into account the complex relationship between global climate change and increased wildfires when setting policy.
Ann Bartuska, Forest Service deputy chief for research and development, said Earth's climate is changing and will continue to do so for many decades, and that decisions made today by resource managers will have implications through the next century.
The Forest Service's climate change research focuses on how to help forests adapt to increased stress; how to capture carbon dioxide in soils, plants and wood products, and providing information to policy makers, she said.
She noted that the agency has been gathering information on climate change for years but that "we have more work to do." Last week, 75 scientists came together to look at gaps in knowledge and new research and development, she said.
But if the agency focuses just on science and research, she said, it will not meet the obligation to inform on-the-ground management approaches.
"It doesn't make sense if we're just going to do the science if we don't put it in a form and in a way that is available to practitioners and helping managers make better decisions," Bartuska said. "And that really is the foundation of the work we're moving into." Bartuska said the growing cost of firefighting is one of the agency's "more significant challenges" and that it is eating into the budget for overall programs.
"The escalating cost is something we're very concerned about," she said.
She advocated increasing fuel reduction work to reduce the threat of wildfires.
Susan Conard, Forest Service national program leader for fire ecology research, said changes in temperature and precipitation patterns are expected to lead to longer and more severe fire seasons in many areas of the U.S. Increased burning will result in increased emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, she said.
She said improved models will help scientists predict the interaction between climate change, vegetation and wildfire. But she said more research must be done.
"We need to understand more about fuels, about the effects of changing burn severity on carbon release, and about how these effects will vary regionally," she said.
John Helms, professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, said various climate models show different outcomes, but one estimate is that wildfires will increase 50 percent by 2050 and will double by 2100.The Montana Standard
