wildfire

August, 2025

There were no meetings as the ABC is deferring to the County and Forest Health Community Working Group (FHCWG) which has been hosting a series of meetings and activities on forest health and resilience, the Community Wildfire Protection Plan etc. In the meantime, this blog will be published at least every two months or so. If you have any message that relates to the ABC mission statement that needs distributing, please let me know at dGriffith.9@gmail.com.

Tree and Native Plant Nursery Feasibility Study: The ABC has awarded the contract for the study to The Beck Group. Although The Beck Group has historically done studies more related to timber production and forest management, they included a tree nursery operator with extensive California experience on their team. Work on the study will begin in September and should be complete in April. Four proposals were received. The study is funded by a $114,700 Sierra Jobs First Catalyst Grant. The tree nursery would produce tree and native plant seedlings for the eastern Sierra and Western Great Basin as well as native plants for restoration after wildfires.

West Fork Carson River Fuels Reduction and Aspen Monitoring Project Tour: On Mon. Aug. 18^th, from 4 to 6:30 pm the Alpine Watershed Group, National Forest Foundation, and US Forest Service are hosting a tour in Hope Valley. Learn about fuels reduction work that has been completed to enhance aspen stands and restore meadows. Please RSVP to alpinewatershed@gmail.com or (530) 694-2327 for meeting location and details. This event is in partnership with the Forest Health Community Working Group. More information is available here, and those interested may want to read the next item on the affect of aspen on wildfire.

Projects in this area are funded by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife through their Watershed Restoration Grant Program or by the Sierra Nevada Conservancy through their Immediate Action Wildfire and Forest Resilience Program.

Aspen impedes wildfire spread in southwestern United States landscapes: Based on a study of 314 fires between 2001 and 2020, aspen slows fire progression: as aspen cover on the landscape increased, daily area burned and linear spread rate decreased. Where aspen cover was <10%, daily fire growth averaged 1112 ha/day and maximum linear spread was 2.1 km/day; where aspen exceeded 25%, these values dropped to 368 ha/day and 1.3 km/day. Aspen also serves as a barrier to fire spread, demonstrated through a higher proportion of aspen cover at fire perimeters than in burn interiors. Aspen stands can act as a firebreak, with clear applications for vegetation management. To read the original paper go here.

Controlled Burns Cut Wildfire Smoke by 14%: A recently published study on 186 burn sites demonstrated that:

Prescribed fires produced only 17% of the smoke that wildfires generate in the same areas
Fire treatments worked better in forests than shrublands or barren areas
Controlled burns significantly outperformed mechanical thinning at reducing fire severity
Treatments were less effective in wildland-urban interface zones where homes meet wildland vegetation.

To read the original study go here.

Wildfire Risk from an Insurance Industry Perspective: A well written paper produced by a couple of insurance companies on the state of the science, opportunities and barriers to reducing our risk from catastrophic wildfire, and suggestions to support insurability. It:

Summarizes the state of the science on how climate and ecosystem changes are exacerbating fire risk.
Showcases opportunities where ecosystem services may be used to reduce fire hazard and support fire defenses.
Identifies barriers to implementing such risk reduction measures.
Proposes policy, financial, and research tools where insurance sector risk expertise can support nature-positive wildfire mitigation at the landscape scale. This helps mitigate risk to support insurability for the long haul.

To read the original paper go here.

June, 2025

New Director Bill Young: Bill Young, who many of you know due to his involvement with the Alpine Trails Assoc., revegetation of areas burned in the Tamarack Fire, and his participation in various other community activities has agreed to serve as a director of the ABC. His common sense and experience will be a great contribution to the ABC.

Tree and Native Plant Nursery Feasibility Study: The ABC has released a request for proposals to conduct the study and hopes to have a consultant onboard in early July. The study is funded by a $114,700 Sierra Jobs First Catalyst Grant. The tree nursery would produce tree and native plant seedlings for the eastern Sierra and Western Great Basin as well as native plants for restoration after wildfires.

The Walker Basin Conservancy’s native plant nursery in Smith Valley was visited along with the Alpine Watershed Group staff and representatives of the Washoe Environmental Protection Dept. of the Washoe Tribe to get some ideas of what will be required, and pitfalls to avoid.

Aging and Wildfire Risk to Communities: The population of the United States is aging as the Baby Boom generation grows older. In 2020, 23 percent of the U.S. population had reached age 60. The share of the population at older ages is forecast to increase to 26 percent in 2030 and 29 percent in 2050. Wildfire risks are also increasing, and older populations are especially vulnerable. This report found that most (87 percent) of the recent population growth in places with moderate-to-high wildfire risk has been among people over the age of 60. Already, the proportion of older people living in places with more wildfire risk is higher than in the population at large. In rural areas with the greatest wildfire risk, 35 percent of people living in those areas are over the age of 60. The number of older people exposed to wildfire risk is expected to increase as populations grow older and as wildfire increases in frequency and intensity. This very much applies to Alpine County. Who knew?

Ignite Awareness, Not Wildfires: As part of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s Fire Prevention Program, the Whitebark Institute has begun a social media campaign to raise awareness about how all of us can reduce wildfire ignitions. Funding for this project is `provided by the California Climate Investments Program.

Wildfire risk is rising in the Eastern Sierra—and nearly all wildfires in California are human-caused. Whether we’re out exploring or working around our home, our actions matter. Ignite Awareness, Not Wildfires is a guide to understanding local risk and how we can help keep this place wildfire resilient. Follow the above link to explore fire conditions, local history, and smart steps we can take to help keep this place healthy and resilient.

Stickers, and coffee-cup sleeves as well as social media posts will start showing up throughout the next few months as part of this program.

October, 2024

Last month, due to a fat-finger error on my part you received my Alpine County District 5 newsletter by mistake. Sorry.

There was no September meeting, and won’t be one in October, as the ABC is deferring to the County and Forest Health Community Working Group (FHCWG) which has been hosting a series of meetings and activities on forest health and resilience, the Community Wildfire Protection Plan etc. In the meantime, this blog will be published at least every two months or so. If you have any message that relates to the ABC mission statement that needs distributing, please let me know at dGriffith.9@gmail.com.

Tamarack Fire Restoration: Help reforest the Tamarack Fire burn scar. The Forest Health Community Working Group (FHCWG) with help from the Sugar Pine Foundation is planning a volunteer tree planting morning on Oct. 26^th from 10 to 12. This is being managed by the Alpine Watershed Group and registration is required. To register, go here.

Resource Advisory Committee (RAC): The RAC is a committee convened by the Carson Ranger District to advise the Forest Service on how to spend Secure Rural Schools Title II funds to benefit federal lands. There is currently about $200,000 available and the possibility of $15,000 to $30,000/year after that. The RAC will be accepting project proposals until late November. Possible project ideas could include such things as trail and trailhead improvements, toilets, campgrounds and campground improvements, new or improved signage etc. Fuels reduction projects are generally too expensive to accomplish with the available funding.

For more information or to submit a project idea contact Brian Peters, bwpeters1@gmail.com, or Matt Dickinson, Matthew.Dickinson@usda.gov, or 775-884-8154. There are vacancies on the RAC so if you are interested contact Matt Dickinson as noted above.

Tahoe Forest Products Sawmill: As part of the Wildfire & Forest Resilience Task Force’s (WFR TF) October meeting in Lake Tahoe there was a tour of Tahoe Forest Products’ sawmill near Carson City. It is located on land owned by the Washoe Tribe of Nevada & California, and currently has 50 employees. The sawmill is up and running and slowly building up to its full capacity.

Logs are being accepted from as far away as Mammoth Lakes and the Inyo National Forest as well as the Tahoe Basin. Logs are currently sourced from fuels reduction programs in Region 5 (Inyo, Eldorado, LTBMU) of the Forest Service as well as power companies clearance of their transmission line rights of way. Tahoe Forest Products still needs to obtain long term supply contracts, primarily from the Forest Service, to ensure its success.

2024-10-11_TFP

Sugar Pine State Park Prescribed Burn: A second tour by the WFR TF was of the prescribed fire operations by CA State Parks at Sugar Pine State Park on the west shore of Lake Tahoe given by Forester Rich Adams. Sugar Pine State Park has an immediately adjacent community that is sensitive to smoke so they don’t rely solely on the air district for determining burn days, but uses local knowledge to sometimes decide not to burn despite a particular day being declared permissible.

Below are two photos of what we saw. The first photo is of a burn that was completed only two days before the tour. Note the impressive sugar pine with the red flagging around it in the center of the photo. This tree is genetically immune to white pine blister rust and is an important source of seeds for tree nurseries, and it may be the source of some of the seedlings that have been planted as part of the Tamarack Fire restoration.

2024-10-11_Prescribed

The second photo is immediately across the road from the first photo, and was last prescribed burned in 2012, and looks like it won’t need a repeat for some time. Not all of the park has been subject to prescribed burning, but many areas have been burned twice, with one plot burned three times over many years.

2024-10-11_Prescribed2

Tuolumne Biomass: Heartwood Biomass, through its subsidiary Tuolumne Biomass LLC, is constructing and operating a new forest products manufacturing facility centered entirely around monetizing small-diameter logs generated from forest restoration projects in Tuolumne County. They are or are intending to pirmarily produce bundled firewood, agricultural posts and poles, and residual chips for a range of end uses (e.g., biomass energy, particleboard), consuming 30,000 tons of forest restoration biomass per year and directly employing over 19 people starting year 1. For those interested there is a tour Oct. 23^rd. For more information and to register for the tour go here. Please register on or by Friday Oct. 18^th.

Stand Density Index (SDI): For those that have heard the term SDI or relative SDI and are curious about its derivation and what it means there is a research brief here, and the full article is available here. It varies, but in this part of the world a resilient mixed conifer forest has a SDI of about 35%. Much of our forest here are close to 100% SDI, which is why our risk from catastrophic wildfire is so high.

Untrammeling the Wilderness: Abstract: “Historical and contemporary policies and practices, including the suppression of lightning-ignited fires and the removal of intentional fires ignited by Indigenous peoples, have resulted in over a century of fire exclusion across many of the USA’s landscapes. Within many designated wilderness areas, this intentional exclusion of fire has clearly altered ecological processes and thus constitutes a fundamental and ubiquitous act of trammeling. Through a framework that recognizes four orders of trammeling, we demonstrate the substantial, long-term, and negative effects of fire exclusion on the natural conditions of fire-adapted wilderness ecosystems. In order to untrammel more than a century of fire exclusion, the implementation of active programs of intentional burning may be necessary across some wilderness landscapes. We also suggest greater recognition and accommodation of Indigenous cultural burning, a practice which Tribes used to shape and maintain many fire-adapted landscapes for thousands of years before Euro-American colonization, including landscapes today designated as wilderness. Human-ignited fire may be critical to restoring the natural character of fire-adapted wilderness landscapes and can also support ecocultural restoration efforts sought by Indigenous peoples.” The full paper is available here.

Effectiveness of Thinning with Follow-up Prescribed Fire: In historically frequent-fire forests of the western US there has been an increase in stand-replacing wildfire that is well outside of the historical range of variability (HRV), leading to forest loss at unprecedented scales. Although various fuels reduction treatments have generally been shown to be effective, increasingly warm and dry conditions may challenge the efficacy of these treatments. Fire severity (% basal area mortality) in areas of the Dixie Fire that had mechanical thinning with a follow up fire treatment (broadcast burning or pile burning) was the most effective and is compared with mechanical thinning without a follow up fire treatment, and untreated areas. The full paper is available here.

Alpine Biomass Collaborative