Fuel Concepts - Wildland Fuel Fundamentals and Applications - page 172

beetles (Jenkins et al. 2012 ). The dead, red foliage in pine stands killed by the bark
beetles appear highly flammable and studies show that the suspended dead foli-
age is generally more flammable than green needles (Jolly et al. 2012 ). However,
these red needles fall to the ground in 1-3 years, leaving a stand of dead trees with
significantly reduced crown fire potential. Further, beetles rarely kill all trees in
a stand; patchworks of 10-90 % beetle mortality in outbreak stands are common
(Schoennagel et al. 2012 ). The green pine needles may be just as flammable as red
needles at the height of an extreme fire season, especially in high wind. Without
spatial and temporal context, it will be always difficult to rate the flammability of
fuels.

10.2.2 Fuel Treatments

Management activities aimed at reducing fuels should always consider ecology first
to increase treatment effectiveness in the long run. A fuel treatment is defined as the
manipulation, modification, and/or removal of wildland fuels to reduce the likeli-
hood of ignition, to reduce potential fire intensity and spread rates, and/or to lessen
potential damage and resistance to control (NWCG 2006 ). However, Reinhardt
et al. ( 2008 ) caution that the primary purpose of fuel treatments should rarely be
to reduce burned area or limit fire growth. Rather, fuel treatments should be imple-
mented to reduce fire intensity and severity, so that if an area burns, the fire will
have minimal impacts on the ecosystem and it will have a lesser chance of harming
people and property. Fuel treatments should also allow firefighters to safely and
effectively fight fire to prevent the loss of property or life, even though fighting the
fire will probably increase future suppression efforts. So the question facing fire
managers is how to treat fuels to accomplish these multiple and sometimes conflict-
ing objectives.
The problem in designing fuel treatments that don't consider wildland fuel ecol-
ogy is that those treatments will probably be ineffective and even counterproductive
in the long run. Fuel treatments should also restore ecosystems to make them effec-
tive at both reducing fuels and useful for other land management objectives. Imple-
menting treatments for the sole purpose of reducing fuels ignores decades of re-
search on the benefits of an ecosystem management approach (Crow and Gustafson
1997 ). It makes little sense to modify fuels with a treatment that creates unconven-
tional stand structures that will quickly compromise the efficacy of the treatment
and will contribute to declines in ecosystem health. Many mechanical canopy fuel
treatments, for example, remove trees to reduce canopy bulk density (CBD) and
increase canopy base height (CBH) without regard to the shade tolerance and fire
adaptations of the residual species. Leaving shade-tolerant, fire-sensitive species
may create stand structures that are highly susceptible to future fire and have low
resilience to other disturbances (Agee and Skinner 2005 ). Moreover, shade-tolerant
residual species can quickly regenerate in treated areas thereby rapidly lowering
CBH and quickly rendering the primary treatment ineffective. When the residual