Washington State just had its biggest wildfire season in history this past summer. Wildfires are a natural phenomenon, and they will continue to happen despite what some may hope. Fire, however, is important to the environment and is needed in order to let it grow and change.

Speaker

Paul Hessburg started out his key note speech on a humorous note by showing a photo of a baby named Philex in a pumpkin from his friend.

Hessburg is the US Forest Service Research Landscape Ecologist and he is a professor at the University of Washington, Washington State and the University of Idaho.

He started out by explaining to his the audience of 80 people about inland northwest forests and how their landscapes have changed through fire.

“We see battalions of incredibly brave men and women fighting really severe fire behavior, we see homes burned, we see firefighters dying, structures are destroyed,” Hessburg said. “We’re seeing tremendously severe fire behavior and so we fight it at all cost but is there a backstory about wildfire.”

Severity of fires

There are different types of severity ranging for wildfires. Low severity fires are defined as fires that kill off less than 20 percent or 25 percent of the dominant tree cover.  These fires occur frequently and constantly reduce the fuel needed to fuel it and thin the forest, Hessburg said.

High severity fire is fire that kills off more than 70 percent of the forest cover. They are most common in cold and wet forests. High severity fires are the most common type of fire now, Hessburg explained.

Historically, most fires were small to medium size and they created a patchwork of burned vegetation which helped regulate when high severity would happen.

Fire helps natural resilience

After a fire, burned and new vegetation would create a patchwork like pattern which actually was a natural resilience towards fire.  

“Locally, fires constantly thin forest patches and they reduce destiny, reduce the fuel,” Hessburg said. “Regionally fires create a patchwork of burned and recovering young middle aged and old forests in various test sizes and this spatially controlled the severity and size of future fires.”

Smaller fires would burn lower hanging branches on trees which would reduce the chance of another fire consuming that tree through a ladder effect Hessburg said. The ladder effect would be when the lower hanging branches would catch on fire then the fire would jump to the above branch and eventually consume the whole tree.

Land ownership disrupts forest pattern

Hessburg showed an image that illustrated how forests under different ownership became disrupted. Each owner has a different goal and a different management plan for their land.  They all work on different schedules as well.

“So these forests that would actually function as sorta an integrated whole on a large scale are disorganized by land ownership,” Hessburg said.

In his closing remarks, Hessburg brought up the key point that the landscapes we live on are shaped by fire. He also remarked how the nearby forest and rangelands need to burn to act as natural fire resilience. The species that live in these habitats are adapted to fire including the fish.

“Historical fire suppression and fire exclusion have created an enormous fuel load and a fire deficient,” Hessburg said. “Consequently, today’s wildfires burn hotter and larger than most historical fires we’re seeing in Washington the last two years.”

At the end, Hessburg solemnly remarked that smoke and fire are inevitable. The weather is changing and becoming more extreme which is increasing fire size and its severity.