El Niño aiding drought, wildfires in Colombia

01 October 2015

published by http://latino.foxnews.com

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Colombia — The low level of water in Colombia’s rivers has officials on standby to deal with the effects of a drought caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon, which has helped wildfires spread and led to water rationing.

The drought in the Andean and Caribbean regions is the result of a combination of adverse factors, Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies Institute, or IDEAM, director Omar Franco told EFE.

Rainfall in September was 50 percent of the normal precipitation level, while El Niño has caused “a rise in temperatures of between 5 and 6 degrees Celsius (9 to 10.8 F) in some regions of the country,” Franco said.

The northern, southern and western basins of Colombia show distress and officials are especially concerned about some portions of the Magdalena River, which crosses the country from south to north, where “the situation is quite critical,” Franco said.

“We have issued a red alert for the Magdalena River’s main course near Barrancabermeja, because its waters are at levels too low for the season, close to 70 centimeters (27.5 inches),” Franco said, adding that navigation and fishing were being affected.

Water flow in the Magdalena River has reached “the lowest level in the past 15 years,” the IDEAM director said.

The other big Colombian river, the Cauca, “is also affected by the dearth of rainfall,” Franco said.

The Magdalena and Cauca basins supply water to 70 percent of Colombia’s population.

Numerous rivers in the central provinces of Cundinamarca and Boyaca, flanked by the Andean ridges and where droughts are rare, now show a decrease in their waters.

The IDEAM expects that the seasonal rains in October will help improve the situation, although it warns that there will be a “deficit” in precipitation.

The prospects are not good since El Niño is still growing and the “major effects of the phenomenon” will come during the first quarter of 2016, which is the dry season, Franco said.

More than 120 cities and towns, including Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, have instituted water rationing.

Environmental protection agencies have suspended access to Caño Cristales, known as “the river of five colors” and considered one of Colombia’s major tourism attractions, due to the low level of water in the area.

The lack of rain and the high temperatures have sparked forest fires, with about 67 wildfires currently active, a situation the Environment Ministry describes as “complex.”

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President signs Wash. state wildfire disaster declaration

21 October 2015

published by www.komonews.com

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USA– President Barack Obama has declared a major disaster exists in the state of Washington following this summer’s wildfires and mudslides.

The disaster declaration makes federal money available to state and local governments as well as Native American tribes to repair or replace facilities damaged by wildfires and mudslides in August and September.

The declaration affects the counties of Chelan, Ferry, Lincoln, Okanogan, Pend Oreille, Stevens, Whatcom and Yakima and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.

Federal dollars are also available on a cost-sharing basis for hazard mitigation work across the state.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency says more disaster designations may be made later if warranted by ongoing damage assessment work.

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Wildfires occurred significantly later than previously thought as a result of changes in oxygen levels

21 October 2015

published by http://phys.org

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USA/UK– The study, carried out by Professor Andrew C. Scott of the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London and Professor Sue Rimmer from Southern Illinois University, reveals widespread fire occurred on Earth more than 80 million years after plants first invaded the land.

The findings, published this week in the American Journal of Science, indicate that although plants were first detected on land more than 440 million years ago there is only scant evidence of fire at that time.

Professor Scott, said: “What surprised us was that many of these early extensive fires were surface fires burning the undergrowth, as we can see the anatomy of the plants being burned through scanning electron microscope studies of larger pieces of the fossil charcoal.”

He added: “This may be because plants were small and were limited in their distribution but over the following 50 million years they diversified and spread across the globe and some of the plants were trees and could have provided a good fuel to burn. Extensive forest fires soon followed, however and we see widespread charcoal deposits throughout the Lower Carboniferous (Mississippian) Period 358-323 million years ago.”

Professor Scott and Professor Rimmer made the discovery after analysing charcoal which was washed in to an ocean that lay across what is now part of present day North America.

The team believes that it was not fuel availability that prevented widespread fire, or climate, but that the atmospheric oxygen levels were too low. It had been suggested that only when oxygen levels rose to above 17% (it is 21% today) that widespread fires would be found. This new data suggests that it was at around 360 million years ago, in the latest Devonian Period, that this threshold was reached and probably never went below this level for the rest of geological history.

This time period defines a new phase of the evolution of the Earth System and regular wildfire would have played an important role in the evolution of both animals and plants.

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Armed ranchers confront firefighters on Tepee Springs fire

01 October 2015

published by www.idahostatesman.com

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USA–  The Forest Service is investigating a report by a firefighter that he and others fighting the Tepee Springs Fire near Riggins were harassed and threatened with guns by landowners.

The unidentified firefighter said the landowners were unhappy that firefighters were not directly fighting the fire that was burning in a steep watershed that drained into the Salmon River. Fire managers had decided to use an indirect strategy to fight the fire because of safety concerns.

The report, filed on the National Interagency Fire Center’s SAFENET page, is designed to give firefighters a voice in safety decisions and to direct managers to safety concerns. The report was published in the online firefighter’s web magazine Wildfire Today, along with a response from the landowners of Mountain View Elk Ranch on the West Fork of Lake Creek, three miles east of Riggins.

The incidents began Sept. 2, when fire behavior was still extreme. It ended four days later, after cooler temperatures and rain reduced the ferocity of the fire that had closed the Salmon River Road for most of the month.

“The landowners, on multiple occasions, expressed frustration towards firefighters (for) their suppression actions, which ranged from verbal threats to aggressive posturing. Law enforcement officers were called on multiple occasions and the incident eventually resulted in two of the landowners verbally accosting a BLM employee while armed with a weapon,” the firefighter said in the report. “The landowners made multiple unsafe demands to firefighters, such as downhill line construction in extremely rugged terrain with fire below them; attempting burnouts on mid-slope (bull)dozer lines with no escape routes or safety zones, and to drop water from helicopters with (the landowners) in the work zone.

“During at least one documented occasion, the landowners took it upon themselves to attempt a burnout and began igniting fire below crews without any communication or warning. Crews had to be pulled to safe areas.”

Brad and Sarah Walters, the son and daughter-in-law of the elk ranch owners, published a detailed response to the firefighter’s filing on Wildfire Today. I spoke with Sarah Walters Tuesday; she said she was a firefighter for five years, and her family didn’t want firefighters to take any action that risked lives. She denied that the ranchers made any threats, started any fires or did anything wrong.

She did acknowledge family members carried sidearms when federal law enforcement officers arrived on the ranch.

“They brought the federal agents on our ground first,” Walters said. “We never threatened anybody with anything.”

Walters said they carry sidearms on the ranch 90 percent of the time.

“We said there was no reason for federal officers to be there,” she added. “We were just trying to save what was left of our animals and our ranch.”

The Tepee Springs Fire burned 95,000 acres before firefighters said it was contained Sept. 24. The number of firefighters has dropped from more than 700 to 15 today, said Brian Harris, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.

“We’re still battling this fire,” Walters said. “They say it’s 100 percent contained. It’s not.”

Harris said there are still hot spots in the West Fork of Lake Creek and other parts of the fire. The West Fork lies in the 9 percent of the fire where firefighters have used a confinement strategy, instead of containment. There they use helicopters to drop bucketsful of water.

“For firefighter safety purposes, we did not go direct in fighting the fire in the West Fork area, so we did construct an indirect containment line to the west,” Harris said.

Later firefighters built a check fire line to keep fire from burning on to the ranch. But several refused to return because of the earlier confrontations. Walters said the fire burned through their ranch twice previously, but that their animals — including elk and bison — “are OK.”

Beth Lund, a Forest Service regional fire official from Ogden, said in the SAFENET corrective actions section that the agency “takes firefighter safety very serious, is looking in to this matter further and will provide further response and follow-up.”

When I asked the Forest Service for comment, I got this: “The issues brought forward … are being reviewed by a group of interagency leaders. We continue to encourage open dialog about safety concerns and will follow up as deemed appropriate.”
 I find it remarkable that after several decades of forest and peatland fires, and associated haze problems, governmental and non-governmental organisations are still barking up the wrong tree in the fire and haze blaming game.

In a recentJakarta Globe article, President Joko Widodo talks tough on fires and haze, blaming “disobedient plantation companies for setting the fires to clear land for planting”. Similarly, the article quotes environmental activists who point to plantation companies for being the biggest cause of fires and haze.

Dear, oh dear — does anyone ever read the studies about causes of forest fire and haze in Indonesia? Apparently not. Or maybe people do, but they prefer to ignore the facts and reiterate the more convenient fictions.

Complex problem

So I say it again, just in case there is someone out there willing to listen. Studies of fire and haze in Kalimantan and Sumatra point firmly towards small-scale farmers and other under-the-radar, mid-scale land-owners, rather than large companies as the main cause of fires and haze.

A study published last month in the journal Environmental Research Letters clearly shows that, on Sumatra, 59 per cent of fire emissions originate from outside timber and oil-palm concession boundaries. These non-concession-related fires generated 62 per cent of smoke exposure in equatorial South-east Asia (primarily Singapore and Malaysia).

In Kalimantan, non-concession fires play an even bigger role. Fires outside concessions generated 73 per cent of all emissions and 76 per cent of smoke affecting equatorial South-east Asia.

These findings are in line with similar results based on more detailed studies in Riau and published in Nature last year. In Riau, 52 per cent of the total burnt area in 2013 was within concessions. However, 60 per cent of these burned areas were occupied and used by small and medium landholders.

And another scientific publication on the causes of Indonesian forest fires showed that, even 15 years ago, when oil-palm companies were involved a lot more frequently than now in land-clearing with fire, rural communities were a dominant cause of fires in both Sumatra and Kalimantan.

The key point is that the fire and haze problem in Indonesia is complex, with multiple actors playing a role. Focusing on large concessions alone, which the Indonesian government and also non-government organisations seem to do, is not going to do much to reduce the problem.

If the President wants “no more forest fires next year”, his government needs to get realistic about real causes and think about how to address these effectively.

Anyone who has ever spent time in Kalimantan or Sumatra during the dry season knows that burning land for agriculture, for hunting, or just for fun is a favourite pastime of many. Most districts have laws in place that prohibit this kind of burning, but the big issue is that no one pays any heed to these laws and consequently, they are largely ignored.

A new approach

If the Indonesian government really wants to reduce the fire and haze problem, it needs to get far more specific in its management. Setting up task forces that look out for fires so that they can direct fire-fighting helicopters and cloud-seeding activities in the right direction are mostly window-dressing and will not do much to reduce the underlying problem of Indonesia’s many arsonists. An expert meeting on the fire problem on Aug 25 similarly recommended shifting the emphasis from fire-fighting to fire prevention.

First, and most immediately, you start with law enforcement. You get the army and police involved to track down anyone illegally setting fire to land, and take legal action. If the law says burning is illegal, prosecute the perpetrators — how hard is that? You advertise burning prohibitions widely, through radio, television, newspapers, social media, billboards and public speeches by governors, district heads and others. And you make sure that everyone understands that this time, it is serious.

In the longer term, Sumatra and Kalimantan may need somewhat different approaches. On Sumatra, where most fire emissions are generated from peat lands, the government has to stop giving out concession licences on coastal peats. As I argued before, plantation development in coastal peatlands is unsustainable and will cause major economic losses to Indonesia. These peat lands need to be reforested and their original hydrology restored. That is the only way to stop peat burning.

In Kalimantan, where burning by local communities plays an even bigger role than in Sumatra, the focus may need to be more on stopping unsustainable slash-and-burn cultivation activities, especially in peat lands. Develop solid agricultural support programmes that provide subsidies for non-destructive land uses that use more advanced fertilisation and irrigation techniques and higher-yield crops.

Ultimately, Indonesia urgently needs to start taking the costs of development into consideration and not focus only on the benefits.

Fires and haze, just like flooding, water pollution, increased temperatures following deforestation and other issues, are costing society tens of billions of dollars in damage annually, but this is rarely noted by those in power. Fires and haze alone caused US$3.5 billion (RM15.07 billion) of losses to Indonesia in the past few years, according to the Jakarta Globe.

Who is counting the costs of floods that increase with deforestation and displace up to half-a-million people annually in Kalimantan alone?

And has anyone even tried to estimate the major economic impact of the much higher temperatures that prevail after a forest has been turned into a grassland or plantation?

Communities complain a lot about the heat, the associated reduced crop yields and the disease outbreaks. They know the costs, but who else is listening?

The science is there to inform decisions on all levels of government and to find lasting solutions, for Indonesia’s own sake. — The Jakarta Globe

– See more at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/what-you-think/article/getting-the-facts-right-on-indonesias-haze-problems-erik-meijaard#sthash.3AXdF9Vv.dpuf

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How to Manage Fire to Cut Pollution and Slow Climate Change

13 October 2015

published by http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com

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World/GFMC–  Here’s a “Your Dot” contribution on the many benefits of managing fires in forests, savannah and peatlands — including slowing global warming, protecting threatened ecosystems and reducing noxious palls of haze. It comes from Lindon N. Pronto, a young former federal wildland firefighter from California who is completing a master of science degree in environmental governance at the University of Freiburg in Germany. Pronto also works at the Global Fire Monitoring Center at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in that city. He’s in Pyeongchang, South Korea, this week at the Sixth International Wildland Fire Conference.

One strategy with implications for climate-treaty talks, he writes, is using controlled fires to cut chances of more intense blazes that emit far more short-term greenhouse gases and degrade ecosystems.

The piece is timely given how much uncontrolled fires have been in the news of late, from the American West to Indonesia, where President Joko Widodo just expressed regret to Malaysia over the resulting harmful haze. For more on that situation please read Joe Cochrane’s excellent report on the fires for The Times and watch drone video shot by Greenpeace here. (This also happens to be the International Day for Disaster Reduction.)

Here’s Pronto’s piece:

Fire Management, Pollution and Climate

By Lindon Pronto

When raging wildfires make the news in the United States, viewers most often watch 100-foot flame fronts threatening luxury homes in Southern Californian or log cabins nestled in the forested Pacific Northwest. Fires have been largely excluded from the climate change discussions, but fortunately this is changing to include consideration of fire as both a consequence and driver of climate change.

In the tropics, fire has been used to manage and tame landscapes through most of human history. But the scale of burning, particularly in Indonesia, has made fire’s environmental impacts an international issue, both by sending dangerous haze across borders and adding to the global buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases warming the climate.

Recent drone footage shot by Greenpeace in Indonesia shows devastation on an astounding scale — combusted rain forest and peatlands smoldering to the horizon. Unfortunately, this is not new.

With a much-anticipated round of climate treaty negotiations starting in Paris on Nov. 30, scientists and fire management specialists are strongly considering the gains in integrating improved fire management practices into climate related agreements and policies. This is a central focus at the International Wildland Fire Conference this week.

Here’s why this could help slow global warming. Global vegetation fire emissions typically constitute a third of total releases of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping emission, annually (1). For example, fires burning in Indonesia alone during the potent El Niño event in 1997 and 1998 produced the equivalent of up to 40 percent of the global gross carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels for that year (2).

This dry season is shaping up to be on track, or worse.

Additionally, every year an average of 608 million hectares burn (over 1.5 billion acres) (3) while an estimated annual average of 339,000 people die prematurely from ailments linked to vegetation fire smoke, with 110,000 of those deaths occurring in Southeast Asia. During previous El Niño years like this one, that global average spiked to some 530,000 deaths (4).

Worldwide, vegetation fires are showing a trend toward longer burning periods, increased fire severity, larger areas burned and increased (mostly human caused) frequency – with all of these factors contributing to more damaging environmental impacts, higher shares of emissions and increasing socioeconomic costs, including greater threats to human health and security.

Scientists are warning that amplifying positive feedbacks appear to be developing in sensitive areas. These ecosystems, primarily the Arctic tundra (5), peatlands (1), and tropical rain forests (6, 7, 8), harbor ancient, highly-concentrated carbon stocks, which are rapidly released during fire events like the one in Indonesia.

During last year’s round of climate treaty talks, in Lima, Peru, a statement issued by the Global Fire Monitoring Center underscored the need to address global vegetation fires in the context of climate change, referring to the work of 58 scientists who evaluated the global state of fire between 1993 and 2014. The full findings are in a 400-page white paper commissioned by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.

Teams are also assessing ways to improve understanding and management of fire’s impacts on the terrestrial environment, on human populations and infrastructure and on the atmosphere – including from cross-border smoke or radioactive fallout from contaminated areas consumed by fire (9).

One tangible result is an agreement of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to combat trans-boundary haze from fires. Other efforts include the International Wildfire Preparedness Mechanism, the International Fire Aviation Working Group, the EuroFire project, the spreading standardization of incident command procedures, the GOFC-GOLD fire monitoring and mapping program, and numerous regional and bilateral agreements.

The next logical step would be a coherent global fire strategy. ASEAN aside, no formal commitments have been made for international disaster preparedness and responses related to large vegetation fires. Flexible yet concerted strategies combining regulatory, informational, economic and organizational instruments, should consider local to global arrangements.

A scientifically-informed cooperative strategy for managing vegetation fires with the climate in mind might help defuse tensions between rich and poor nations tussling over provisions in the draft climate agreement on climate aid and emissions cuts.

Policy approaches could support and include:

– Knowledge transfer and capacity building

– Early fire detection, warning and monitoring systems

– Distinguishing between constructive and destructive fire

– Increased application of prescribed fire in appropriate ecosystems

– Reviewing regional and national policies and law enforcement effectiveness

– Embracing innovation and creativity, along with science and technology

– Using existing institutions; creating new ones where needed

– Applying community based fire management and incorporating indigenous knowledge

– Searching for alternatives to fire in land-use change

– Enhancing trans-boundary cooperation, exchanges, and protocols

– Addressing fire-induced immediate threats to human health and security

Many of these objectives are already under consideration, development or implementation, making it conceivable that they can be shaped into a more comprehensive program. Fire occurrence and fire landscapes, unlike other environmental disturbances, can be effectively managed to result in landscapes that either welcome, or discourage, subsequent fires and can offer a comparatively low-cost means of curbing greenhouse-gas emissions in the short and medium term. Local communities play a critical role in such a strategy.

As the esteemed fire historian Stephen Pyne puts it, we must address the bigger problem, Man’s burning of neolithic landscapes—more commonly referred to as fossil fuels.

In the end, we must address the bigger problem, emissions from burning fossil fuels.

But replacing fossil fuels with renewables at a global scale will take time. While the heavily touted “solutions” are things like incrementally more fuel-efficient vehicles, more sustainable consumption and waste reduction, we could conceivably look to improving wildfire management to buy some time while we sort out the fossil fuel challenge.

Simply put, fire must be carefully applied and delicately managed in natural fire landscapes, and appropriately excluded from where it does not belong.

References:

1. Page, Susan E., et al. 2002. The amount of carbon released from peat and forest fires in Indonesia during 1997. Nature 420, p. 61-65.

2. Spessa, Allan, et al. 2013. Modeling Vegetation Fires and Fire Emissions. Johann G. Goldammer (ed.). Vegetation Fires and Global Change– Challenges for Concerted International Action. Remagen-Oberwinter : Kessel Publishing House, p. 181-207.

3. Mouillot, Florent and Field, Christopher B. 2005. Fire history and the global carbon budget: a 1×1 fire history reconstruction for the 20th century. Global Change Biology Vol. 11, 398–420.

4. Stratheropoulus, Milt, Karma, Sofia and Goldammer, Johann Georg. 2013. Vegetation Fire Smoke Emissions and Human Health. Ed. Johann Georg Goldammer. Vegetation and Global Change — Challenges for Concerted International Action. A White Paper directed to the United Nations and International Organizations. Remagen-Oberwinter: Kessel Publishing House, 2013 p.247

5. Mack, Michelle C., et al. Carbon loss from an unprecedented Arctic tundra wildfire. Nature 475, 489–492. doi:10.1038/nature10283

6. Barlow, J. und Peres, C. A. 2004. Ecological responses to El Niño–induced surface fires in central Brazilian Amazonia: management implications for flammable tropical forests. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Vol. 359, No. 1443, 367-380.

7. Cochrane, M. A., & Laurance, W. F. 2002. Fire as a large-scale edge effect in Amazonian forests. Journal of Tropical Ecology. 18, 311-325.

8. Barlow, J., et al. 2003. Large tree mortality and the decline of forest biomass following Amazonian wildfires. Ecology Letters. 6, 6-8.

9. Goldammer, Johann Georg. 2013. Beyond Climate Change: Wildland Fires and Human Security in Cultural Landscapes in Transition– Examples from Temporate-Boreal Eurasia. Johann G. Goldammer (ed.). Vegetation Fires and Global Change– Challenges for Concerted International Action. Remagen-Oberwinter : Kessel Publishing House, p. 285-311.

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