As wildfire season heats up, CSU experts push for national smoke warning system

17 June 2016

published by http://source.colostate.edu

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USA–  We have warnings for high ozone levels, for floods and tornados. But there is one major natural disaster-related risk that is easily trackable but has been silent so far: smoke.

Wildfire smoke is not only a view-blocker. It is also a health hazard, especially for children and older adults, and for those of any age with asthma or other lung or heart conditions.

That’s why A. R. Ravishankara, professor of chemistry in the College of Natural Sciences, and of atmospheric science in the College of Engineering, along with several CSU colleagues, have put together a series of workshops on the topic. Their goal is ambitious: the enactment of a national smoke warning system.

Working with Ravishankara on this initiative: Sonia Kreidenweis of atmospheric science, Marilee Long of journalism and mass communication, Jennifer Peel of epidemiology, John Volckens of mechanical engineering and environmental health sciences, Jeff Pierce of atmospheric science and Sheryl Magzamen of epidemiology. Ravishankara, Kreidenweis, Long, Peel and Volckens make up the Partnership for Air Quality, Climate, and Health (PACH) group, first funded by the Office of the Vice President for Research as a Catalyst for Innovative Partnerships (CIP) program.
Partnering with stakeholders

This month, as wildfire risks climb in the great outdoors, the group met indoors at the CSU Denver Center with representatives from various government agencies including the U.S. Forest Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. They also met with private companies specializing in forecasting, such as Global Weather Corporation and IBM-owned The Weather Company, as well as with stakeholders, including the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the California Air Resources Board. Together, workshop participants discussed ways in which they could work together, and with CSU, to help turn a national smoke warning system into a reality.

Such a system could be a tremendous benefit to the general public. Last summer’s wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, for example, burned more than 1.6 million acres and generated smoke that covered as much as a third of the continental U.S. The haze dulled normally blue summer skies here on the Front Range of Colorado – and as far away as Texas and Michigan. It also brought with it harmful particles that can trigger asthma attacks as well as more serious health issues. Massive wildfires like these are only predicted to increase in frequency with climate change.

As Ravishankara notes, “people really don’t feel climate change.” An increase of two degrees itself might hardly be noticeable. But, he says, we will feel the effects of climate change. Especially when it comes to our health, as is the case with a heavier wildfire smoke burden. And when it impacts health, he says, “that’s when it becomes personal.”

The workshops, which will continue in 2017 and 2018, are being held with support from The A.J. Kauvar Foundation.

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Sovereignty, jurisdiction and international law

25 June 2016

published by www.straitstimes.com 

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Singapore/Indonesia–  In 2014, Singapore enacted the Transboundary Haze Pollution Act, which came into force on Sept 25, 2014. Essentially, the Act makes it an offence for any entity to engage in conduct, or to condone conduct, causing or contributing to haze pollution in Singapore. Apart from criminal liability, the Act also creates statutory duties and civil liabilities.

The Act is unusual but not unprecedented in targeting conduct that occurs outside Singapore, and which causes or contributes to haze pollution in Singapore.

Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, speaking in Parliament in August 2014, said the Act “is not intended to replace the laws and enforcement actions of other countries, but it is to complement the efforts of other countries to hold companies to account”. He added that “we, in Singapore, cannot simply wait and wishfully hope that the problem will be resolved on its own. The Singapore Government would want to send a strong signal that we will not tolerate the actions of errant companies that harm our environment and put at risk the health of our citizens”.

EXTRATERRITORIALITY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

There were mixed reactions to this law in Indonesia. Some parties expressed support for Singapore’s law. Others, including some Indonesian ministers, criticised the law on the grounds that it was a violation of Indonesia’s sovereignty. A typical comment was: “As it happened in Indonesia, it is part of Indonesia’s jurisdiction. If Singapore could easily try Indonesian citizens, it could be a violation of Indonesia’s sovereignty.”

The Singapore Government responded that the law was consistent with international law. It was drafted with the advice of international law experts and did not violate the sovereignty of any country.

The issue is whether it is permissible for a country to enact legislation that would have extraterritorial reach. The answer to this question turns on a proper understanding of the established principles of international law.

The general principle in international law is that states exercise jurisdiction on a territorial basis, namely, over persons, property and acts within its territory. However, there are exceptions to this principle.

One exception is a group of crimes that attract universal jurisdiction. Examples are piracy, genocide, torture, slavery, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes. For instance, under this exception, it is permissible for an Indonesian or Singapore court to try persons accused of committing piracy, such as Somali pirates, even if the acts of piracy occurred outside their respective maritime jurisdictions.

Another exception involves crimes committed outside a state’s territory but which have harmful effects on the state concerned.

There are many examples, including bribery and corruption, terrorism, cybercrimes and cyber attacks and pollution. Such an exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction can be justified under several principles of international law, notably the “objective territoriality principle”.

To argue that states cannot exercise such jurisdiction would mean that states are powerless to deal with a variety of situations where individuals, groups and corporations can, with impunity, carry out acts outside their territories which have harmful effects and consequences on them.

INTERDEPENDENT WORLD

Indeed, the United Nations International Law Commission (ILC) 2006 Report stated that “today, the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction by a state with respect to persons, property or acts outside its territory has become an increasingly common phenomenon”.

The ILC said this phenomenon is due largely to increased movements of persons beyond national borders, the growing number of multinational corporations, globalising of the world economy, increased transnational criminal activities, increased illegal migration and increased use of the Internet for legal or illegal purposes.

To that, we will add the growing interdependence between nations, and the undeniable fact that we live in a fragile environmental ecosystem, where harmful polluting activities in one country can cause serious harm, not only to its own people but to the people of other countries. The nature of transboundary offences necessarily means that multiple states do have a legitimate interest in bringing the offenders to justice.

It cannot therefore be said that any of these states would be acting in contravention of the offending state’s sovereignty by enforcing its own laws. Such a violation of sovereignty would arise in some cases, such as, for example, if a state were to send its firefighters into the territory of another state, without its consent, to put out a fire.

Clearly, Singapore’s legislation does not seek to do this. The law is enforced only when the party accused of causing the harmful act enters Singapore and comes within Singapore’s jurisdiction.

We should add that Indonesia itself has enacted laws that have extraterritorial reach, such as its laws on corruption and on electronic transactions.

CONCLUSION

In a previous contribution to The Straits Times, (“The haze, international law and global cooperation”, Oct 6, 2015), we discussed the principle of international law that a state has the sovereign right to exploit its natural resources, including its forests. However, that sovereign right is limited by a second principle, namely that a state has the responsibility to ensure that activities within its jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other states.

We explained that there is a clear rule in international law that acts committed in one territory that cause environmental harm to the territory of another state constitute a legal wrong. It is, therefore, consistent with international law for Singapore to hold accountable individuals and companies that have caused the fires in Indonesia or elsewhere for that matter, and which have, in turn, caused the haze pollution in Singapore.

Singapore and Indonesia are close friends and partners. We are two of the founding members of Asean. Under Article 2, paragraph 2 of the Asean Charter, Asean and its member states are committed to adhering to the rule of law and upholding international law.

Indonesia insists that the haze issue be resolved under the Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution. We agree that we should use the Asean agreement, as well as other bilateral, regional and international agreements, to solve this problem. However, such agreements cannot curtail Singapore’s right to take actions that are in compliance with international law.

Singapore’s Transboundary Haze Pollution Act is consistent with international law. It does not violate Indonesia’s sovereignty.

On the contrary, Indonesia should welcome Singapore’s law, which complements Indonesia’s efforts to hold accountable those errant companies and individuals that have acted in blatant disregard of the serious harm they have caused to the people of Indonesia as well as those of its neighbours.New Research on the California spotted owl has found that severely burned forests that have not been post-fire salvage logged are used by the threatened raptor when foraging for their small mammal prey. Stand-replacing fires, also called crown fires or high-intensity fires, do not harm spotted owl foraging habitat.

“We looked at spotted owl foraging behavior at multiple spatial extents and we found that whatever scale we used, the owls foraged in severely burned unlogged forests in proportion to their availability. In other words, they foraged in burned forest with the same likelihood as in unburned forest.” said Monica Bond, lead author of the study.

Wildfires over the past two decades have affected southern California spotted owl habitat to a greater extent than elsewhere in the range of the subspecies. From 2003 to 2007, spotted owl territories in the region were especially affected by wildfire, with more than 40% of 168 breeding sites in the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains experiencing at least one fire.

“These frequent and hot fires make southern California forests a good indicator of what may happen in more northerly forests of California in a warming climate,” said Bond. “Luckily, forests burned by high-severity fire can still be considered suitable foraging habitat for Californiaspotted owls.”

Bond continued, “We also found these spotted owls strongly selected foraging sites close to streambeds, so we recommend implementing protective measures and management activities that conserve water and streamside forests.”

The study was published this week by scientists from the Wild Nature Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity in theJournal of Wildlife Management, a peer-reviewed scientific journal for professional wildlife biologists.

This is the latest in a series of scientific papers that have documented how resilient spotted owls are to high-severity fires, including so-called megafires. Spotted owl pairs have been shown to survive and continue to reproduce in breeding sites that experienced severe fire, even megafire, with success that is the same or higher than unburned sites. Spotted owls have also shown a significant preference for foraging in severely burned forest patches in the Sierra Nevada. However, post-fire salvage logging, also called forest restoration by the US Forest Service, causes site abandonment and reduces survival. Logging in an attempt to reduce the risk of fire, often called thinning or fuels reduction, also has adverse effects on spotted owls. The only studies that claimed forest fires hurt spotted owls have had logging in large portions of the study area.

“It’s high time we stopped managing our forests with the futile and unnecessary goal of stopping severe fires. All the science from the field says fuel buildup and insects don’t make forest fires worse. It is extreme weather like the Santa Anna winds in southern California that push fires to become very large, but we will never be able to stop these weather-driven blazes, so we should not risk our firefighter’s lives out in the wildlands. Instead, we should repurpose the billions of dollars we waste each year fighting wildfires on making structures fire-safe in our forest communities,” said Dr. Derek Lee, a co-author of the study. “Many native plants and animals thrive in the severely burned unlogged forest, and that response tells us that this kind offire is natural and necessary to the ecology of theforest.”

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-06-evidence-forest-threaten-owls.html#jCpNew Research on the California spotted owl has found that severely burned forests that have not been post-fire salvage logged are used by the threatened raptor when foraging for their small mammal prey. Stand-replacing fires, also called crown fires or high-intensity fires, do not harm spotted owl foraging habitat.

“We looked at spotted owl foraging behavior at multiple spatial extents and we found that whatever scale we used, the owls foraged in severely burned unlogged forests in proportion to their availability. In other words, they foraged in burned forest with the same likelihood as in unburned forest.” said Monica Bond, lead author of the study.

Wildfires over the past two decades have affected southern California spotted owl habitat to a greater extent than elsewhere in the range of the subspecies. From 2003 to 2007, spotted owl territories in the region were especially affected by wildfire, with more than 40% of 168 breeding sites in the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains experiencing at least one fire.

“These frequent and hot fires make southern California forests a good indicator of what may happen in more northerly forests of California in a warming climate,” said Bond. “Luckily, forests burned by high-severity fire can still be considered suitable foraging habitat for Californiaspotted owls.”

Bond continued, “We also found these spotted owls strongly selected foraging sites close to streambeds, so we recommend implementing protective measures and management activities that conserve water and streamside forests.”

The study was published this week by scientists from the Wild Nature Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity in theJournal of Wildlife Management, a peer-reviewed scientific journal for professional wildlife biologists.

This is the latest in a series of scientific papers that have documented how resilient spotted owls are to high-severity fires, including so-called megafires. Spotted owl pairs have been shown to survive and continue to reproduce in breeding sites that experienced severe fire, even megafire, with success that is the same or higher than unburned sites. Spotted owls have also shown a significant preference for foraging in severely burned forest patches in the Sierra Nevada. However, post-fire salvage logging, also called forest restoration by the US Forest Service, causes site abandonment and reduces survival. Logging in an attempt to reduce the risk of fire, often called thinning or fuels reduction, also has adverse effects on spotted owls. The only studies that claimed forest fires hurt spotted owls have had logging in large portions of the study area.

“It’s high time we stopped managing our forests with the futile and unnecessary goal of stopping severe fires. All the science from the field says fuel buildup and insects don’t make forest fires worse. It is extreme weather like the Santa Anna winds in southern California that push fires to become very large, but we will never be able to stop these weather-driven blazes, so we should not risk our firefighter’s lives out in the wildlands. Instead, we should repurpose the billions of dollars we waste each year fighting wildfires on making structures fire-safe in our forest communities,” said Dr. Derek Lee, a co-author of the study. “Many native plants and animals thrive in the severely burned unlogged forest, and that response tells us that this kind offire is natural and necessary to the ecology of theforest.”

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-06-evidence-forest-threaten-owls.html#jCp

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Manly Vale Public School: ‘Do not murder our children with this plan’

14 June 2016

published by www.canberratimes.com.au

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Australia — Parents and residents are furious with government plans to redevelop a Sydney school in a high fire danger zone.

The redevelopment of Manly Vale Public School on Sydney’s northern beaches has been with the state’s joint regional planning panel since January, after the former Warringah Council urged the Department of Education to withdraw its application for the $23 million redevelopment over environmental concerns.

The school’s fire safety evacuation plan shows that it would take up to 15 minutes for 18 buses to rescue hundreds of students from the school located on top of a ridge next to a category one fire zone, according to documents submitted to the council.

NSW Premier Mike Baird, who is the local MP, said: “We have been working closely with authorities regarding bushfire safety at the school and are satisfied the current plans will provide appropriate protection.”

Under the department’s current proposal, buildings for the 1000-student “super school” would be pushed further into bushland and away from key evacuation points.

The redevelopment of the school is needed to meet “urgent demand”, according to the department, with more demountables than classrooms currently being used to educate the school’s students.

While recognising the need for more classrooms, parents have urged the department to reconsider the planning proposal, which the department is attempting to get through the joint regional planning committee.

“Do not murder our children with this uniformed plan,” said parent Bel Maud.

“As a parent of a child at the school, and a resident living 70 metres from the school, I am not opposed to a new school, but I am against it being shoved unsafely into the Crown land.”

“This will be an accident waiting to happen, just move the buildings closer to the road and the students might have a chance to evacuate quickly.”

Resident Ellin Byrne said the current plans defied reason. The former Manly Vale student has started a petition against the development that has garnered more than 1600 signatures.

“Common sense will tell you that there is a safety issue putting classrooms on top of a ridge,” she said. “They are also stilted, with the potential for fire to burn under the classrooms.”

According to council documents, the NSW rural fire service has yet to approve a bush fire safety authority for the multimillion-dollar proposal.

On Tuesday, Premier Mike Baird was out promoting the service’s rural fire safety initiative to the state’s students at another school vulnerable to bushfires, Warrimoo Public School in the Blue Mountains.

“Unfortunately we are all familiar with the devastation a bushfire can cause and it is important that communities have a plan and know exactly what they will do,” Mr Baird said.

In January, the former Warringah Council, which has since been merged into the Northern Beaches Council, cited environmental concerns and impacts to threatened species as key reasons for its rejection.

The department had proposed clearing more than four hectares of bushland, threatening the habitats of the eastern pygmy possum, powerful owl, eastern bent-wing bat and the grey-headed flying fox.

Despite the protests of parents and council, the proposal looks set to be forced through by the department.

An assessment commissioned by the department found the land was not a conservation area and had no item of environmental heritage.

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California to Fire up Burners to Battle Dead Tree Epidemic

19 June 2016

published by http://abcnews.go.com

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USA–  California’s drought and a bark beetle epidemic have caused the largest die-off of Sierra Nevada forests in modern history, raising fears that trees could come crashing down on people or fuel deadly wildfires that could wipe out mountain communities.

Aerial images show vast forests that have turned a rust-color. The epidemic has killed an estimated 40 million trees since 2010 in the central and southern Sierra, and it’s spreading north.

Officials who are cutting down and stacking the most dangerous trees in piles across six counties, however, say they are stumped by how to get rid of them all.

One solution is to fire up a fleet of 10 large, mechanized incinerators the state recently purchased. Promoters say they burn so hot that they spew little if any smoke, making them environmentally friendly.

Environmentalists contend the burners undercut an emergency order by Gov. Jerry Brown — considered a global leader in the fight against climate change — who called for sending the trees to biomass plants and converting them into energy.

Chief Ken Pimlott, who manages the state’s response to the die-off as director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, defended the air burners as one of many tools.

He acknowledged the burners will contribute to air pollution, as with any work in the forest, but much less than a large wildfire, which the air burners may prevent by removing dead trees.

“We could have a catastrophic wildfire in any of these communities,” he said, adding that sending trees to electricity-generating plants remains a priority. “We have to be aggressive in terms of protecting life and property.”

Called air-curtain burners, the 20-foot long, steel containers blast a sheet of air over the open top, disposing of up to eight trees an hour. The state bought them for roughly $1 million, part of a $5 million investment in equipment to meet the epidemic.

A lack of visible smoke, however, doesn’t mean the air burners are clean, said Chad Hanson, a forest ecologist at Earth Island Institute’s John Muir Project. He called them a waste of taxpayer money and a misguided approach to managing California’s forests.

“You’re still pumping a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” Hanson said.

Living trees absorb and store carbon dioxide, a major source of greenhouse gases, which is released again when the wood is burned. Hanson said he favors leaving the trees that need to be cut down on the forest floor to naturally decompose as wildlife habitat.

He urged Brown to withdraw the emergency declaration, fearing that it would increase logging of dead trees that forests need to replenish. Hanson added that dead trees don’t fuel more fierce wildfires as commonly believed.

Last year alone 29 million trees died at the height of California’s drought now in its fifth year, the U.S. Forest Service reports. Officials say they’ll soon release an updated count.

Drought makes trees vulnerable to the insects’ attack, officials say.

A beetle epidemic in forests of the Rocky Mountain states was blamed in 2013 for contributing to Colorado’s second largest wildfire, forcing entire communities to be evacuated, said Jeff Mai, aerial survey manager for the U.S. Forest Service based in Colorado.

Officials removed some trees throughout the region that threatened people, selling them as lumber products like fence posts. Most were left to decompose naturally. Mai said that in California, bark beetles have killed five times more area of forests than in Colorado.

It’s unclear how many trees in the Sierra will be cut down. Officials say the first job is removing those that threaten motorists and mountain communities.

Declaring the emergency on Oct. 30, Brown formed a task force, including representatives of the energy industry and environmentalists, that is charged with carrying out the order, which emphasizes sending the trees to biomass plants that turn agriculture and tree waste into electricity.

That has moved slowly because California’s few remaining biomass plants are closing as utility companies turn to cheaper sources of solar and wind.

Another solution to turn the dead trees to lumber has hit obstacles because they quickly deteriorate, and beetles carry a fungus that stains the wood blue, diminishing its value.

Urgency for residents at the heart of the tree epidemic remains high as California enters another potentially explosive wildfire season.

“One big fire in the wrong place will become very big, very fast,” said Randy Hanvelt, a Tuolumne County supervisor. “I’m afraid people are going to die.”

CalFire plans to start running the air burners around the clock this fall.

An environmental benefit of the air burners is that they eliminate the soot, a major contributor to climate change, said Norbert Fuhrmann, vice president of Air Burners, Inc., the device’s Florida-based manufacturer.

Jim McDougald, a CalFire division chief in Fresno County overseeing the burners, said he prefers turning the trees into energy, lumber or opening undiscovered markets to give them value.

But the air burners are one means for the state to get rid of trees in the massive die-off that’s changing the Sierra’s landscape for years to come, he said.

“This is bad,” said McDougald, standing at a lookout point south of Yosemite, where a few patches of dead trees two years now dominate the vista. “It’ll never come back — not in our lifetime.”

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