Tree Rings the Journal of the Yuba Watershed Institute
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TREE RINGS THE JOURNAL OF THE YUBA WATERSHED INSTITUTE NUMBER THIRTY SUMMER 2021 JOIN THE YUBA WATERSHED INSTITUTE TODAY! The YWI welcomes new members and volunteers. We need your support and involvement. Members receive Tree Rings and discounts to YWI events and activities. While donations of any size are welcome, annual membership dues are: $100 Forest Steward or Business Membership $50 Families $35 Individuals $20 Low Income and Students Become a member online at www.yubawatershedinstitute.org or send your check, made payable to the YWI, to P.O. Box 2198, Nevada City, CA 95959 All donations and membership dues are tax-deductible. Copyright 2021 All Rights Reserved Tree Rings is published from time to time by the Yuba Watershed Institute (YWI), a 501(c)3 organization based on the San Juan Ridge in Nevada County, California. We welcome unsolicited articles, art, letters and notes. IN THIS ISSUE Listening to the Trees: Learning from the past to inform the future of forest management by Jeffrey Lauder … 3 Restoring Fire and Building Community through the Yuba-Bear Burn Cooperative by Jamie Ervin … 5 The Re-Generation by Debra Weistar … 7 Internship by Amber Cone … 9 Prayer to a God I Don’t Believe In by Jacquie Bellon … 10 The Phoebe Named “It” by Kurt Lorenz … 11 Fuels Reduction for Now, Forest Restoration for the Future by Cameron Musser … 12 Book Review - Trees In Trouble: Wildfires, Infestations, and Climate Change by Bob Erickson … 15 Now That it’s Clear by Jacquie Bellon … 16 The Lone Bobcat Woods Prescribed Burn That Wasn’t by Janaia Donaldson … 17 Wildfire Preparedness and Evacuation Planning in a Pandemic: Experiences from Nevada County, California by Shefali Juneja Lakhina and Susie Kocher … 21 Front cover art - “Good Fire” by Janaia Donaldson Back cover art - “We All Love the Yuba” by Wendy van Wagner (Free download available at www.extrapro.org) Photo: Lisa Haden As we begin to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Yuba Watershed Institute is doubling down on its commitment to help build a more resilient future. The theme of this Tree Rings issue is “Sheltering in Place,” and we hope that the articles, artwork, and poems that follow offer some inspiration for what we might collectively focus on next: a renewed sense of place, strengthened community, forest management guided by emerging science, and a determination to restore the “good fire” upon which our land depends. We are listening, experimenting, and learning together as we navigate new challenges and work to become better stewards of this place. YWI is working on fuels reduction and forest restoration projects in the ‘Inimim Forest and helping to plan new collaborative forest management projects in the Round Mountain and Little Deer Creek watershed areas. Working with community partners south of the San Juan Ridge is a big step for us, as we’ve historically been “hyperlocal” in our focus. However, as our neighbors have become increasingly concerned about wildfire risk arising from nearby public lands, we’ve been invited to build on the success of our partnership with the Bureau of Land Management and replicate our model in other communities. We are grateful for the support of our members, funders, and project partners, and look forward to more collaborative stewardship ahead. - Cynthia King, Editor SUMMER 2021 2 Listening to the Trees: Learning forests of the west burn. These forests were forged in fire, and will continue to be maintained from the past to inform the by it. We know this through study of multiple future of forest management kinds of records, including tree rings. Fire scars— formed within an annual tree ring when fire by Jeffrey Lauder, PhD, Ecologist, damages the thick bark but does not kill the tree Sierra Streams Institute and Board —provide a readily identifiable (and dateable) indication of fire timing and severity. It is through Member, San Juan Ridge Taxpayers studying these patterns that we have become Association aware of the severe lack of fire in our local forests that is the primary culprit in the firestorms we all Forests are interconnected groups of organisms have come to fear. This story is now a familiar representing a system beyond the sum of their one to most forest dwellers: combinations of parts. They are more than just the trees, but trees Native American cultural burns and natural fires do form the foundation. Life in the forest isn’t smoldered across our forests every few years prior easy; drought, pests, fire, wind, and competition to mass settlement of the region. As “civilization” with surrounding plants all conspire against began to tame the wilds, the fires were put out as young trees, selecting only the most robust soon as they were spotted, viewed as a threat to seedlings to make it to adulthood. And this battle our safety. This removed a natural self-regulation against the elements is recorded in the tree itself. mechanism from the landscape, and forests Dendrochronology—the science of tree rings— became increasingly choked by larger populations allows us to look at trees of smaller and smaller as living (or sometimes trees. Coupled with dead) records of their d e c r e a s e d w i n t e r own lives. The name moisture and increased of this journal—Tree warming under climate Rings—is as apt as it is change, this has led to significant. Much like most western forests this issue contains the being just one spark story of ourselves and away from complete our life within the ecosystem reset. forest, so too do the rings of a tree. But as is Thankfully, in our typically the case, there region in particular, Photo: Jeffrey Lauder are multiple sides to there is a revival of this story. The 2020 fire interest in and support year only amplified already renewed investment for cultural burning, in forest restoration work. If there is one major prescribed burns, and mechanical or hand-based lesson we can learn from the mistakes of prior forest treatment that embraces low and mixed- failed forest management practices, it is that we severity fire in order to prevent uniformly high- must stop viewing forests strictly through the lens severity fire. We are slowly refilling the blank of human-forest interactions, and instead learn pages in the story of the trees that once contained from the trees themselves how to go about fire scars. But we must also dig deeper and read restoring a vibrant, dynamic forest landscape. between the lines of that story. Make no doubt about it—our forests are in dire need of our While the fires of 2020 were more severe than stewardship. But we must also be wary of going many in the last century, the total acreage burned too far in the name of fire prevention. Through across the state was on par with pre-settlement studying tree rings we have learned that trees fire seasons. This was a stark reminder that the respond well to fires that clear the surrounding 3 TREE RINGS THIRTY landscape, opening acknowledge that most of what we “know” new patches of soil comes from snapshots in (modern) time— to be colonized by snapshots that form only the outermost rings in the next generation our largest trees. If we look further back in time, o f s e e d l i n g s , into the early pages of a tree’s story, we can learn increasing access to what kinds of conditions allowed these trees to water and other thrive, and how we can modify our strategies to r e s o u r c e s , a n d mimic or support them. So the next time you decreasing likelihood perform fuel reduction on your property, try to of pest infestation imagine yourself as a fire; carve a large swath from nearby “brood through some low shrubby vegetation, maybe trees.” But we also even remove a few large trees if they are see evidence that connected to that swath through their branches. forests thrive on Then leave an adjacent clump untouched. Plan dynamic changes these locations in a way that acknowledges the through time and path a fire would take were it to burn on your space; that a forest land. You should place these treatments in ways with many that allow you egress, and to reduce the generations of trees likelihood of the fire climbing into the canopy or found in clumps with spreading rapidly. But be wary of trying to simply gaps between them “prevent fire.” Instead, embrace fire, embrace are resilient to a heterogeneity, and embrace this opportunity to natural disturbance help our forests write the next chapter in the story r e g i m e . held in their tree rings. “Heterogeneous,” or structurally diverse forests, both prevent uniform high severity Illustration: Hal Fritz 1976 disturbance damage ( i n c l u d i n g fi r e , drought, and pest outbreak) and are more able to recover from it. Tree rings also tell us that some trees are much more resilient to drought, pests, and fire than even their immediate neighbors, and that this resilience may come from more conservative growth strategies (i.e., the slow-and- steady tree may be more resilient than the fast growing one). And finally, we see in tree rings that forests historically experienced particular disturbances during specific seasons, and have since adapted to that seasonality. So how do we listen to these stories the trees tell us, and allow them to help guide our actions? We can view forests through the lens of our place in the landscape, or we can view forests through the lens of trees themselves.