The dead tree challenge Wood utilization in WMSoutheln (alifornia

By John Shelly, Ph. D.

D ECENT wildfires in Southern

-[f,Culitornia burned thousands of acres where wildlands and urban settings meet. These fires, tragic as they were, did little to lessen the fire hazard in the San Bernardino National Forest and mountain-top communities such as Lake Arrowhead, Big Bear, and Idyllwild.

The fires burned mostly chaparral and brush leaving millions of dead and dying trees untouched, and the area vulnerable to destructive wildfires.

Addressing the wildfire risk means removing the dead and dying trees, a costly action that could be made less expensive if the wood could be utilized for products. In the near term, hundreds of thousands of trees need to be removed in and around at-risk communities. In the longer term, utilization infrastructure and markets need to be developed so these forests can be managed safely and consistently with community goals.

Rural residents must also be better educated about the dangers of forest living, and management plans need to be developed to mitigate the fire risk and retain the environment that draws people to reside in these areas.

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The near-term challenges to utilizing the dead and dying trees are numerous:

The amount of forest resources that need to be removed and used is large. By one rough estimate, there are about 3.4 million tons of bone-dry wood in the San Bernardino National Forest. If half of that were processed, it could yield more than 1 billion board feet of lumber or other wood products.

Forest resources need to be better inventoried to encourage new investments. Rough estimates are not good enough.

Many of the pine, fir, and cedar trees that need to be removed are of exceptional form for processing (large diameter, straight stems) but the beetle-infestation has degraded the wood quality by introducing blue-stain fungi. The stain discolors any lumber

Forest resources need to be better inventoried to encourage new investments. Rough estimates are not good enough. produced, making it unsuitable for the highest-value uses and often unprofitable to transport long distances for processing.

Specific markets must be identified for each type of forest resource removed. While some wood may be of the high quality needed for building materials, other wood may only be suitable for landscaping uses or as fuel for wood-fired boilers at biomass power plants.

Trees must be removed promptly to optimize the amount of wood that can be made marketable. For example, salvaged logs should be processed within one year to avoid excessive deterioration. Trees dead more than two years are probably only usable for low value options such as mulch, and in manY cases will be destined for costly landfill disposal or incineration.

Southern California lacks an established forest products infrastructure, with no permanent sawmills to cut and process the wood. The nearest sawmill is 200 miles away and the closest biomass power plant is nearly as far.

In the long term, reducing the wildfire risk will require fbrest management that includes measures to manage fire hazards. Community leaders will not be able to accomplish this task alone.

Landowners and the forest products industry need to understand their roles in supporting fire hazard management and forest health. This includes developing markets for the low value trees that contribute to the high wildfire risk.

The agencies responsible for forest management, fire fighting and prevention, community development, and related issues need to work together to find strategies to reduce wildfire risk and strive for healthier. better managed forests for the future.

- Mr. Shelly, Ph. D., is woody biomass advisor with the University of Califurnia Cooperative Extension stationed at the U.C. Berkeley Richmond Field Station in Richmond, CA. He formerly served as a wootl scienti:;t with the University of Califurnia Forest Products Laboratory.

This article is reprinted with the permission o/Caf ifornia Forests magazine.