Hart Prairie Day Three

Protect, Transform, Inspire: (Neil) Probably caused by an unattended campfire, the Schultz Fire burned 15,000 acres of the adjacent Coconino National Forest in June 2010, at an eventual cost of $150 million (subsequent flooding due to the monsoon’s effects on denuded soil also caused damage). What can we do to prevent such costly forest fires? One answer is to look at how we log forests.

Currently, forests are logged by manual methods, and the commercial returns on the investment have been minimal. Because the Forest Service agency is part of the Department of Agriculture, forests have traditionally been considered resources for harvesting, as if they were agricultural crops. In current practice, the Forest Service hires logging companies to cut trees on public land; they tell the loggers what trees not to cut and then the loggers go in and take out the rest (the trees to save are marked with a special, expensive brand of orange paint). This process has not worked well, due to a number of factors: technical issues such as equipment ill-matched to the local infrastructure, generally low prices for soft wood products, difficulties in timber processing, and lack of experienced logging personnel.

There has to be a better way. The Conservancy is experimenting with using digital tools, such as the Digital Restoration Guide, which uses an iPad to digitally mark trees. Computers in the cabs of the logging vehicles make it much easier and quicker to collect data, which in turn, helps to better manage the forest. These technologies allow the Forest Service to increase the acreage of forest which can be cut while at the same time reducing costs. The Conservancy’s prior partnerships with the Forest Service facilitated the adoption of the Four Forest Restoration Initiative.

Perhaps the irony in all this is that logging operations are now integral to forest restoration. That seems almost counter-intuitive, until one considers a business model focused on ecological services: forests should not necessarily be valued primarily for the extractive worth of their timber.

(Selena) In Arizona, water issues are hugely important. After successful experiences in the international arena, TNC introduced the concept of water funds in Arizona with the creation of the Salt-Verde Water Fund. Basically, a water fund is based on the premise that ecosystems provide financial benefits to people, and that investments by downstream users will improve conditions upstream. The Arizona fund is intended to support projects that invest in both water quality and quantity.

The Salt and Verde Rivers, part of the Colorado River Basin, provide a substantial portion of the state’s population and economy with water, specifically, the greater Phoenix area and the communities and farms upstream. In the Verde Valley, 30 ditches deliver water to landowners throughout the valley. Working with the ditch managers and landowners, the Conservancy helped install new digital monitoring systems for two Diamond S Ditch gates, which in initial tests worked very well to adjust water levels automatically. Hence the technology was installed at additional ditches: Zach Hauser can now adjust the flow of Eureka Ditch with digital gate technology. Hauser, a third generation farmer in the Valley, has also agreed to install drip lines which direct water to a plant’s root instead of flooding a whole field, an irrigation technique that can use half or less of the water that once left the river.

Locale: About a dozen miles north of Flagstaff, at the edge of the Coconino National Forest, is the Sunset Crater Volcano and the Wupatki Pueblo ruins, national monuments administered by the National Park Service, to “perpetuate this geologic landscape that preserves increasingly rare habitat for native plants and animals and to protect past human developments and their relationships to the land.”

As its name implies, the thousand-foot Sunset Crater is the remnant of a recently active volcano; we cannot say for sure, but geologists believe that the eruption happened around 1066 (an easy-to-remember date from European history). In concert with the eruption, two lava flows, the Kana-a and the Bonito, destroyed everything in their paths and created fantastic natural sculptures which tourists gawk at even now. I wondered why the crater was named sunset; supposedly, the afterglow of the eruption, caused by red and yellow cinders spouting from the crater and falling on the rim, reminded people of a sunset (I’m not sure I believe this story).

The Wupatki Pueblo ruins indicate that people lived in the shadow of the volcano in the 1100s, for at least a few generations, in a landscape of scarce water and temperature extremes, before they migrated outward to more hospitable regions of the Colorado Plateau. Archaeologists have named the cultural traditions of the area the “Sinagua,” from the Spanish term for “without water.” Due to the limitations imposed by water scarcity, this culture thrived on trade and exchange. For example, houses in the Wupatki Pueblo could be built in the Anasazi style, but might be furnished with different styles of pottery and textiles.

Weather: High 90, Low 51. Sunny

Creatures: Steller’s Jay (Cyanocitta stelleri), Antelope (Antilocapra americana)

Itinerary: FR 151 to US 180 to Schultz Pass Road to US 89 to Flagstaff to US 180 and return

Excursions: Schultz Pass, Sunset Crater, Wupatki Pueblo Village

Speakers:

Neil Chapman, TNC, On the Schultz Fire and Logging Operations (morning)
Selena Pao, TNC, Managing Water Resources in the Verde Valley (evening)

Reflections: I have never seen anything like the devastation wrought by this fire. Of course, living as I do east of the 100th meridian, multi-acre forest fires are not an everyday occurrence. Though it is now generally accepted that the northeastern Native American tribes set fires to clear forest undergrowth, by definition these were controlled burns. Perhaps our forests suffered comparable damage from the 1938 hurricane, and to a much lesser extent, from more recent tornadoes and ice storms.

I grew up in Hawaii, which means that volcanoes and lava flows signify home to me! Where I live now, in New England, the landscape has been shaped by the same igneous processes (as well as by glaciation), but in different ways. Our rocks are granite, the stuff of continental crust. Granite is felsic, intrusive; it cools slowly, resulting in a coarse-textured, light-colored rock. Basalt is mafic, extrusive; it cools quickly, resulting in a fine-grained, dark-colored rock. Standing here in northern Arizona, so far from my childhood home, I was amazed to see basaltic rock, the same stuff that forms the Hawaiian Islands.

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