Forest fires spark debate on climate change

WASHINGTON — It was a monster fire — 175,000 acres of tinder-dry timber just south of the Canadian border in north-central Washington state. In places it burned with an intensity rarely seen, crowning through stands of Douglas fir and ponderosa and lodgepole pine that had been weakened by a bark beetle infestation.

"It was clearly a firestorm," said David Peterson, a research biologist with the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab in Seattle.

At its height, 2,300 firefighters battled the blaze, including crews from New Zealand, Mexico and soldiers dispatched from Fort Lewis near Tacoma, Wash. Last year's Tripod fire, the largest in Washington state in more than a century, smoldered through the winter, and several small spot fires have kicked up this summer.

Peterson and others scientists say the Tripod fire could be a sign of things to come in the Western forests. Rising temperatures brought on by global warming put added stress on trees, making them more susceptible to bugs and disease, and stimulating the growth of underbrush and other fuels to feed the blazes. Some studies suggest that the number of acres scorched by wildfire could increase fivefold by the end of the century.

Even as wildfires burn across the West this summer, the nation's forests have become entwined in the larger debate over climate change. They are both a victim of global warming and a potential solution in helping reverse the trend, by sopping up huge amounts of greenhouse gases.

Among all the talk of carbon sequestration, biofuels and corporate average fuel economy, forests have been mostly overlooked on Capitol Hill.

By some estimates, the forests could absorb 500 million tons of carbon dioxide a year — about a third of the carbon dioxide the United States produces annually. Like all plants, trees soak up carbon dioxide as part of the process of photosynthesis, using the carbon to produce leaves and wood and releasing oxygen. Additional carbon is stored in the forest floor.

"If you are looking at greenhouse gases, forests are a great thing to focus on," Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell said in an interview.

Yet with most things involving federal lands, controversy is brewing. Bureaucrats, scientists, timber industry officials and environmentalists are already sniping over how best to manage the forests in an era of global warming.