Forest Service research budget feels the pinch

FRASER - An agency-wide budget crunch is affecting Forest Service research efforts at the Fraser Experimental Forest, near Winter Park, a leading Forest Service scientist said last week.

Sitting near the epicenter of the advanced pine beetle infestation in Grand County, the research forest has been a focal point for research related to the insect infestation in recent years, but shriveling funding threatens to impede some of the work.

Just a few months away from retirement, silviculturist Dr. Wayne Shepperd described the funding picture as grim, noting cuts not only at the Fraser site, but in other important posts, including fire ecology research at the agency's Montana fire research lab. When a well-respected senior researcher recently retired there, the agency didn't fill the position, leaving a gap in at least one critical research area, cutting fire ecology research by half.

Shepperd, who has been conducting research at the Fraser forest for more than three decades, said that for the last 10 years, the budget of the Fort Collins-based Rocky Mountain Research Station has stayed flat at about $30 million annually. But because of increases in fixed costs, including gasoline and salaries, that actually represents an annual decrease of about $1.5 million - money that's no longer available for critical on-the-ground research.

"It's made us leaner and meaner," Shepperd said. "We have to be more targeted. Twenty-five years ago, we were giving money to universities. Now we're competing for the same soft money (grants)."

Because of the shrinking operational budget, the Forest Service hasn't replaced key scientists. The number of agency researchers working on fire, insect infestations and other areas has shrunk significantly in the last two decades, down to about 95 scientists from a peak of nearly twice that number.

Shepperd has been conducting forest science experiments at the Fraser site for 37 years. Much of the research has focused on the effects of logging on water quality and quantity, but as the ubiquitous mountain pine beetles have blasted through the extensive stands of lodgepoles in the 27,000-acre site, the infestation has provided some opportunities for new research.

Among other things, scientists are trying to determine how effective various types of treatments are in slowing the epidemic - a topic that's of huge interest in Summit County, where local officials are also dealing with an explosive level of beetle infestation.

Shepperd said his focus as a researcher is providing the decision makers with the best possible science.

"You tell me what you want. I'll try to tell you if you can get there and how," Shepperd said. "What, if anything, do we need to do to move the forest back to a more desirable condition," he added.

Determining what that "desirable condition" is a social and political question, and once those decisions are made, then the scientists can help show how to get there, Shepperd said.

If the goal is to preserve a relatively small areas of trees - around campgrounds, or in tree islands between ski trails, for example - Shepperd said one technique that's been effectively tested at the research station is to selectively cut and thin by hand to encourage a wide range of age classes and different species of trees.

"Uneven age management," as Shepperd called it, is very intensive, but probably worth it in the long run for preserving key areas, he said. "But it also runs counter to what you want to do from a fire management standpoint," he said, explaining that leaving a mix of tree sizes contributes to the ladder-fuel effect, which enables blazes to grow into dangerous and rapidly spreading crown fires.

Similarly, Shepperd said research at the forest shows that thinning lodgepole pine stands also has limitations. Since thin evergreens generally grow in thick clumps, taking away more than 30 or 40 percent of the trees in a given stand makes them susceptible to wind throw.

And the thinning that has been done in the Fraser forest has not been effective at slowing the beetles.

"They're running roughshod over our thinned plots," Shepperd said.

Ongoing research also shows that removal of forest biomass (trees) means increased streamflows. The current beetle epidemic will definitely kill enough trees that water yields will increase in some watersheds. But those increases are difficult to measure on a meaningful scale, Shepperd said.

The research at the Fraser forest shows that the increase in runoff can be measured in so-called first-order streams, the smallest creeks high in the watershed. But once you get downstream to the bigger streams and mainstems of rivers, the increase is not as easy to quantify, he explained.

"If you can't measure it, you can't claim it. It becomes a legal and societal issue," he added.



Bob Berwyn can be reached at (970) 331-5996, or at bberwyn@summitdaily.com.