Perspectives on Catastrophic Wildfire

When I started this post, I'd been thinking about wildfires quite a lot. Maybe it was because there were a couple burning here in Idaho*, though none (so far as I know) were on the Payette National Forest where I worked**; I relish that, because wildfires are a pretty usual thing in the summer. This time of year was often a busy time for me helping assess fire effects on resources, particularly fish and fish habitat because this is about the time nature finally extinguishes the fires. But I think I've been thinking about more because of the media attention wildfires get these days, how they're so often described as "massive," and how readily people attribute what may mistakenly appear to be increasing wildfire activity with climate change.

Introduction

I'm not an expert in wildfire, but I have some experience, particularly in post-fire recovery response. Wildfires happen; out here, they happen annually with large fires probably much more common than most people realize. When I got involved, they were generally of a size where using the word "massive" makes sense: In 1994, the Payette had about 250,000 acres burning; in 2000 about 350,000 acres; and in 2007 closer to 500,000 acres. These numbers are approximate, I could go through the reports to find more accurate numbers, but it's not necessary: The point is that really big fires happen with some regularity where you don't hear much about it and when they happen somewhere other than "flyover country," much smaller fires seem increasingly to be reported as "massive" or "catastrophic." In addition, land management agencies have adopted the term "catastrophic" with a slightly different meaning, implying they're worse than they "should" be because of past fire suppression, "climate change," etc.

I don't want to downplay the dangers of wildfire in any way: All fires are dangerous and can easily destroy lives and property that get in their way. But they are probably not getting either more common or more destructive.  I plotted out the data presented by the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) for all fires in the United States and got this graph:

Despite a disclaimer about pre-1983 data, which suggests some change in measurement about that time, there doesn't seem to be an increase in numbers of fires. I also found this graph from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center (CIFFC):

But what about fire size? Are they getting bigger? It would seem so from this chart of data from the same NIFC source:

But I have some issues with interpreting this as evidence for a general increase in fire size. At one time, essentially all wildfires were aggressively suppressed because they were clearly a "bad" thing. And for logging areas where timber production is important, for areas with substantial private property inholdings, developed recreation areas, etc., fire is definitely bad. But there's been a trend, out here at least, toward reduced emphasis on timber production and more emphasis on restoring "natural" fire regimes in areas not designated for timber production. This has led to less aggressive suppression in more primitive areas (like wilderness) and sometimes little direct suppression at all. The Payette National Forest, in fact, has designated large areas on the Forest for "fire use"; here are some definitions from the plan reflecting this change in management emphasis:

Appropriate Management Response (AMR) 

Actions taken in response to a wildland fire to implement protection and fire use objectives.  

fire use 

The combination of wildland fire use and prescribed fire application to meet resource objectives. 

wildland fire use (for resource benefits) 

The management of naturally ignited wildland fires to accomplish specific prestated resource management objectives in predefined geographic areas outlined in Fire Management Plans. 

wildland fire use planning area 

Portions of the Forest that may be considered for wildland fire use consistent with the selected alternative.  Delineation of the planning area or areas consider proximity to designated Wilderness, area size, location of administrative boundaries, adjacency to wildland-urban interface, and other factors.  Further refinements to identify a feasible implementation area may take place during Fire Management Planning.

In short, so-called "fire use" encourages allowing naturally ignited fires to burn in some areas to help restore presumably natural conditions; that is, conditions that would presumably have existed in the absence of decades of active fire suppression. It's using natural ignitions rather than prescribed burning in some semi-natural or wilderness areas.

A Brief Look at Fire Ecology

Out here in the Northern Rockies, wildfire is mostly a natural, relatively common occurrence. There are, of course, human ignitions, but escaped human-caused are not, in my experience, responsible for the bulk of large wildfires. Fire is a powerful ecological force to which ecosystems are variously adapted: Some tolerate relatively frequent fires, some don't, and some plants may even require fire to propogate; some animals also need burned landscapes to thrive. In the case of trees, ponderosa pines (Pinus ponderosa) and western larch (Larix occidentalis), for example, shed lower branches and develop thick, insulating bark near ground level; frequent ground fires that reduce shrubs and young trees have relatively little effect on adult trees that may live hundreds of years. On the other hand, fire is relatively uncommon in moister spruce and fir forests, where trees may also be hundreds of years old but all individuals quickly succumb to fire. Lodgepole pines (P. contorta), often a transitional species prominient in meadow invasions and the early stages of forest succession, sometimes need fire to force their cones to open and release seeds (a feature known as serotiny); you can see how it works in this image of a serotinous lodgepole cone I found after a large fire in 2007:

Climate and weather patterns have always changed, periods of warming, cooling, humidity, and drought have come and gone and will certainly come again; as they change, fire return intervals may change as may natural vegetative cover. As far as I know, no one doubts that drought can exacerbate eboth the likelihood that wildfires will get started and their potential size. The scientific literature surrounding historic vegetation change show that wildfire is important in changing ecosystems in response to such climatic changes. Here are a few examples:

• Hallett and Walker (2000).
• Whitlock et al. (2003).
• Pierce et al. (2004).
• Hallett and Hills (2006).
• Shoennagel et al. (2007).

This list is, obviously, not exhaustive, but provides examples of research documenting the interacting roles of climate and wildfire for effecting large scale vegetation changes. To a lesser extent, these articles explore the role of humans, whether it be potential climate warming, fire suppression, burning by aboriginal groups, or prescribed fire. While humans may effect the occurrence and severity of fire, it is an inherently natural process.

Catastrophe or Not?

So what is a catastrophic wildfire? Up close, large wildfires always look catastrophic:

And, clearly, any wildfire that affects someone directly through injury, property damage, etc. is catastrophic to that person:

And the landscape can certainly look devastated shortly after it burns:

But fire-adapted ecosystems can recover quickly. This is the same small creek drainage as the one shown above just one year later:

Of course it hasn't fully recovered, the trees take much longer to grow than the grasses and forbs, though many shrubs have already resprouted.

Even ancillary effects such as landsliding, which can cause tremendous problems when they affect property or infrastructure, may have relatively short-lived ecological effects. In 2008 the Payette National Forest experienced a severe landsliding episode during a heavy rain event on the East Fork of the South Fork Salmon River. The entire area had burned in 2007 and the soils destabilized by loss of anchoring vegetation may have exacerbated the landsliding. This picture shows a completely rearranged stream channel resulting from a slope failure several miles upstream:

If I recall correctly, the debris deposit it left as it got to the main river channel was about 900 feet wide and 20 feet deep. It created this delta deposit in the main river:

The road repair work was considerable. Here's a culvert pipe in a small drainage that "blew out":

There were several spots in the main river where the landsliding had deposited excess fine sediments (sand and silt), which are generally detrimental for spawning by the native fish community. To monitor these potential effects to fish habitat, I established some photopoints to track over subsequent seasons as the river adjusted; to my surprise, most of the fine sediment deposits were gone the following high flows the following spring and the notion of monitoring recovery in this instance was unnecessary. The debris delta shown above remained but was now predominately composed of exposed larger rocks:

Landsliding is an important mechanism for delivering sediment particles of suitable sizes to streams,  and this was likely a net benefit for anadromous fish (relatively rare here).

A Little about Suppression

Federal agencies spend a tremendous amount of money fighting fire (even more if you consider preventive actions like prescribed fire); so much, that fire now dominates the U.S. Forest Service budget:

In 1995, fire made up 16 percent of the Forest Service’s annual appropriated budget—this year, for the first time, more than 50 percent of the Forest Service’s annual budget will be dedicated to wildfire.†

Suppression, especially initial attack, is clearly an appropriate response to natural ignitions in areas where wildfire is not desired. But as wildfires grow and more agencies and resources get committed, the potential for ancillary resource damage (fish, wildlife, soil, cultural artifacts, etc.), as well as greed and waste accelerate. From a fish perspective, which I know best, deleterious effects of suppression actions can can easily exceed the direct effects of fire. For example, water drafting can capture fish as well as harass them:

While harassment may instinctively seem trivial, it is a component of what the Endangered Species Act considers "take" when protected organisms are involved:

The term “take” means to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct. (16 U.S. Code § 1532[19]). 

Fire retardant used to contain cyanide, though it doesn't so much anymore, but it still contains ammonia compounds that are highly toxic to fish and watersheds, especially those containing ESA-listed species, must be protected. Clearing fire lines to control fire spread destabilizes soils, which are then more readily eroded from bare surfaces reducing productivity and depositing in streams. During the excitement of initial attack particularly, fuel spills into streams are a real threat:

And, of course, there are the firefighters, sometimes thousands of them in undeveloped areas that typically do not see so much human impact:

These are real threats that can cause persistent effects on terrestrial and aquatic resources. And out here, despite all the money and suppression resources thrown at them, escaped large fires are usually ultimately extinguished by nature:

Recovery and Benefits

My attitude about wildfire changed drastically after I experienced fires and post-fire recovery up close. I wanted to live and work in a forested area, and during my first year on the Payette National Forest, about 250,000 acres were burned; during my tenure there, something like 750,000 to a million acres burned, nearly half the Forest***. While the trees died, the ecological effects were probably not catastrophic but, rather, rejuvenating. In fact, from an aquatic resource perspective, we considered fire suppression actions and post-fire mitigation efforts to be more likely to be deleterious than the effects of the fire itself.  This stream burned late in 1994 in a section of the Blackwell-Corral complex that was considered "very hot"††:

Early the next year, you can see streamside grasses and shrubs beginning to reappear:

We monitored recovery with photography every year since the fire as part of a series of photopoints to document post-fire recovery of aquatic and riparian ecosystems. I retired in 2012, but I snapped a picture in August this year to illustrate 22 years of recovery:

The streambanks are fully vegetated, trees are growing vigorously, and the stream has accumulated woody debris that provides shade and cover for fish despite the reduction in arboreal canopy.

Increasingly, research is showing that these periodic disturbances in disturbance-adapted ecosystems are beneficial and perhaps necessary to proper ecological function on various timescales. Fires deposit organic and inorganic debris into streams, providing, among other things, cover and spawning areas for fish and other aquatic organisms, and food and nutrients into the food web. Some specific studies (e.g., this one) have shown that fish in large streams may be drawn to the mouths of tributaries that have recently burned to exploit this pulse of food. Such benefits are not restricted to fish: Some woodpeckers (e.g., black backed woodpeckers) seem to require recently burned snags with other riparian species, such as bats, may also benefit.

There can be negatives, of course: Tree plantations can be lost; invasive species may be benefitted; stream temperatures may be elevated for some time; life and property may be damaged; etc. But, in my opinion, "catastrophe" is related more to human context, not ecology. Ecosystems change, fire is one mechanism for change.

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* Since I started this post, one Idaho fire, the Pioneer Fire, as become the largest wildfire in the United States at about 180,000 acres.
** As I start this post, none are reported on the Incident Information System (InciWeb) page.
*** These numbers are approximate and possibly underestimated.
† http://www.fs.fed.us/sites/default/files/2015-Fire-Budget-Report.pdf
†† All wildfires are obviously "very hot," as in 1,000-2,000°F; much like the words "massive" and "catastrophic," variations of "hot" convey an observers subjective view of the intensity (heat release) and/or severity (soil damage) of a fire.

Unbiased Cherry Picking

Introduction

Some weeks ago I was discussing on Facebook some of my previous USHCN temperature adjustment posts (e.g., here and here) with a friend of a friend. His assertion was that my use of "cherry-picked" sites to demonstrate that the adjustments in the temperature record supported the notion that the past was typically cooled and appeared to exaggerate a warming trend was invalid. While "cherry-picking" is an important aspect of non-scientific analysis (i.e., pseudo-science), it also seems to be the knee-jerk response of the Climate Change faithful to facts or analyses that intrude on their beliefs. In fact, those the sites investigated previously were chosen first for convenience (I picked the closest site to me that bears on the National Forest where I worked) and, secondly, systematically (to see whether sites close to one another geographically had temperature records that were correlated with one another).

To be sure, I realize that a small selection of sites may not adequately represent the whole universe of USHCN sites, and I never asserted that the ones I selected did; I merely reported that the adjustments tended to be such that they supported a warming hypothesis and that the "need" for those adjustments was unclear. But I decided to take a look at a more randomized selection to see what that would show and whether it also tended to support the warming narrative.

Methods

USHCN Sites

The first thing I did was devise a means of more-or-less randomly selecting USHCN sites in Idaho. I approached that as follows:

1. I listed all USHCN site identification codes in an Excel column alphabetically as shown on the USHCN web site.
2. There are 29 sites, which I numbered 1 to 29.
3. In another column, I generated a random number between 1 and 29 using Excel's "Rand()" function and formatted each to 0 decimal places.
4. I then selected the sites corresponding to the five lowest numbers (there were 2 numbered "4"). These sites were selected*:

The selected sites seem pretty well distributed geographically and and with respect to elevation. It would have been nice to have a more northerly site given the topography and environmental gradients in Idaho, but this is an unbiased selection.

Although the SurfaceStations project seems moribund, it is referenced in the USHCN documentation pages, particularly with respect to site quality ratings. In the USHCN documentation, only the Salmon site is mentioned, which, according to SurfaceStations has a rating of "4" (poor). The poor rating appears to be a function of proximity to buildings and shading. The other sites are apparently not rated.

These are predominantly rural sites, located in the sorts of areas that urbanites would probably consider "the middle of nowhere"; the most urbanized site is probably Salmon, a "city" of about 3,300 residents. Here are Google Earth images showing the locations of the sites based on their documented Latitude/Longitude locations (I have been unable to locate close-up images of the stations themselves).

Ashton

Glenn's Ferry

Lifton

May

Salmon

Analysis

Next I wanted to set up a comprehensive analysis. Not all sites had completely overlapping data records, so I trimmed them to make the site records comparable. To accomplish this I did the following:

1. I computed the adjustment (TAVG-TRAW) for each temperature observation.
2. I decided to use decadal comparisons among sites; that is, average adjustements by decade (e.g., 1910-1919).
3. I decided to start the comparison in 1910; no sites had complete records before that and this method only removed one site (Lifton) from the 1910-1919 comparison.
4. I decided that I wanted to have at least 7 data points for a site in any decade for comparison; this resulted in dropping some sites (most notably Glenn's Ferry) in several decades; all sites were excluded in at least one decade.

From the results (below), I also took looked at the trends in adjusted raw data and computed a few statistics about infilled (i.e., estimated) data.

This is a simple analysis, not a thorough investigation, but should help add clarity to how and when data adjustments dominate the apparent trends in temperature. It is as unbiased as I could think to make it, though, of course, it's restricted to Idaho.

Results

Here are the basic decadal results displayed graphically:

At first glance, there is no obvious tendency to make decreasing adjustments over time; indeed, the largest adjustments were made toward the end of the 20th century. The relatively large adjustment in the 1930s is significant, however, because that was a period generally recognized as hot and dry. Furthermore, the 1990s were also adjusted down despite the strong El Nino warming toward the end of the decade. Of all the sites, only the record at Ashton was mostly adjusted upward, though it was adjusted downward with the others in the decade of the 1980s.

I like numbers and looking at numbers and statistics, but graphics are clearly more easily understood. So here are graphic representations of the data from each site:

Except for Salmon, trends modeled from adjusted data were more positive (i.e., estimated more warming) than trends modeled from raw data (Note: I made no effort to calculate either statistical significance of models or significance of differences between the two models). Interestingly, all sites have infilled data from before the raw data records begin. Although not shown, two sites (Lifton and May) have more than a decade of pre-record infilled data; Lifton actually has more than two decades of such data. Overall, infilled data accounts for 28% of the official adjusted data record, with a whopping 48% of the data for Glenn's Ferry estimated (which, interestingly, was the only site with a negative trend modeled from the raw data).

Conclusions

Picking sites randomly suggests that, even with raw data alone, most Idaho sites probably have modestly increasing temperatures. As I've indicated in previous posts (e.g., here), I would expect that since most people understand that temperatures seem to have been generally increasing since the Little Ice Age (LIA). Generally speaking, however, data adjustments seem to increase warming trends and potentially reverse some that might be cooling. In my opinion, it seems odd that so much data must be estimated, particularly for very old records; I have not been able to determine the need for or accuracy of the either the adjustment or estimation procedures. These are rural sites, none of which seem likely to have large urban heat island (UHI) effects, particularly during the 1930s. Using the historic imagery in Google Earth, it is clear that the areas have changed very little at least over the past two decades (of course, I can't trace station moves that may have occurred). 

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* The official names have been shortened for this post. Officially, they are: Ashton 1N, Glenn's Ferry, Lifton Pumping Stn, May 2SSE, Salmon-Ksra.

Reflections on Climate and Idaho Bull Trout

My last post was sort of a generic description of how my experiences with variability in nature helped mold my generally skeptical attitude toward seeing differences between now and the past as a cause for concern. I haven't always had such skepticism (or perhaps "complacency" is appropriate here) so I wanted to delve more deeply into my evolution on the climate change issue in particular.

One of my areas of expertise is bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus). I became involved with bull trout population dynamics and habitat requirements about 38 years ago when they were still thought to be inland dolly varden (S. malma). Bull trout are a native salmonid (trouts, chars, whitefish) in the Northern Rocky Mountains that typically inhabit, indeed, require, colder water than many salmonids. They are important to land management and fish management programs because they were listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act in 1998 making it illegal to harm them (their habitat gained similar status in 2010). They were also selected as a "Management Indicator Species" (MIS) on the Payette National Forest where I worked; the viability of MIS must be monitored by the Forest and considered for all planned actions.

Stream temperature is a critical habitat component for salmonid fishes, and possibly of overrriding importance in some cases; thus, temperature is very often monitored when designing and implementing land management actions. I was directly involved with one of the first studies of bull trout distribution using stream temperature (in conjunction with catchment size) as a driving parameter for estimating the probability that bull trout would occur in streams that had not been sampled. Subsequently, with the listing of bull trout under ESA in 1998 and the need to assess the effects of Forest actions on bull trout, I developed a preliminary predictive model for the likelihood of bull trout occurrence in streams in which their occurrence had not been properly documented. This model was preliminary, informal, and somewhat subjective, but it was also 100% effective; that is, bull trout were later found where I said they were likely to be found and they have not been found where I ruled them out*.

Climate change was and is thought to be a potentially significant factor in the long-term persistence of bull trout because of their dependence on very cold water. In Idaho, 10°C Maximum Weekly Maximum Temperature (MWMT)** in bull trout waters in summer was set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as suitable for bull trout***. Inquiries into the potential climatic warming-induced decrease in suitable habitat and distributions of various salmonid species began about 20 years ago and continues today. Inexpensive, submersible thermographs also only became readily available about two decades ago, making it relatively simple to sample and monitor stream temperatures. On the Payette National Forest we implemented an extensive temperature sampling and monitoring program and considered potential effects of stream temperatures, potential stream temperatures with climate change, and distribution of suitable habitat for bull trout based largely on stream temperatures to assess viability of local populations***. I want to point some of these assessments out here because they illustrate how climate change considerations were formally incorporated.

Our first Forest-wide viability assessment was produced in 2005. I was largely responsible for the discussion of why climate change could be a potential issue for bull trout viability:

"Fragmentation decreases the likelihood of long-term persistence of bull trout populations making them more susceptible to extinction from habitat alteration such as climate change, exotic species, grazing, road occurrence (sedimentation and culverts), water diversions or impoundments, consumptive activities (timber harvest, mining), and random events such as debris torrents." (page 3)

"Naturally isolated populations have persisted since they were isolated despite lack of interchange with other populations, but anthropogenic fragmentation within the watersheds inhabited by these populations is probably reducing their long-term viability, particularly because the amount of available suitable habitat is likely declining generally as a result of climate change (Keleher and Rahel 1996; Rieman et al. 1997; Nakano et al. 1996). As available habitat declines, connectivity among isolated populations becomes more important and simultaneously increases the likelihood of individual populations being extirpated while reducing the potential for their refounding." (page 4)

"Another potential determinant of bull trout viability, particularly in the Weiser River watershed, is climate change. Given their position in the food web as top predators, bull trout may be vulnerable to increasing temperatures because such climate change is expected to be harshest to top predators (Petchey et al. 1999). In addition, if temperatures continue warming, we would expect the downstream limits of bull trout to increase in elevation, shrinking the amount of habitat available to them; this has been modeled in the Japanese archipelago for Dolly Varden (S. malma) and white-spotted char (S. leucomaenis), two species closely related to bull trout, by Nakano et al. (1996). This would, of course, exacerbate the negative competitive effects of brook trout, which appear more thermally tolerant." (page 38)

Although I mostly accepted the argument that global warming was happening, whether naturally or because of CO2 emissions, I would confess to being a skeptic about catastrophic global warming even then; I did, however, believe that the climate had been generally warming since the Little Ice Age and was comfortable assuming that trend would continue. I still believe management should be based on observed, not modeled, trends.

In 2010 I produced another extensive review of bull trout populations on the Forest with emphasis on streams proposed as critical habitat by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This assessment has a full section on climate change as a threat to bull trout persistence, but generally took a much more skeptical tone about the likelihood of climate change being a serious existential threat. There were two main reasons for this skepticism: first, invasive brook trout (S. fontinalis) posed a much clearer and intractable threat to viability over most of the Forest, and, secondly, we weren't seeing much in the way of increasing stream temperatures. This figure appears in that report:

The report had this to say about the above figure and Forest-wide stream temperatures:

"Nelson and Burns (2006) reported (using regression modeling that accounted for autocorrelation common to time series records) that most streams for which we had sufficiently lengthy time series data had increasing trends in MWMT. This analysis should be updated to determine whether the trends remain detectable with additional data and to get a wider sampling of the Forest (many of those with upward trends in Nelson and Burns [2006] had burned within 10 years of the modeling). For the few sites that have reasonably long records in the RU temperature discussions above and which haven’t had much recent wildfire, there is little evidence of warming streams." (page 10)

Despite my skepticism, others remain convinced that the climate will continue to warm, perhaps drastically, and bull trout distributions will decline with increasing stream temperatures. To this end, I was also involved in coordinating and disbursing funds to develop a sampling/monitoring protocol and building a model of possible effects of warming-induced habitat reductions, though I question their ultimate utility and the Forest has been slow to apply them.

Bull trout have been around for a long time, probably reaching their maximum distribution shortly after the end of the Wisconsinan glaciation. There are many threats to their long-term persistence, most of them of anthropogenic origin. Climate has undoubtedly played some role in the biogeography of bull trout and in development of genetic diversity within and among various groups. However, it seems unlikely to me that their demise will be caused by a warming climate unless the earth gets hotter than previous warm periods through which they must have survived. There may be some extirpation of isolated populations at the margins of their range, such as here in south-central Idaho, but that contraction may have been going on for some time. In fact, there are populations on the Payette National Forest that survive in temperatures normally regarded as unsuitable, so some local adaptation may be underway as well. Only time will tell; but, in the meantime, treatable issues like habitat fragmentation, proper riparian management, reductions in road densities, etc. should receive most attention.
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* There is one technical exception to this. Bull trout were thought to occur in the Middle Fork Weiser River and this model, though not explicitly used for the Weiser subbasin, would have assigned a high likelihood of presence; extensive surveys have failed to find any.
** This is the 7-day moving average of daily maximum temperatures.
*** This is, unfortunately, a somewhat arbitrary target. The corresponding criterion in Oregon is 15°C and, in fact, 10°C in Idaho is achievable in relatively few Idaho streams in summer.

Of Sardines, Salmon, and ... Lobsters

A few days ago a Facebook friend posted a YouTube video of Ted Cruz answering a reporter's question about lobsters moving north and the dispersal's possible relationship to climate change. Naturally, being a question by a reporter, a simple soundbyte answer was expected to what may, in fact, be a rather complex question. The video, of course, suggests that Ted Cruz gave an unsatisfying (indeed, "absurd") response. The video is here:

And here is a typical scare piece on the movement of Maine lobsters to more northerly waters.

In my opinion, Ted Cruz has demonstrated a pretty sound understanding of the climate change issues, even though he clearly does not accept the popular alarmism and questions the magnitude of the role humans play in climate change. Note that this does not necessarily deny that climate changes nor does it mean it hasn't gotten warmer over time. This is basically my attitude, and the issue of lobsters (about which I know very little) got me thinking about why I remain a skeptic. The following is a contemplation of my journey so far.

I grew up in Southern California and was an avid fisherman (sorry, no politically correct "angler" or "fisher" here). During junior high and high school (I graduated in 1969) I fished the ocean around Long Beach and Huntington Beach extensively. I was very happy with this, because I had moved to Southern California from what Californian's call the "Central Coast" in 1966; ocean fishing up there was pretty unremarkable for pier fishing at least. But the fishing in Southern California, according to the locals, had gotten pretty bad since the sardines left. At the time, I don't think anyone really know why the sardines had been replaced by anchovies, though I think over harvest was assumed to some extent (commercial harvest of Pacific sardines is an important industry). At any rate, many of the really desirable pelagic gamefish like yellowtail (Seriola lalandi dorsalis) had moved south and/or away from the coast. For me, the most important pelagic gamefish I could catch was bonito (Sarda chiliensis lineolata); they are great fun to catch on light tackle, but relatively small.

I moved out of California in 1978 seeking fame and fortune in the great Pacific Northwest. I don't know when it was exactly, mid-1980s probably, that I realized the better gamefish had returned to Southern California and so had the sardines. Turns out there was a climate connection, namely the the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO (a summary of sardine-anchovy and related ocean changes can be seen here).

I was, of coursed, "bummed" that better fishing was afoot in my old stomping grounds, but by the 1980s I was firmly entrenched in what, to me, was practically Heaven on earth: The great and wonderfully backward* state of Idaho. And Idaho had salmon; a few remained anyway as their numbers had become perilously low. The problems with Pacific salmon are complex, but like sardines, salmon are an important commercial resource; however, they are themselves a top predator and sought-after game fish. And like anchovies and sardines, they are affected by the PDO.

In fact, the PDO was more or less discovered by researchers studying salmon catches in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Despite the many threats Idaho salmon face as the outmigrate and return to spawning streams in the Columbia River Basin (CRB; something I talked a little about in a previous post), the PDO revealed a pattern of relatively higher salmon catches in Alaska and lower catches farther south in the Pacific Northwest; these trends reverse when the PDO phase shifts, though the southern population patterns may be somewhat less to connected to the PDO than in Alaska. Regardless, there are also effects on precipitation and streamflow. I've merged two graphs here that, while the relationship is imprecise, clearly suggest it:

The El Nińo-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a smaller period pattern (or sub-pattern) overlaid on the PDO that more directly affects annual precipitation, so a precise relationship to PDO cannot be expected.

And Chinook salmon were relatively abundant in the early 2000s in Idaho. Idaho's South Fork Salmon River (SFSR) is one of the premier anadromous salmon spawning streams in the interior CRB. There are no dams on the Salmon River, so fish returning from the ocean are relatively unimpeded once the reach Lewiston, Idaho. There is also a program for supplementing the wild Chinook salmon population with hatchery juveniles reared at Idaho Fish and Game's (IDGF) McCall Hatchery. But here's a graphic I made for a presentation that shows redd (spawning "nests") recorded at IDFG's index areas on the SFSR:

The increase in salmon allowed IDFG to establish a summer Chinook salmon fishing season when more hatchery salmon than needed for the supplementation program returned and were collected. I don't have figures at hand, but I think the angler harvest was about 6,000 fish in 2001 and 2002; it has declined some in recent years.

Presently, linking the PDO to SFSR salmon is sketchy and should be considered hypothetical pending longer term study. Ocean conditions are undoubtedly important to salmon production and there seems to be some uptick in fish during the cool PDO period starting in the late 1990s; but the CRB fishery has been historically devastated by development of the Columbia River Hydrosystem, which has completely altered the river's ecosystems, commercial, recreational, and subsistence fishing, irrigation diversions, riverine habitat changes, climate change according to some, and so forth. Conversely, salmon populations in the SFSR are being supplemented with hatchery production and this seems to be helping keep populations relatively robust. In addition, in the case of salmon we are not specifically considerating a shift in species range as much as subpopulations being deferentially affected by changes in ocean conditions in feeding areas.

So what about lobsters? There is a similar ocean pattern in the Atlantic called the "Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation" (AMO) that has been linked to changes in faunal distributions. The authors of this recent paper say this (possibly about fish in particular):

"During positive phases of the AMO there is generally a poleward shift in the distributions of marine organisms and a subsequent equatorial shift during negative phases." 

Could this include lobsters? I don't see why not, though demersal organisms of limited mobility would not be expected to change their ranges as quickly quickly as fish. But if you look, it's not too hard to see similar variability in lobster catches in Maine, which, interestingly, seem to be increasing.

The above discusses fluctuations in animal distributions related to climate cycles. Other fluctuations also occur in nature. For example, my graduate study was expected to focus on dispersal in microtine rodents, a group widely known for cycles in population density; lemmings and voles are familiar examples. I'm no longer up to date on this phenomenon, but I believe that the cycling is still not understood and is seemingly endogenous, but there may be somewhat synchronous effects on predator populations. Snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus) are another species with somewhat longer population cycles, and I think these may affect predator abundance and distribution in some marginal areas like central Idaho.

For me, the take home message is that nothing in nature is static and cyclic phenomena are common. While cyclic animal populations may be quite obvious because of irruptions, longer period oscillations may be less obvious. Something like "normalcy" for climate or animal distributions may intuitively seem reasonable, but perhaps only insofar has humans have difficulty seeing patterns that are long relative to their lifespans (that is, human lifespans may only be long enough to witness one or two phase changes in natural multidecadal oscillations). So I philosophically embrace variability; nature is unconstrained by what we want it to be. Are things getting worse? Maybe; maybe we need more time to find out. Change happens, it need not be feared; if it's deleterious, adapt and mitigate. I choose to remain optimistic and, as always in later life, to be skeptical of all assertions about how nature "should" behave.



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* I say this in a non-pejorative sense: Idaho was very much the embodiment of social and environmental conditions that I was distressed to see vanishing in California as it became increasingly overcrowded.

More on Central Idaho USHCN Data

My first post looked at temperature data from the U.S. Historical Climate Network (USHCN) site at New Meadows, Idaho. That analysis was a simple look at how, when, and by how much data had been estimated or adjusted. I picked that particular site simply because I was familiar with it and had used data from it in analyses I performed as a Fisheries Biologist on the Payette National Forest (PAF). This post adds to that analysis with a look at four other nearby sites, two to the north and two to the south, and the relationships among them.

These are the five sites investigated: New Meadows (106388), Cambridge (101408), Payette (106891), and Moscow (106152). The four additional sites were selected because they are the closest sites to New Meadows and are on an approximate North-South axis. Idaho has a temperature and precipitation gradient that runs more or less diagonally from northwest to southeast, and this arrangement serves to minimize the east-west influence. Elevations of these four sites and distances* from New Meadows are shown in this table:

New Meadows has the highest elevation of these five USHCN stations at 3,870 feet. West-central Idaho has high relief and elevation is certainly a factor, but no nearby USHCN sites are at the moderate elevation of New Meadows.

Firstly, I wanted to see whether, how much, and in which directions temperature adjustments were made. The data manipulations are summarized in this table:

where: Total is the number of "official" (i.e., SHAP adjusted) mean annual temperature records; Raw is the number of raw (unadjusted) annual mean temperature records; # is the number of records with non-zero adjustments; and % is the percentage of records adjusted. Clearly the vast majority of records have been adjusted in some fashion.

When looking at the adjustments, it was clear that the magnitudes (and occasionally the direction) of adjustments changed with time, mostly becoming lower in recent decades (as I showed in a previous post). This suggested three periods where adjustments changed in magnitude: Early (before 1910), Middle (1910-1949), and Late (1950 and beyond):

 Only one station doesn't vary much among periods, Payette. Oddly, this is one of the two (the other is Lewiston) where I might expect the largest increase in the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect as it's in the growth area surrounding Boise.

I don't really know how the adjustments and estimations are made. The online USHCN documentation suggests that estimates involve using data from nearby, highly correlated stations. I looked at the correlations of the New Meadows data, where about one-third of the data were estimated, with these four stations where they had raw data for the same years, and I can't see how that makes sense here with these relationships:

Clearly, raw data from none of the stations are well correlated with the New Meadows raw data.

So data are mostly adjusted, mostly downward but decreasing in magnitude over time, and none of the sites can be considered highly correlated with the New Meadows station. Curiouser and curiouser, it would seem.
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* Elevations were obtained from the USHCN web interface page and distances acquired using MapQuest.

West-Central Idaho USHCN Temperature Adjustments By Decade

This is just a quick post. Someone posted a Tweet about record high temperatures in the 1930s and why those hadn't been adjusted out now that we've had the "hottest year in history." I had looked at adjustments to USHCN temperature records previously and was working on a post about several local stations, so I was pretty sure there were substantial adjustments to data in the 1930s. So I gathered the data from a few local stations, computed the differences between the raw data and the official data, and computed the average differences by decade (1890s-2010s). I picked 5 sites, including the one used in the previous post (New Meadows).

The added sites, their elevations, and their distances from New Meadows are:

The data records run from about 1893 to 2014, but not all sites have the same length record and some raw data are missing from most records so decadal means vary in sample size; the 1890s decade has the least data. I regard this as relatively unimportant for this coarse look, but it should be noted. It is also important to know that the pattern of adjustments is not uniform among sites or among decades; I hope to investigate this more thoroughly in an upcoming post.

The results demonstrate a distinct pattern of reduction in size of adjustment from older to newer data:

On average, adjustments resulted in lower temperatures than the raw data. The largest adjustments were to the oldest data. While the 1890s decade had the least data (with one site missing) the magnitude of the adjustment was similar to the 1900s decade. From the 1910s decade through the 1940s decade the adjustments were about 40% less but still fairly large; and yes, there were substantial reductions in official temperature in the 1930s. Adjustments since 1950 were about 50% of the previous 4 decades and less than 1°F on average.

I intend to look at the differences in the way data were adjusted at each of these sites in an upcoming post, because they aren't uniform. Two of the sites (PY and MO) were adjusted relatively uniformly among decades, and one, (PY) had relatively smaller adjustments. Clearly, though, the general effect appears to be a cooling of the past relative to measurements.

Just For Fun (1)

Bird and Breakfast

Winter Chickadees - My First Time Lapse Movie

And The Cat Wins Again

What Does "Natural Born Citizen" Mean? (3)

Part III: My Take

Overview

It is my opinion that the phrase "natural born citizen" in the U.S. Constitution was probably intended by the majority of those involved in drafting and adopting the Constitution to include children born abroad of U.S. citizens as "citizens at birth" requiring no naturalization (i.e., not subject to naturalization by statute, that is, "natural born."). I cannot prove this, but ultimately, I think it would be harder to prove the opposite position. I come to that conclusion because my review leads me to believe that:

• It follows from both Vattel's "Law of Nations" (§215) and Blackstone's commentary on British Common Law of the time;
• It's a logical view given passage of such language by the First Congress in the 1790 Naturalization Act; 
• This seems to be the common view among actual Constitutional scholars; 
• It seems to me that proponents of "strict interpretation" rely for their arguments on incomplete and/or erroneous references and inconsistent logic.

So let's look closer at these points.

Natural and Common Law Roots

Nearly everyone seems to agree that one or both of these form the basis for interpreting the Constitution. As we have seen, the Constitution may specifically mention Vattel's work "The Law of Nations," John Marshall quoted its §212 and §213 in his partial dissent in the Venus case and the background information in Minor v. Happersett ties §212 to the "common law":

"At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners."

Obviously, this does not specifically relate to "natural born," which occurs a couple of paragraphs later where the phrase from the 1790 Naturalization Act was referenced. But the link to common law also incorporates the tradition of British common law wherein Blackstone has said:

"But by several more modern statutes these restrictions are still farther taken off: so that all children, born out of the king's ligeance, whose fathers were natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception."

So the traditions of both have been used to interpret the Constitution because these were the legal theories familiar to and used by the Founding Fathers. In this case, Vattel asserted that foreign born children inherited the citizenship status of their fathers at birth and Blackstone equated that to "natural born."

Simple Layman's Logic

The 1790 Naturalization Act included foreign born children of citizens in the "natural born" category. The First Congress passed this act, including 43% of the signers of the Constitution, and George Washington signed it. I find it hard to believe these men did not a) know what their duties were under the Constitution (i.e., what Article II, Section 8, Clause 4 allowed and required) and b) how the Constitution viewed "natural born." Do I believe they were unanimous in how they viewed these things? No, I don't. But the exceptions brought to bear by the "strict interpreters," specifically letters by John Jay and possibly James Madison, requires one to believe the Congress monumentally erred; indeed, some hold this view as the reason the 1795 Act was required to repeal the 1790 Act. I find this logic less than credible and believe that the fact that the 1795 Act refers to citizens (not "natural born citizens") means that the Act has nothing at all to do with "natural born citizens" and the fact that "natural born" is missing means only that it's not addressed.

Consensus View

Not being a Constitutional scholar myself, I can't authoritatively say that the consensus view among Constitutional scholars is opposed to the "strict interpretation" view; it is the conclusion I come away with after doing the research for this series. Surely there are scholars who hold each interpretation, but accepting foreign born seems to me more common. In addition, opponents of foreign born seem to have the same inconsistency issues as laymen. For example, this OpEd says Blackstone denied natural born citizenship to foreign born children; this is not strictly true as shown in my first post. This OpEd states that no legal thinking of the 1780s and 1790s supported foreign born; Congress' approval of the 1790 Naturalization Act suggests that that's not correct. This Harvard Law Review article presents the opposite case.

Inconsistent Arguments

I've hinted at this previously, but, for me, it's the really the principle argument against the "strict interpretation" view. Proponents of the strict view regularly commit five "sins" that, in my opinion, substantially diminish their arguments:

• They cherry pick quotes from Supreme Court cases. For example, they cite Minor v. Happersett where it quotes Vattel §212 but ignore the part a couple paragraphs later that I put in the first post that specifically mentions "natural born."
• They pick quotes from one or two Founding Fathers whose letters suggested they disagreed with the policy (e.g., John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) as if that must have represented the majority view.
• They rely extensively on argumentum ad ingnoratium, the argument from ignorance. Two examples: 1) When they can't show what "natural born" means, they assume it must mean what they assume; 2) When legislation says nothing about "natural born" they often assert that that has some implied meaning about natural born.
• They tend to blur references to "citizen" and "natural born citizen," erroneously thinking this supports their arguments. An example is the 6 times the Supreme Court ruled on "natural born." In fact, the Supreme Court has never ruled specifically on "natural born" and these cases determine regular citizenship issues.
• They circulate images and documents that reflect opinions supporting their position, but often don't provide sources of the information so that it can be verified and sometimes don't even know they're either wrong, inconclusive, actually contradictory. One example is arguing that Congress has no role in defining "natural born" and then using legislation as an argument in their favor. 

There is a corollary to the last point: They seldom present results of their own investigations, choosing to rely on arguments from what they present as authoritative sources. Many times, those sources exhibit the same flaws listed above.

Summary

So that's pretty much it. In this case, the "Truth" is uncertain, but it seems to me that the "strict interpretation" has the weaker position. I would personally like to see the Supreme Court rule on the issue, both on the definition of "natural born citizen" and on the role of Congress. Since the courts have so far resisted attempts to adjudicate the question of what "natural born citizen" means when given the opportunity, this seems doubtful. Until then, say when a candidate loses an election to a foreign born candidate and has clear "standing" to sue, I expect "natural born citizen" will equate to "citizen at birth" as defined in 8 USC 1401. As of now, barring some explosive discovery or disclosure, that definition appears to cover Ted Cruz.

Addendum (19 February 2016)

I recently encountered a legal theory of which I was unaware when I wrote these posts: Non-judiciable political questions. Under this theory, ironically when you consider strict interpreters often disavow a role for Congress, Congress is the principal arbiter of political questions under it's authority over elections. In 2008, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed a challenge to the eligibility of Senator John McCain to be president, relying in part on this theory. Here is what the judge said:

It is clear that mechanisms exist under the Twelfth Amendment and 3 U.S.C. 15 for any challenge to any candidate to be ventilated when electoral votes are counted, and that the Twentieth Amendment provides guidance regarding how to proceed if a president elect shall have failed to qualify. Issues regarding qualifications for president are quintessentially suited to the foregoing process. Arguments concerning qualifications or lack thereof can be laid before the voting public before the election and, once the election is over, can be raised as objections as the electoral votes are counted in Congress. The members of the Senate and the House of Representatives are well qualified to adjudicate any objections to ballots for allegedly unqualified candidates. Therefore, this order holds that the challenge presented by plaintiff is committed under the Constitution to the electors and the legislative branch, at least in the first instance. Judicial review — if any — should occur only after the electoral and Congressional processes have run their course. Texas v. United States, 523 U.S. 296, 300–02 (1998).

Tellingly, and also somewhat ironically, this decision also indirectly seems to support the natural born citizen (i.e., citizenship by birth) language of the 1790 Act with this:

At the time of Senator McCain’s birth, the pertinent citizenship provision prescribed that “[a]ny child hereafter born out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such child is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States.” Act of May 24, 1934, Pub. L. No. 73-250, 48 Stat. 797. The Supreme Court has interpreted the phrase “out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States” in this statute to be the converse of the phrase “in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” in the Fourteenth Amendment, and therefore to encompass all those not granted citizenship directly by the Fourteenth Amendment.  Under this view, Senator McCain was a citizen at birth.

The court had went on to state that "it was probable" that John McCain was a natural born citizen.
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* Marshall in the Venus quoted either the original French or an English translation that had not yet rendered the French "indigenes" as "natural born."