G, below is Ludlow’s 7/6/12 e-mail in response to my request that he look at town trees.  (Kris Gibson had requested at the June town meeting that I get a forester to give us an updated prescription on town meadow recovery.  As you’ll see, Ryan did not come out because he is so busy this fire season, but he sent us advice that is seems very reasonable.  Susan

Hey Susan,

Sorry for the really long delay in getting back to you. Things have been very busy for me with the elevated fire danger. We have been providing a lot of outreach to landowners on how to implement effective wildfire mitigation on their land.

I am not sure if I will have time to come up and meet with you to provide advice on mitigation needs in the trees above the town meadow. I am a bit too busy this time of year to under take another project. It is possible that someone from CSFS or NRCS might be available.

Last time I drove by the town meadow it looked like the understory grasses were reestablishing very nicely with a whole hillside of nice lush green grasses. Our general outreach message for a burned hillside would be to keep an eye out for noxious weeds establishing and expanding in area and to keep checking to make sure native vegetation is coming back in. If you have areas of formally dense forest that are not reestablishing with grasses and flowers it might be worthwhile to buy native local seed to replant in the areas without much vegetation. Many areas in the burn area are reestablishing on their own; but some of the densest (with the highest burn severity) sections of forest have been taking a bit longer for plants to rebound on.

As far as tree removal is concerned there isn’t much ecological benefit to removing the burned trees. Most of those burned trees will fall in the next decade and a few will remain standings for many decades to come. In general if folks decide to log their burned forest often their main goal is to enhance their view shed and to partially speed up the reestablishment timetable for native plant. It might be worthwhile to start developing a tree seedling replanting plan, but I believe some of the trees on the hillside where lodgepole pine. Lodgepole pine will respond very well to fire and they should do just fine reseeding themselves without a need to replant. In addition, if native aspen was present prior to the fire you should see it establishing like crazy right now. Aspen is what we call an early successional tree species and is precisely what we would expect to establish after a fire at this elevation. If the hillside that burned was mostly ponderosa pine it might be worthwhile to develop a reforestation plan for the hillside since we know that ponderosa will take multiple decades to reestablish themselves on severely burned hillsides.

Cheers,
Ryan

Ryan Ludlow | Forestry Education & Outreach Coordinator 

Boulder County | Land Use Department
P.O. Box 471, Boulder CO 80306
O: 720.564.2641 | F: 303.441.4856
rludlow@nullbouldercounty.org |www.bouldercounty.org/ForestHealth