October 8, 2019
Human Blog 4: Multifaceted differences concerning forest management between in USA and China
After several days of scientific research, the American state of Washington left a deep impression on us. At the same time, as Human Group, we also have a deep reflection on the phenomenon we observe. After careful sorting, we were interested in the differences in forest management policies between the United States and China, and conducted a detailed comparative analysis.
We plan to discussion mainly two aspects, namely fire and deforestation, which we have experienced during our journey. Additionally, we look at those differences in forest management in general terms of socio-economic, policy and legislation and technological advantages, respectively.
To begin with, we focus on stuff concerning fire in forests.
Fire in the United States has many differences from that China in terms of legal policy provisions, economic and social impact.
Fig.1 Norse Peak Fire (Photo by Qifeng Wan)
From a policy standpoint, China strictly prohibits forest fires, and some areas (such as Mountain Lushan) prefer to allow soil acidification due to the decay of dead leaves on the ground rather than risk man-made fires to remove debris from the surface. However, in the United States, prescribed fires are allowed and are considered as an effective way for the U.S. government to protect forests. This is because the United States has a unique system of land ownership: private ownership of 60 percent, federal ownership of 33 percent, and state, public, and Indian tribes own the rest of the land. Whether or not to set fire to each forest is closely related to the ownership of the land, rather than the federal government itself. Tribal land, as well as land owned by the state or federal government, is governed by different laws and regulations, respectively. However, everyone must abide by laws, such as the air quality protection act.
From the cost of setting a fire, the exact price of a prescription fire depends on the size of the land to be burned, the laws to be followed and the fuel to be burned, so there is no fixed price. In the part of the daily education and advocacy efforts of American citizens, school students learn a lot about the benefits of forest fires in ecology-related courses. At the same time, Americans are also more concerned about private property rights, meaning that even when there is a prescribed fire, people care more about putting it out and not letting it burn where there is a house or private property.
In Washington State, due to its natural climate, every year from June to September, there is a fire hazard period. In addition, the expansion of human settlements and the intensification of climate warming both make prescribed fires more difficult to control, and thus the actual implementation of prescribed fire is much less than before. However, as a way to manage and control forests, prescribed fire is receiving more and more attention. Under the trend of increasing impacts of climate change and human activities, how to use and manage fire more efficiently has also been studied by more people, forest managers and scholars, which is a pleasant trend.
Also, in the management and control of forest fire, we found through investigation that China and the United States have obvious differences in the attitude of using prescribed fire, which is partly due to the disparity in fire control technology. According to former research and relevant survey, the United States has obvious advanced technology in controlling forest fires.
The United States starts early in forest fire detection and prediction, develops for a long time, and has a complete system. The forest fire forecast comprehensively considers the weather condition, the dry and wet degree of combustibles, the type characteristic of forest combustibles and the dangerous degree of the fire source to forecast the possibility of fire. The types of forest-fire prediction include forest fire prediction which indicates the possibility of lightning fire and man-made fire, and forest-fire behavior prediction which predicts the spreading speed, energy release, intensity of forest-fire and the degree of fire-fighting difficulty. At present, the development of forest fire prediction in the United States has entered a higher stage. For example, the United States has already formed its own National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS).
However, the research on forest fire prediction in China began in 1966 and started relatively late, but it has made great progress and some achievements since 1980s. With the passage of time, forest fire prediction and forecast has received more and more attention, and the research progress has been gradually accelerated. However, there is still a gap between the advance time and accuracy of the current forecast and that of the United States. Specifically, the United States’ advances in fire prediction and control rely on the following technological advantages: collection and transmission of meteorological data, estimation of vegetation greenness, and output and release of results.
On the whole, the United States has advanced technology support in fire monitoring, and does better than other countries in the scope and scale of monitoring. It brings convenience to the management and control of forest fire, and has a more accurate control of the positive and negative effects that forest fire may bring, so as to have a greater grasp of the decision whether to use prescribed forest fire in the designated area, which undoubtedly promotes the use of artificial fire. Advanced technological advantages enable the United States to allow the occurrence of beneficial natural forest fires and the conduct of planned prescribed fires, which also supports our research results from one aspect, that is, the incidence of forest fires in the United States is much higher than that in China.
Next, we are about to discussing forest management disparities in terms of deforestation.
First, we start in the aspects of social and economic factors. Ownership in the United States plays an important part in the differences. According to statistics, the private forest area of the United States is 172 million hectares, accounting for 57% of the total forest area of the country, among which the enterprise forest accounts for 1/3 of the private forest; Public forests cover 132 million hectares, or 43 percent of the country’s total forest area. Most of the national forests in the United States are managed by the forest service, mostly natural forests are under good protection and little productive logging. Most production and logging happen in private forests. The main task of the U.S. forest service is to protect forests and conduct scientific management of state-owned forests, while timber harvesting and processing activities are mostly carried out by private enterprises, which gives them a large degree of autonomy. All forests in China are owned by the state and the community. Also, China follows a strict and unified forest management program: state-owned forestry enterprises, institutions, farms, factories and mines are the units for state-owned forests and trees, while counties are the units for collective forests and trees. Annual cutting quotas are set respectively. The measures shall be collected by the competent forestry authorities of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government, and shall be implemented only after being examined and approved by the government at the same level and submitted to the state council for approval.
Compared with China’s increasingly strict forest management and control program, the relatively free and flexible management policy and market environment under the private ownership of the United States are an important factor for its multiple forest disturbances.
Policy is another significant factor. With regard to conservation and commercial logging restrictions, national forest deforestation in the United States must be tested in advance. The restrictions on commercial logging are as follows: no commercial logging shall be allowed in water conservation forests around rivers and lakes, and no soil erosion and water pollution shall be caused when cultivating and thinning. As for the provisions on the cutting of state-owned forests, the United States shall adopt proper selective cutting method and strictly control the amount of cutting. If the actual cutting amount is higher than the prescribed cutting amount, the extra sales shall be handed over to the state in proportion. In terms of regulations on private forest logging, private forest owners and forest companies in the United States, as market players, make independent decisions on logging activities on the premise of complying with logging requirements.
Fig.2 Selective cut in Washington State (left photo by Qifeng Wan, right image is downloaded from Google Earth)
China implemented the classified forest management policy in the natural forest protection plan in 1998, followed by the “returning farmland to forests” project in 1999 to protect forests from excessive deforestation. China banned all commercial logging in the northeast in 2014 and extended the ban nationwide starting in 2017. At present our country extant natural forest quantity is little, the wood source is mainly each forest farm’s economic forests. According to the principle that the consumption of timber forest must be lower than the growth, the state strictly controls the annual forest cutting amount. The units and individuals that cut trees shall, in accordance with the principle of giving priority to artificial regeneration and promotion of natural regeneration, complete the task of afforestation in the current year or next year after the cutting.
Fig.3 Clear cut in Washington State (left photo is from Qifeng Wan, right image is from Google Earth)
Generally speaking, China’s forest management has developed from the center of timber production, the center of ecological benefit, and the center of both economic benefit and ecological benefit to the present diversified benefit management mode of forest resources.
Apparently, the Chinese government has gradually tightened its controls on deforestation. On the one hand, China’s forest resources have been protected to some extent through the implementation of the forest quota cutting system and the ban on commercial cutting of natural forests. But on the other hand, the quota cutting limits the forestry management subject’s initiative greatly. With the opening of the market economy and the continuous expansion of the demand for timber, the forestry operators can only operate in accordance with the established limit and cannot make changes according to the market demand, which will inevitably damage the economic benefits of the operators and reduce the enthusiasm of the forestry operators. Forest operators not only cannot operate normally in accordance with the required amount, but also be restricted in terms of the cutting quota, tree species and many other aspects by the local management department, resulting in a certain amount of economic losses. By contrast, in western countries, the government will give operators certain compensation, such as tax reduction or exemption. In China, there is no national compensation from forestry management department. China protects the forest resources through the quota cutting, but it infringes the independent management rights of the management subject, reduces the economic benefits of the management subject, and hinders the normal development of forestry to some extent.
Fig.4 Clear cut (left: after; right: before) in China (from Google Earth)
In addition, it has to be mentioned that, in terms of policy implementation, another important feature is that the implementation of the project has been effectively supervised and the effect of implementation has been continuously monitored in the United States. The collection of relevant data provides a firm basis for the decision-making and policy improvement of state-owned forest management.
On the whole, the differences in the quantity and quality of forest resources, as well as different political systems and cultures inevitably lead to great differences in the forest law system of the two countries. The difference of forest management policy directly leads to the difference of the quantity and spatial and temporal distribution of forest disturbance in two countries though with the same latitude and similar climate.
As for the concept, China started relatively late in forest management with traditional ideas. In the early days of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the concept of environmental protection was very backward. In the early 1980s, China’s forest resources were faced with exhaustion. Though in order to protect the forest resources, China promulgated the forest law of the People’s Republic of China. However, China’s forest resources are still being lost due to intensive logging. In contrast, the United States implemented the famous National Forest Management Act as early as 1976, which embodied the new management concept and the idea of combining advanced scientific knowledge with resource planning and management.
On the other hand, China is the largest developing country in the world. Since the reform and opening up, China’s economy and society have developed rapidly. Due to the urgent needs of industrial development and economic construction, China has to conduct large-scale deforestation to meet the wood demand of production. This process will inevitably lead to the destruction of ecological environment and overdraft of the ecological benefits, so that the state must adopt strict measures to control and ban deforestation now. However, the United States is a developed country, the demand for wood is consistent through time. This is reflected in our analysis of results, that is, relatively few disturbances concerning deforestation in China, while relatively more disturbances in Washington State.
Deforestation is one of the rational management and utilization of forests. Deforestation will have a certain impact on the forest, unreasonable Deforestation may lead to unsatisfactory forest species structure, reduced level of biological diversity, instability of the forest structure and the vulnerability of stress resistance. Therefore, certain technical means and reasonable methods should be adopted for harvesting.
Generally speaking, the main methods of deforestation are selective cut and clear cut.
The advantage of clear cut is that there is no need to choose the cut wood. Also, it is more convenient to collect materials, and clear and renew forest land after. More importantly, the economic benefit is higher. However, clear cut has a detrimental impact on soil, water circulation, rivers, wildlife and natural landscape. Compared with clear cutting, the adverse effect of selective cutting is much smaller, showing obvious superiority. Based on the comprehensive analysis of economic, social and ecological effects, the comprehensive benefit of selective logging is higher than that of clear logging, which can adjust the plantation to mixed and different age forest and maintain the natural forest, protecting the biological diversity and making the forest management sustainable. However, the intensity and cycle of selective cut should be considered carefully, which has higher requirements in techniques. If the selective cut intensity does not exceed 25%, and the canopy density remains above 0.5 after cutting, the stand structure can be adjusted, and the forest composition can be bettered, which is conducive to forest regeneration and growth. However, selective cut with excessive intensity will lead to an increase in large trees, poor dry deformation and a decrease in average diameter. According to research, selective cut with 70% intensity has the highest benefit. Therefore, it is necessary to think twice in the planning and design of cutting areas, reasonably determine the selective cut intensity, scientifically select and reserve timber, and optimize the cutting and gathering technology. Moreover, the logging operation should avoid the rainy season as much as possible, so as to reduce the disturbance of the operation on the surface.
It can be seen that the core issues of selective cut in artificial forests are to determine reasonable selective cut intensity, selective cut cycle, consider spatial structure and selective cut method and technologies. However, China’s traditional plantation harvesting is carried out as clear cut, and the concept of selective cut is lacking. Also, a complete technical system of selective cut and regeneration of plantation has not been established yet. For this reason, China has to build a large area of artificial forests, the purpose of which is to improve the forest coverage rate. Nonetheless, we neglect the forest quality, and thus the species are relatively simple and the wood quality is relatively low, failing to make good use of the ecological and economic benefits of the forest. At the same time, China’s topography is also one of the reasons for the limitation of selective cut. This is because selective cut requires frequent transfer of machinery and equipment, which takes a lot of time and manpower. China’s forests are mainly located in hilly areas, making it more difficult to transfer equipment. Therefore, China’s forest resources have been wasted a lot.
America’s forests, by contrast, are largely multi-play, with much of it devoted to logging. However, the United States has a complete set of techniques for harvesting forests, so the total benefits of its logging industry are much higher than those of China’s forest management. Although clear cut is also the main method of deforestation in the United States, there is a complete set of forest restoration measures after clear cut, including afforestation, irrigation, fertilization and pest control. Forests in this mode of operation can recover over 35-65 years, leading to periodic logging and sustainable logging. Therefore, certain technological advantages also make the incidence of logging in the United States higher than that in China.
All in all, we have dug into many kinds of driving factors in terms of fire and deforestation. However, they are only our own thinking, whether they make sense or not is what we cannot guarantee. But one thing we can say for sure is that, we really learn a lot from the expedition in the Washington State, and thank all the instructors who once help me, and also this valuable experience very much.
