STUDIO DESCRIPTION

The role of fire, forestry, and carbon are shifting in response to climate change, with many parties—in both the public and private sectors—expressing interest in reducing the potential for catastrophic carbon emissions as a result of wildfire and climate change. Decades of counterproductive U.S. federal and state-level forest management are facing public scrutiny, including a focus on more than a century of unsustainable fuels buildups, and the suppression of traditional burning by Indigenous communities throughout the United States.

Wildfires are not a new threat, but on a warmer and drier planet, they have grown in severity and frequency. Firefighters are having to learn new tactics to combat increasingly intense and fast-moving wildfires. Fire seasons, which have historically been limited to the summer months, are starting to become year-round. In 2011 the U.S. Forest Service coined the term “megafires” to describe the novel behavior of a growing number of wildfires of unprecedented size and severity, which burn over 100,000 acres. For more and more communities, megafires represent an immediate climate threat.

This studio seeks to highlight promising directions for federal and state forest policy, with the quadruple goals of:

1) reducing wildfire risks in anticipation of climate change,

2) strengthening public understanding of climate-smart forestry practices,

3) increasing the sequestration of biogenic carbon in forested landscapes, and

4) amplifying the voices of local communities in forest decision-making—which includes advocacy for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination in the land use planning conversation.

Most of U.S. forestland is dedicated to commercial forestry—managing forestland for the long-term production of wood products, paper, fiber, and biofuels. Commercial forestry, and the economics and politics of wood’s complex supply chain are essential to maintaining forestland and protecting it from land conversion. Additionally, in recent years, there has been a new emphasis on the role of the built environment to store carbon, in long-lived wood products like mass timber and engineered wood, locking up potential emissions and protecting them from fire and natural decomposition. The benefits of wood quickly escalate if one also considers the carbon savings of substituting wood for high-emissions building materials such as concrete and steel. Also, due to the localized nature of wood harvesting, milling, and transportation, a rapid increase in the forestry and construction sector also provides all too rare opportunities for increasing economic opportunities for rural communities left out of the green economy.

However, there are questions about the full ecological impacts of increased timber production. What happens to forests and ecosystem services as production is scaled up quickly? Can this growth be achieved through responsible forest management, or will it result in deforestation, degradation and loss of biodiversity. Who will benefit from the growth of mass timber? How will the transformation of this sector actually impact rural communities and tribal nations?

Proponents of climate-smart forestry argue that sustainable harvesting and management is not inherently in conflict with maximizing forest carbon sequestration, biodiversity, or other ecosystem services. This studio will explore the economic and supply chain questions of the forestry industry, and track the carbon and labor impacts of this system across the studio’s two sites. It will strive to untangle the complex dynamics of wood products, from the forest to the mill and beyond. And it will articulate the case for a concerted program of outdoor conservation work, in line with the Green New Deal’s agenda of decarbonization, jobs, and justice, and in line with Just Transitions principles.

To date, a Green New Deal for Forests has not been articulated or evaluated comprehensively, though it has incredible potential to break longstanding divisions and bring together industry, environmental and labor groups across the United States. A GND for Forests could overhaul forest management, keeping more of that carbon in the landscape and locking up carbon stocks in long-lived forest products. It would seek to climate-proof forests against the mounting threats of climate change. It would put millions of people to work preparing forests for low-intensity prescribed burns—as Indigenous land managers have long advocated, but as forestry agencies have only recently begun trying to do. Getting back to a healthy fire ecology sounds simple, but it is in fact extraordinarily difficult to counteract more than a hundred years of fire suppression and get forests to a place where they can be safely burned again. A Green New Deal for forests would foreground rural labor and communities, including Indigenous communities who have long argued for a more ecologically responsible (and traditionally informed) approach to fire management. It would re-invigorate rural economies that rely on forests to generate economic activity, by developing sustainable wood products markets that are non-extractive and carbon-negative.

This studio is being organized as part of the national Green New Deal Superstudio, a nation-wide collaboration between multiple schools of landscape architecture and planning across the U.S. focused on illustrating a range of potential strategies and outcomes of the Green New Deal Congressional Resolution, HR 109.  Work developed during the semester will be submitted to the Green New Deal Superstudio exhibition and will inform the Landscape Architecture Foundation’s next summit in October 2021.

NEW DEAL LEGACIES

This studio draws on the legacy of the original New Deal, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s immensely popular suite of emergency employment and public works programs, which from 1933 until 1942 helped to combat the unemployment and poverty resulting from the Great Depression. One of the most popular of the New Deal programs was the Civilian Conservation Corps, which put millions of young men to work planting trees, fighting fires, and fighting soil erosion.

Over the last decade, faced with the threat of climate change and a new set of ecological threats, numerous environmental advocates have called for a new Civilian Conservation Corps, Green Brigade, or other such ecological restoration program. The studio will study both the legacy of the original CCC, as well as the continuation of this program at the state level in the subsequent decades—most notably the California Conservation Corps, which continues to operate today.

The fundamental premise of a Green New Deal for Forests is the deployment of outdoor labor for the ecological improvement of forest landscapes. In the case of fire risk, a Green New Deal-type program would fill the unmet need for forest management resources to reduce flammable fuels buildup, while removing carbon from the forest system, and ideally also achieving all of the same employment and outdoor education goals of the original CCC and California’s subsequent CCC programs. This studio will develop this premise, testing it on two sites, in two very different regions and forest systems.

AREAS OF FOCUS

The studio will look at two very different regions through the forestry and carbon lens: Central Washington State in the Pacific Northwest, and Northern Georgia in Appalachia. While the Pacific Northwest forest and fire conversation is different from that of the Southeast, both regions are facing increased fire risk due to climate change, and both stand to benefit from a Green New Deal for forests.

Students will track carbon flows, labor, products, and the ecological impacts of their strategies on their two sites, develop prescriptions and detailed spatial designs for these sites, and play out the long-term impacts of their interventions using ecologically-informed scenarios. The studio will ground students in the fire ecology and forestry conversation by analyzing several classic forest fire and forest carbon case studies, learning about the emerging science of both climate-smart forestry and prescribed burning.

We cannot talk about fire or carbon without addressing forest ecology, and cannot talk about forest landscapes without addressing rural economies. Redesigning forestry for climate change requires synthesizing across multiple disciplines—work that landscape architects are well-positioned to do. This studio will use landscape intelligence to develop ideas for fire-adapted communities, for restored and climate-adapted forests, and will begin the process of decolonizing fire management—part of a larger project of re-envisioning the American landscape.

STUDIO ADVISORS

Stephanie Carlisle (Carbon Leadership Forum)
Frank M. Riley (Chestatee/Chattahoochee Resource Conservation and Development Council)
Phil Rigdon (Yakama Nation)

This studio has benefitted from the input and experience of a diverse group of foresters, ecologists, policy experts, and labor organizers. Full list of participants to be added at the studio’s completion.

Introductory Resources

A few introductory resources to get you started. Over the course of the semester, we will cover, many more readings and hear directly from experts on a range of topics and perspectives.

Green New Deal:

• Matt Huber, “Building a “Green New Deal”: Lessons From the Original New Deal.” Verso Books Blog, November 19, 2018.

  https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4131-building-a-green-new-deal-lessons-from-the-original-new-deal

• Nicholas Pevzner, “The Green New Deal, Landscape, and Public Imagination,” Landscape Architecture Magazine, July 2019. https://landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/2019/07/23/the-green-new-deal-landscape-and-public-imagination/

• Paul J. Baichich, “A Green New Deal Needs a 21st-Century Civilian Conservation Corps,” Jacobin, August 11, 2020. https://jacobinmag.com/2020/08/fdr-green-new-deal-ccc

• Naomi Klein, “Forged in Fire: California’s Lessons for a Green New Deal.” The Intercept, Nov. 7, 2019. https://theintercept.com/2019/11/07/california-wildfires-green-new-deal/

US Forest Service & Civilian Conservation Corps:

• Gerald W. Williams, "Looking Back: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the National Forests," March 21, 2008. https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsbdev3_004791.pdf

• Neil M. Maher. Nature’s New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

• Jim Furnish. Toward a Natural Forest: The Forest Service in Transition. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2015.

• Neil M. Maher, “Why We Need A New Civilian Conservation Corps—And How To Do It,” Data For Progress Memo, October 2020. https://tjcinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/20.10_Civilian-Conservation-Corps.pdf

• Esch, B., and D. Vosick. The Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI): The Role of Collaboration in Achieving Outcomes. ERI White Paper—Issues in Forest Restoration. Ecological Restoration Institute, Northern Arizona University, 2016. https://4fri.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/1205_4FRI-Lessons-Learned-ERI-White-Paper.pdf

Decolonization:

• Kari Marie Norgaard. Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People: Colonialism, Nature and Social Action. New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2019.

• Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization is not a metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1(1), 2012: 1-40.

• Climate Adaptation Plan for the Territories of the Yakama Nation, April 2016. https://www.critfc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Yakama-Nation-Climate-Adaptation-Plan-.pdf

Fire (general):

• Stephen J. Pyne. Fire In America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire. Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 1982.

• Philip Connors. “We Made Wildfire an Enemy for 110 Years. It Could Have Been an Ally.” The New York Times, Sept. 22, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/us/forest-fires-fighting-history.html

• Nicola Twiley, “A Trailblazing Plan to Fight California Wildfires.” The New Yorker, August 26, 2019. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/26/a-trailblazing-plan-to-fight-california-wildfires

• Ula Chobak, “How to rebuild California forests, with climate in mind” Knowable Magazine, December 16, 2020. https://knowablemagazine.org/article/food-environment/2020/how-rebuild-california-forests-climate-mind

• A. Sydney Johnson and Philip E. Hale. “The Historical Foundations of Prescribed Burning for Wildlife: a Southeastern Perspective.” Report, U.S. Forest Service. https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/gtr/gtr_ne288/gtr_ne288_011.pdf

• Jeff Winkler. “If You Can’t Stand the Heat: How I became a cook at fire camp,” The Atlantic, December 30, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/12/my-time-fire-camp/617452/

Fire (research papers):

• William R. L. Anderegg, Anna T. Trugman, Grayson Badgley, Christa M. Anderson, Ann Bartuska, Philippe Ciais, Danny Cullenward et al. "Climate-driven risks to the climate mitigation potential of forests." Science 368, no. 6497 (2020) 

• Crystal A. Kolden. "We’re not doing enough prescribed fire in the Western United States to mitigate wildfire risk." Fire 2, no. 2 (2019): 30

• Terry K. Haines, Rodney L. Busby, and David A. Cleaves. "Prescribed burning in the South: trends, purpose, and barriers." Southern Journal of Applied Forestry 25, no. 4 (2001): 149-153. 

• Crystal A. Kolden and Timothy J. Brown. "Beyond wildfire: perspectives of climate, managed fire and policy in the USA." International Journal of Wildland Fire 19, no. 3 (2010): 364-373 

• Ryan D. Haugo et al. “The missing fire: quantifying human exclusion of wildfire in Pacific Northwest forests, USA.” Ecosphere, April 2019.

Forest Management, Climate-Smart Forestry, Forest Carbon, Biogenic Carbon:

• Jerry F. Franklin, K. Norman Johnson, and Debora L. Johnson. Ecological Forest Management. (Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc, 2018) 

• K. Hoover & A. A. Riddle, (2020). Forest Carbon Primer. Congressional Research Service. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R46312.pdf

• P.J. Verkerk et al. "Climate-Smart Forestry: the missing link." Forest Policy and Economics 115 (2020).

• David D. Diaz et al. “Tradeoffs in Timber, Carbon, and Cash Flow under Alternative Management Systems for Douglas-Fir in the Pacific Northwest.” Forests 9, no. 8 (2018).

Selected Congressional Bills:

• H.Res.109 - Green New Deal Resolution, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/109

• S.3684 - 21st Century Conservation Corps for Our Health and Our Jobs Act, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3684

• S.4538 - RENEW Conservation Corps Act, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/4538/text

Podcasts:

• "Timber Wars," Oregon Public Broadcasting. https://www.opb.org/show/timberwars/

• “Boulder v. Hill: Act One, The Extinguishers,” This American Life, December 18, 2020. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/727/boulder-v-hill

• How to Save a Planet, Feb. 4, 2021 Episode: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/5whko6o/the-tribe-thats-moving-earth-and-water

Land Acknowledgement

The University of Pennsylvania is located on the lands of the Lenni Lenape people, in the Lennapehoking, the ancestral and spiritual homeland of the Lenape people.

The Lenape people are a sovereign nation, the original inhabitants of Delaware, New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, and Southern New York, and the continuing caretakers of the Delaware River for over 10,000 years. We want to acknowledge the Lenape as the original caretakers of this land and their continuing relationship with their territory. and recognize the histories of colonial warfare and removal practices—indigenous land dispossession, land theft, violence, or erasure—that have brought our institution and our city here, and that have led to the dispersal of Lenape communities to what is today Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Ontario, and New Jersey—and to their continued presence in Pennsylvania, where some Lenape were driven into hiding but remained. Pennsylvania is one of the few states without any recognized tribes or tribal reservations.

We also recognize and support the ongoing struggle for sovereignty and self-determination faced by indigenous groups both here and across the world. This semester we will be studying and designing for two areas with their own distinct Indigenous history, both of them sites of violent displacement, land dispossession, and expulsion. We will take seriously the tasks of learning this history of settler-colonialism on our sites of design, understanding the role of Indigenous land dispossession in the creation of the U.S. federal public lands and state-owned lands in both locations, and striving to understand the impact of this land dispossession on the lives and experiences of these Indigenous communities.

We commit to strive toward policies and practices that work more closely with indigenous communities, listen to and value their knowledge and perspectives, and recognize their continued presence on and relationships with their ancestral homelands. Through our research and design work, we will strive to act in a reparative way for these historic harms, with humility but compassion, and to seek avenues for decolonizing the power relations that have been perpetuated over the last two centuries.