Water is life and biomass is what life does with water. As biological mass, biomass is nature’s currency, produced from water, sunlight, and nutrients. But forest biomass borrows against water and over time, the demand outpaces the supply and a biomass debt accumulates. The function of fire is to pay the bill and balance the budget. In fire-adapted ecosystems, the historical biomass budget was balanced by a fire rhythm maintained by lightning and by First Nations land management practices. When colonization tipped this balance and removed the regular fire payments, the debt sky-rocketed in dry forests around the world. The penalties and interest, in the form of catastrophic fires and widespread tree mortality, are now balancing the budget.
Utilizing small-diameter wood in fire-adapted ecosystems can help to pay-down the biomass budget. If the budget has been blown and the debt is too great, fire cannot be applied safely. Biomass must first be harvested to reduce the liability. The difficult reality is that this material isn’t commercially viable and usually won’t be paying its way out of the forest. But, in many cases, it can walk its way out of the forest, if the bureaucrats will just get out of the way. More on this soon.
