41–50 of 112 posts
This quote from the article is important: Still, considerable disagreement remains among scientists about exactly how forests should be managed.
As you crank up the tightness of "exact", you'll always get more and more disagreement.
Is there any large science-based policy decision where there is 100% agreement among scientists, or where there hasn't been considerable disagreement between some of them?
The missing step is often that we continue to let communities pop up in these areas that we fully expect to periodically burn down. Of course, we often still let people build their houses in flood planes, but we seem to be slowly getting better at that.
Or in zones where there are catastrophic earthquakes on a regular basis. Or hurricanes. Or tornadoes. Or blizzards. > we often still let people build their houses in flood planes The best farmland is on flood plains; good luck with holding them back. Let's be honest for a moment: there's no place in America which is safe from every regularly occurring natural disaster. Yet we still live here.
[0] http://www.ky3.com/content/news/Taney-County-residents-clean...
We will be the laughingstocks of history, if humanity somehow survives us.
In a book about the smoke jumpers from several years ago, one of the members made a profound statement, jokingly, probably, but maybe not. He said that instead of battling wildfires the way we do now, we just throw money on the fire and wait until the rains come. With the continued droughts throughout the west and up into Alaska and Canada along with the effects of global warming, the forest lands are just dry tinder…
One more thing that's really hurt has been beetle kill. There are stands of trees killed by beetles which have been waiting for the right spark. They've been working for years to clear out these tinderboxes, but it's hard work (especially since those efforts have to fight against the anti-logging camps). http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/pine-beetles/rosne...
In Australia we do a lot of controlled burning through the winter. They're called "hazard reduction burns" and are carefully planned operations involving lots of firefighters and appliances. The aim is to burn the leaf litter and other fuels, but not let the fire get hot enough to kill established trees. You start to see signs of regrowth very quickly. HRs are usually done in the late winter. By mid spring the landsc…
It's really amazing to witness being performed. These places don't seem to ever have wild damaging fires like other parts of Australia, due to a lack of fuel build up, and the environment in these places always look "immaculate", almost like a freshly cleaned apartment. The smell of these slow burning fires through winter is really nice.
I've spent a lot of time on the East Coast of Australia too, where the "bush" is managed the European way, and there is a lot of problems with wild fires, invasive species (introduced) and a less healthy looking landscape.
The hazard reduction burning in Australia seems to be more about establishing parameters to protect property more than anything else?
Speaking as a Montanan here. The policy of "let some fires burn" has been in practice for a few decades now in our corner of the woods. Ever since the Yellowstone fire in the 80's, we've focused our efforts on containment instead of extinguishment (i.e. make a best effort to keep it away from human settlements); letting land lost to the fires just burn out naturally while stopping them from claiming too much land. Sh…
> Grass fires can move even faster than forest fires, given a wind to push it along. In earlier times, farm fields actually were separated by bushes, patches of rocks, tiny rivers, whatever. Humans have flattened all of this, in order to make really huge strips of farmland that can be worked on really, really efficiently by machines. Not only has this practice destroyed the living space of small animals like rabbits…
Some forests are self-regulating when it comes to fire. Some forests are not. What defines forest is actually pretty complicated, even for Federal and state agencies. Controlled burns work in conjunction with thinning practices and bone-piling (stacking big burns away from other areas). The root of the problem has been and continue to be that structurally we separate "fuels" and "prevention" teams in the forest servi…
Do you think it would help to hold some sort of conference every year or two about firefighting techniques and science?
Most of the budget goes to handling fires that are really out of control, and there's more and more of those every year.
If you doubled the budget, hired fuels teams with scientists at the head of the teams (instead of fire fighters) and applied that budget to thinning and controlled burns, you'd probably have much safer more defensible forests areas.
Also, there's a huge gray area around what fires to prioritize and when to fight them. A good example of "letting it rip" and "let them log" was the Egley complex fire in 2007 (one of my last fires!): https://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/success/stories/2009/nf...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or in zones where there are catastrophic earthquakes on a regular basis. Or hurricanes. Or tornadoes. Or blizzards. > we often still let people build their houses in flood planes The best farmland is on flood plains; good luck with holding them back. Let's be honest for a moment: there's no place in America which is safe from every regularly occurring natural disaster. Yet we still live here.
No one is talking about farmers. They're usually smart enough to locate their houses up the hill. The problem is towns, cities, and especially rural housing developments in floodplains. This year, we had local residents bemoaning their devastating flood losses while pointing out that the water rose even higher two years ago. [0] ?%?!#$? What is wrong with people? [0] http://www.ky3.com/content/news/Taney-County-resid…
> What is wrong with people?
Ask the residents of New Orleans. Or the Netherlands. Or the Venetians.
They're people, in their homes. People are typically pretty irrational when it comes to their homes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One more thing that's really hurt has been beetle kill. There are stands of trees killed by beetles which have been waiting for the right spark. They've been working for years to clear out these tinderboxes, but it's hard work (especially since those efforts have to fight against the anti-logging camps). http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/pine-beetles/rosne...
ISTM that nothing would have been as good a firebreak against the beetle onslaught as actual firebreaks left by uncontrolled fires would have been?
And unless explicitly directed, forest fires rarely create anything that could be considered to be a "break" between two sections of forest. Usually more like a "blob" in the middle of a forest.