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2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

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31–40 of 210 posts

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#31

I guess 2000 is a long time biologically and I suppose those trees have seen bad fires before climate change really kicked off. I'm sure there were very dry and warm periods before this too. Even thought we might think we're dominating nature, I'm sure it has a few tricks up it's sleeve yet.

The concerning issue with this fire is that humans have spent most of the last 100 years suppressing wildfires in these forests. This leads to an unprecedented amount of fuel built up on the forest floor, which leads to abnormally large and hot wildfires. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to be too much for the redwoods, though time will tell.

Not sure what fire plans California have, but prescribed burning is a thing.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/prescribed-fire

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#32
post #8

A hundred miles north of this fire, at the Armstrong Redwood State Park, there is another lightning-caused wildfire that is burning through an old growth grove. That fire is burning through the forest floor only, and is significantly less dangerous. The 1400-year-old Armstrong tree, and park buildings, have been protected, while the fire is free to burn through the surrounding undergrowth. Everyone involved seems to…

Takes more than a forest fire to kill off the ents.

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#33
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The global temperature anomaly is already out-of-range for not only the lifetime of this tree, but much of its evolutionary history. We are entering an out-of-context situation for a large portion of the earth's extant lifeforms.

California has been subject to century long droughts in the not too distant past (about 1000 years ago). "BEGINNING about 1,100 years ago, what is now California baked in two droughts, the first lasting 220 years and the second 140 years. Each was much more intense than the mere six-year dry spells that afflict modern California from time to time, new studies of past climates show. The findings suggest, in fact, that…

Further to that, the global temperature anomaly has caused rainfall patterns to change, meaning some places are trending wetter, and some drier, and crucially, volatility has increased. Having wet seasons, generating fuel load, followed by dry is more problematic than a sustained drought.

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#34

I guess 2000 is a long time biologically and I suppose those trees have seen bad fires before climate change really kicked off. I'm sure there were very dry and warm periods before this too. Even thought we might think we're dominating nature, I'm sure it has a few tricks up it's sleeve yet.

The concerning issue with this fire is that humans have spent most of the last 100 years suppressing wildfires in these forests. This leads to an unprecedented amount of fuel built up on the forest floor, which leads to abnormally large and hot wildfires. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to be too much for the redwoods, though time will tell.

I've heard this argument a lot and it makes sense, but on the other hand isn't there a maximum limit to the amount of fuel(carbon?) that can accumulate? Fungus and detritivores must certainly play some role, no? Doesn't the shade provided by the big trees place some limit on what can grow beneath?

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#35

Why are there always so many fires in California?

Because it's wet in the winter, and hot, dry and windy in the summer. Everywhere with this weather pattern sees frequent wildfires.

California used to have more acres burned annually a hundred years ago, but the amount of land burned has decreased since then, as a result of suppression efforts. This may be increasing the severity of fires, as there's more fuel to burn.

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#36

“Withstand” is a funny word. Forests need fire. Fire is destructive to the organs (flora and fauna) but beneficial to the organism (a forest). I’m thinking of all of the sequoia seeds, now germinated from the fire[1], that will sprout next year into full sunlight that hasn’t touched the forest floor in hundreds of years. It is sad though that it’s also destructive to the lives of so many people. May everyone find saf…

Note that the trees in question are Coastal Redwoods, not Giant Sequoias, in Big Basin, maybe five miles from the coast, near sea level. They are TALL trees, with some over 300 feet tall. The Giant Sequoias in the article you linked are in the Sierra Nevada mountains, at a few thousand feet elevation and a couple hundred miles from the coast. They are MASSIVE trees, truly awe-inspiring, a bit shorter than the Coastal…

Pedantically it ain’t so straight forward. Coastal redwoods are taxonomically in genus Sequoia while giant sequoias are in genus Sequoiadendron. And of course “pedantry“ is the answer to “What is the practical utility of learning Latin?”

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#38
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 1400-year-old Armstrong tree The bare fact that a tree is 1400 years old is pretty strong evidence that it's unlikely to be harmed by a fire.

The global temperature anomaly is already out-of-range for not only the lifetime of this tree, but much of its evolutionary history. We are entering an out-of-context situation for a large portion of the earth's extant lifeforms.

”Earth's surface became entirely or nearly entirely frozen, sometime earlier than 650 Mya (million years ago) during the Cryogenian period. "

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth

Note that animal (multicellular eukaryotes) fossils exist from that period.

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concerning issue with this fire is that humans have spent most of the last 100 years suppressing wildfires in these forests. This leads to an unprecedented amount of fuel built up on the forest floor, which leads to abnormally large and hot wildfires. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to be too much for the redwoods, though time will tell.

Not sure what fire plans California have, but prescribed burning is a thing. https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/prescribed-fire

Australia is slowly moving back to using "cultural burning" to help tackle this problem.

http://www.walkaboutpark.com.au/aboriginal-culture/cultural-...

Re: 2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park

#40

Redwoods not only survive the fires, they tend to proliferate afterwards. After lesser trees have been cleared out by the fires, redwood seedlings take root. Redwoods also thrive in low rain areas that are prone to fog because they benefit from the fog in a way that other trees do not. I once suggested redwoods as an alternate or additional metaphor for giftedness re Stephanie Tolan's "Is it a cheetah?" https://www.s…

I believe the heat of a wildfire is literally the trigger for the cone to open up and release the redwood's seeds! (I don't know the exact mechanism for this, though.)

I don't know. I know there is a pine that does that, but I'm in rough shape and trying to stay out of trouble, which is challenging for me under the best of circumstances.

I remember the pine cone of I think a yellow pine species opens up at 170 degrees, so it typically opens in response to fire. A quick google suggests it is called a Jack Pine.

Hurricanes are also thought to be responsible for bringing fly species to islands and new islands end up having bird poo on them with seeds the birds ingested. Plants do this intentionally to let birds spread their seeds because birds lack teeth, so the seeds don't get chewed up in the process.

Hot peppers are intended to be eaten by birds but not other species. They are hot as a form of chemical warfare against things they don't want eating them. Chocolate and maybe also coffee is bitter like it is to kill ants and if you have sufficiently dark chocolate (in, say, a tent), it doesn't attract ants. Milk chocolate attracts ants because of the sugar, but the cocoa itself is ant poison.

Anyway, little islands form from volcanos and they start sticking up out of the ocean a little and they become resting places for birds and the bird poo is the first soil and fertilizer on these barren volcanic rocks and then coconut trees are typically the first trees because the coconut will float across the ocean without being killed by the salt water and land on some newly formed little island with a bit of bird poo and a few plants and it will take root. I think no other tree does that.

If you get rid of all "disasters" entirely, you kill off a lot of stuff. Mother Nature or "mother earth" has fascinating and complex ways of letting life find a way and fire laying waste to some portion of the forest and leaving in its wake fertile soil and opening the cones of some pine species is just one of the fascinating ways she does that.

Anyway, I have big plans to shut up on HN and attempt to go behave now by being elsewhere. Ciao.

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