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We Know How to Prevent Megafires

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Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#71

Post by hinkley »

brudgers wrote: post #48

Academics believe that between 4.4 million and 11.8 million acres burned each year in prehistoric California. Even the low end of this is several times what burned this year. I’m drawing a blank on how that level of burning would prevent “mega fires” unless the idea is to replace them with “super mega fires” several times larger.

There’s a difference between “had flames on it” and “burned to the ground”.

There’s also a heat point where the soil is sterilized, meaning it can take many times longer for substantial succession to occur.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#72

Post by hinkley »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #43
trhway wrote: post #37

Control burns look to me just like blood letting - a thing from the past when we didn't know better. how to prevent megafires? How about extinguishing them while they are just fires? A fleet of 100 tanker planes is just a few $B investment with couple hundred $M/year maintenance. Several round trips of those 100 tanker planes in the first day when these fires have just started would have solved the issue. They would…

I think what you might be missing in your analysis is that preventative approaches that only "stop" the spread of fires only contribute to reducing the occurrence rate of catastrophic events, but also contribute to increasing the severity of them as well (through build up of fuel). Robust solutions should ideally both manage occurrence and severity of catastrophic events, and be able to scale through multiple magnitu…

I see a big overlap with Antifragility concepts here. Stopping all the fires at all costs makes the system fragile.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#73

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

dragonwriter wrote: post #17
jeffbee wrote: post #15

There's a couple of misleading statements in here. It's true that CDF firefighters make a decent living, but it's also true that every other fire department pays better. They'd all take a position in a city fire department if they were after more money. The other misleading thing is associating these current fires with bad forest management practices. It's true for Sierra Nevada forests generally, but that's not wher…

> It's true that CDF firefighters make a decent living, but it's also true that every other fire department pays better. Except CDCR, which pays notably worse, but that's not really competing for firefighters. > There doesn't seem to be a mechanism for the state to require a prescribed burn through private lands, like you might do in a national forest or BLM holding. There's not mechanism for the state to require a p…

"the state" is often used as a general term for the government and not necessarily the government of a specific area.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#75

Post by kurthr »

philips wrote: post #2

My big takeaway from the article is it will require a big culture shift in the general public, two quotes: > “I’ve talked to many prescribed fire managers, particularly in the Sierra Nevada over the years, who’ve told me, ‘Yeah, we’ve spent thousands and thousands of dollars to get all geared up to do a prescribed burn,’ and then they get shut down.” Maybe there’s too much smog that day from agricultural emissions in…

The parts of this fire that you heard about (LNU and CZU complexes) were not caused by lack of controlled burn (some fires in the Sierra Nevada probably are). In particular North Napa and Lake counties have both burned in the same area in the last 5 years so it's sort of gibberish, while the redwood areas (like north of Santa Cruz) are not forests that regularly burn... and it is still logged which didn't stop the progression.

Sadly, this expert isn't an expert on these fires... there are others where his comments would be relevant.

The idea of doing controlled burns in areas that recently burned (already causing many $Billions of damage to crops and real estate) or in redwood forests which require a firestorm to ignite in a populated region with many more $Billions in real estate and 10s of thousands of inhabitants which boarder cities of millions... would be hilarious, if it wasn't so dangerous.

Look at the caltopo website if you want to look at the area burning and what has previously burned.

https://caltopo.com/map.html?fbclid=IwAR3Bd6K6XaKR-S_Co9io8i...

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#76

Post by kurthr »

dmurray wrote: post #10
perl4ever wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how a private individual would deal with the liability.

Here in Ireland farmers regularly burn fields and occasionally the fire gets out of control and destroys an entire mountainside. A couple of years ago one came within 100m of my parents' house - one more change of wind direction and they would have lost everything. No one ever seems to get criminally or civilly prosecuted for starting the fires. Often everyone knows who did it but there's no irrefutable evidence and…

How many parts of Ireland ever receive less than 20cm of rain in a year?

Grass fires are not considered a significant danger in CA... it's the big canyon fires with 20+deg slopes rising 1000m covered with Eucalyptus and other large trees interspersed with scrub brush that create firestorms and can easily burn 40km^2 per day even with mild winds.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#77

Post by zdragnar »

NicolasGorden wrote: post #63
jefftk wrote: post #29

It's amazing how many obstacles we put in the way of planned burns, to prevent problems that we've been just have to accept when they happen unexpectedly on their own: Planned burns are human-made events and as such need to follow all environmental compliance rules. That includes the Clean Air Act, which limits the emission of PM 2.5, or fine particulate matter, from human-caused events. In California, those rules ar…

I think a big part of the problem is the concept of sacrifice is falling by the wayside. I feel my grandparents had a much more realistic understanding of the world and it's trade offs. I get it, yes, it sucks to have controlled burns. No, it doesn't suck as bad as out of control wildfires. But people want to have their cake and eat it at the same time. It's always been that way, but I feel there are less forces cons…

I think there has been a general decrease in the value placed on self discipline. Part of it is the abundance of pretty much everything, and an overall rise in the basic standard of living for the average American. Part of it is the coincidental rise in the exaltation of self- social media reputation, self promotion, self fulfillment.

This change, I think, is especially evident in the change over the past decades in the American Christian communities. Churches with laws and discipline have been on a steep decline, and churches that focus on feel-good messages that basically amount to "try to be nice, it is wonderful!" seem to be becoming the norm. It isn't even just the megachurches, even Catholic traditions have largely abandoned any sense of enforcing the practice of discipline- observing dietary restrictions on Lent is more a holiday and an excuse to eat fish rather than an observation.

Obviously, there are no shortage of examples of strict laws going wrong, but I do think that society as a whole could do better by practicing forms of discipline- whether religious observances, meditation, or entirely secular things like community organized walks or workout routines.

The power of sacrifice, as you put it, is a strength to overcome adversity, and is a state of mind and habit that requires practice.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#78

Post by njarboe »

landryraccoon wrote: post #64
njarboe wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to, as you point out that is the current case, but I think that private ownership would do a better job of extracting economic value from land that we want to put to economic use. Motorized recreational forest and timber production could work well together, but I have not seen that. In some places selective cutting is done, but usually the biggest trees are felled. It would be much better, I think, if…

I’m curious, why wouldn’t a private owner just clear cut all of the land for maximum value? Private land owners choose short term windfall over long term sustainability all the time. I don’t see why private owners would preserve old growth forests if the lumber is more financially profitable when cut down and sold.

Yes, private ownership would lead to tree farms which might find that clear cutting is the best way to maximize output. With regulations on soil runoff, I don't see that as a problem.

My proposal was one that might have a chance of being implemented, thus the reason for private sale of part of the public forest land. It would be impossible politically to get a 1/3 transfer of Forest Service land into wilderness designation and steep reduction of lumber sales on the rest. Allowing the sale of some areas to open up space for towns and cities and some for high output tree farms seems like a reasonable compromise to me that might be possible and I think a better situation that the current one.

You would not transfer any old growth to private hands. There is almost none left outside national parks and wilderness areas (Edit: excluding Alaska), in any case.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#79

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

umvi wrote: post #5
perl4ever wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how a private individual would deal with the liability.

When I lived in the suburbs of Naples people would burn their trash in big piles whenever the garbage collectors went on strike and "nobody" was liable, even though sometimes the fire would spread and burn/damage stuff on the neighbor's property. Then again, Europeans don't have the same litigious culture/attitude that Americans have.

per-capita, lawsuits occur at more or less the same level in the USA as across most of western europe.

the USA just has a culture that talks about suing people a lot more; in practice, Europe and the US do so at about the same rte.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#80

Post by theptip »

jeffbee wrote: post #15

There's a couple of misleading statements in here. It's true that CDF firefighters make a decent living, but it's also true that every other fire department pays better. They'd all take a position in a city fire department if they were after more money. The other misleading thing is associating these current fires with bad forest management practices. It's true for Sierra Nevada forests generally, but that's not wher…

> The Big Basin area near Santa Cruz isn't supposed to regularly burn.

Do you have any sources you can share for further reading on this?

I did a little bit of digging and found https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/management/firemanagement_fir..., but couldn’t come up with anything for Big Basin specifically.

The closest I found was:

> Fire return intervals range from as long as 500 years on wetter, northern sites to 5–25 years on drier, southern sites. Point Reyes NS falls closer to the shorter end of the fire return interval spectrum. Researchers report a fire return interval of 7.7 years for redwood stands at Point Reyes. A study of redwood stands on Bolinas Ridge and Mount Tamalpais found point estimates of fire return interval ranging from 21.7 to 27.3 years.

Regardless of what the natural fire frequency was in the past, isn’t this an empirical question about unburnt fuel levels and other environmental factors listed in the article? If we have a large surplus of fuel building up in these forests, and more controlled burns would manage it, that seems like a management problem even if frequent burns were not part of the historical norm.

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