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A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wildfire smoke spreads

nature.com

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Re: A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wildfire smoke spreads

#11

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

Spooky23 wrote: post #8
magduf wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds to me like there's a very simple solution to this problem: just don't clear-cut forests. Of course, as usual with stupid humans, when there's a very simple solution to a problem, they absolutely refuse to do it, usually because some selfish person is benefiting from the action that's causing the problem, and countless other people are perfectly happy to enable that person.

Were we in 1819, then I would agree. Unfortunately, we're in 2019, and it's already happened. You're stuck with homogenous forests.

There is also the consideration that this whole process is being studied and modeled on a moving platform.

The environments that we assumed to be in place when we look back and describe these 'ancestral' states are rapidly changing. The timing and duration of rain events, winter snow levels (elevation, depth, duration), high heat events, Santa Ana winds; all of these things are quite rapidly changing their patterns of predictability.

Forests are dynamical systems with non-linearity in many of the ways they interact with and respond to the environment. How forests have responded to climate change, to anthropogenic interactions, hunting and extinction of large herbivores (and predators), create feedbacks that further impact how forests (or really, vegetation at large), respond to the environment.

I think my point here is that there is questionable utility in trying to run the clock in reverse. Its more important to understand where we're at and how things respond now than it is to contrast them with some ancestral state that is impossible to return to.

There's no un-baking the cake. The 'climate' (read: entire earth biosphere), has changed/ is changing.

Re: A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wildfire smoke spreads

#12

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #11
Spooky23 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were we in 1819, then I would agree. Unfortunately, we're in 2019, and it's already happened. You're stuck with homogenous forests.

There is also the consideration that this whole process is being studied and modeled on a moving platform. The environments that we assumed to be in place when we look back and describe these 'ancestral' states are rapidly changing. The timing and duration of rain events, winter snow levels (elevation, depth, duration), high heat events, Santa Ana winds; all of these things are quite rapidly changing their patterns o…

I agree.

The 'climate', and the species that can live in it, also change and continue to change- the wooly mammoth couldn't survive many places right now, to be honest.

I feel like a lot of people miss the idea that the planet itself shifts over time- Hawaii hasn't been there forever, and most of the land on the earth has shifted a lot from where it first was in Pangaea.

Humans stopping climate change feels a lot like getting in front of a moving train- it is absolutely futile- it also makes sense to try to shift the rails themselves around, but I don't even know how feasible that is, either.

Re: A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wildfire smoke spreads

#13

Post by ahoy »

owlrobot wrote: post #9

Yep, american "scientists"...I knew it.

Controlled burns have been a tool that forest managers use for years now. Many ecosystems depend on periodic burning, but for a lot of reasons wildfires are undesirable when they happen near places where people live. Controlled burns are a way to promote ecosystem health without endangering human lives.

Re: A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wildfire smoke spreads

#14

Post by thaumaturgy »

yeahitslikethat wrote: post #5
andrei_says_ wrote: post #2

Forests that have been clear cut have a different structure from old forests and burn very differently. Most California fires were of the former kind. In “Young” forests grown in the place of clear cut “old forests”, the shrubbery grows before the trees and is very thick. The trees are not that high and the branches are close to the ground. These forests get completely annihilated by fire. Old forests have tall trees…

Not fighting forest fires also helps. Truth is forest fires are necessary. The bugs in forest fires, like destroyed homes and lives are because we are doing it wrong: https://www.vox.com/2018/8/7/17661096/california-wildfires-2...

Have you been through the Redding burn scar? What happened there isn't a "cleansing fire" that's going to leave the forest healthier. The forest is gone. It's not going to come back without a lot of human effort, and even then not before we're all much older.

What's going to grow back in those areas is mostly scrub, and that in turn is going to further affect the microclimate around the Redding area, making one of the hottest microclimates in the state even hotter and drier.

Yes, there are biomes that benefit from a regular low-intensity fire. Those are the biomes that scientists are talking about when they say "let it burn". Scrub and grasslands can burn and be back to scrub within a year. Old growth forest can survive a low-intensity fire and be a lot healthier afterward.

But the young forests that have grown in all of the clear-cut areas from the state's mining days, those don't bounce right back from a high-intensity fire.

Re: A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wildfire smoke spreads

#15

Post by dang »

owlrobot wrote: post #9

Yep, american "scientists"...I knew it.

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? We're trying for a different quality of internet discussion here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wildfire smoke spreads

#16

Post by magduf »

Spooky23 wrote: post #8
magduf wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds to me like there's a very simple solution to this problem: just don't clear-cut forests. Of course, as usual with stupid humans, when there's a very simple solution to a problem, they absolutely refuse to do it, usually because some selfish person is benefiting from the action that's causing the problem, and countless other people are perfectly happy to enable that person.

Were we in 1819, then I would agree. Unfortunately, we're in 2019, and it's already happened. You're stuck with homogenous forests.

This is incorrect. There are still old-growth forests, such as the Amazon, but they're still being clear-cut.

It's very, very simple: stop doing that.

No, we can't easily get back the old-growth forests in the US, as that ship has sailed, but there's more to the planet than the US, and we can stop causing even more damage. But we don't want to.

Re: A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wildfire smoke spreads

#17

Post by hinkley »

silverfox17 wrote: post #10
owlrobot wrote: post #9

Yep, american "scientists"...I knew it.

Just curious - what is your country doing to study the issue and come up with solutions? Forest fires are necessary in nature, and at least this is a controlled one with the intent of being studied.

Forest fires are necessary for the kinds of 'primordial forests' we found in the US and assumed were constructed entirely by natural processes.

It's closer to the truth to say that they were being stewarded with a subtlety we refused to grasp. One of those mechanisms being fire.

Re: A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wildfire smoke spreads

#18

Post by hinkley »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #2

Forests that have been clear cut have a different structure from old forests and burn very differently. Most California fires were of the former kind. In “Young” forests grown in the place of clear cut “old forests”, the shrubbery grows before the trees and is very thick. The trees are not that high and the branches are close to the ground. These forests get completely annihilated by fire. Old forests have tall trees…

In healthy forests the lower branches may be cleared by animals like deer.

"Limbing up" trees not only changes the fire ladder dynamic but also helps control some pest vectors, such as fungal spores that have to find their way from the forest floor to the lower leaves of the trees. I think it's safe to assume that periodic fires also reduce a bunch of pests.

Re: A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wildfire smoke spreads

#19

Post by andrei_says_ »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #14
yeahitslikethat wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not fighting forest fires also helps. Truth is forest fires are necessary. The bugs in forest fires, like destroyed homes and lives are because we are doing it wrong: https://www.vox.com/2018/8/7/17661096/california-wildfires-2...

Have you been through the Redding burn scar? What happened there isn't a "cleansing fire" that's going to leave the forest healthier. The forest is gone . It's not going to come back without a lot of human effort, and even then not before we're all much older. What's going to grow back in those areas is mostly scrub, and that in turn is going to further affect the microclimate around the Redding area, making one of t…

I imagine it might be possible to put effort into growing healthy forests even after clear cutting / devastating fire. But this may be more expensive than the profit from clear cutting.

It is interesting how strong an example clear cutting forests is for externalizing the costs... and pushing them more than a century down the timeline. Should this be something that we regulate? Or, should we include the cost for the future forest fires in the price of the timber?

Similarly, shouldn't the gas producing countries pay for the cost of the CO2 their product disposes into the atmosphere?

Re: A controlled blaze in Utah could improve models of how wildfire smoke spreads

#20

Post by JudgeWapner »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #2

Forests that have been clear cut have a different structure from old forests and burn very differently. Most California fires were of the former kind. In “Young” forests grown in the place of clear cut “old forests”, the shrubbery grows before the trees and is very thick. The trees are not that high and the branches are close to the ground. These forests get completely annihilated by fire. Old forests have tall trees…

and the corollary to this is that logging can absolutley be done sustainably, providing direct benefit to the environment. But this is a politically offensive fact, so people often find elaborate ways to navigate around it to support their faith.
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