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Fire for Water: A tribe in California is helping to reshape fire management

biographic.com

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Re: Fire for Water: A tribe in California is helping to reshape fire management

#11

Post by mistrial9 »

sfink wrote: post #10

I largely agree with the thrust of the article, but wow is it one-sided. Which is fine, I'd just like to read another article that discusses some of the issues as well. Like air quality—the mention of smoke being thick enough to drop stream temperatures by 2.5°F didn't seem quite as wonderful to me as the article implied. (Then again, that seems like an extreme case, and one where you're burning a lot of wet stuff. W…

this is a "feel good" article for public outreach (and votes) in California. In the last ten years, forest bureaucracies here had to do a 180 degree turnaround from the Federal arrogance and helpless wishful thinking on the ground that ruled previously.

A combination of forest stress via drought and a hundred years of ignorant executive management resulted in multiple catastrophic fires and ruined lives, with more on the way.

Re: Fire for Water: A tribe in California is helping to reshape fire management

#12

Post by bluGill »

LargeWu wrote: post #6
bluGill wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone in forestry has known for decades 'smoky the bear' is killin our forests. though each forest it different and California forests need very different treatment from most.

I think the point of Smoky Bear is to prevent accidental fires through carelessness, from somebody not extinguishing their campfire or a discarded lit cigarette, by the general public. Managing wildfire risk with intentional, controlled burns is something else entirely.

Two problems, first everyone went too far and put out all fires. Second if we let those careless fires burn they would stay small as nature was already doing the job.

Re: Fire for Water: A tribe in California is helping to reshape fire management

#13

Post by thinkingtoilet »

dragonwriter wrote: post #8
dmoy wrote: post #7

It is worth mentioning that many states do significant amounts of controlled burns as a routine thing. Growing up in the Midwest, it was just a common thing, nothing out of the ordinary. I think in the southeast, it's even more common. It really helps limit the damage when an uncontrolled fire does start For some reason out here in the West Coast, there's an aversion to doing enough controlled burns. I'm not sure why…

Is the federal vs. state thing “the federal government controls most of the land at issue in the west and decides policies, not the states”. Because that's actually the situation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands#/media/File%3A...

The obvious follow up to that is why don't the feds do controlled burns?

Re: Fire for Water: A tribe in California is helping to reshape fire management

#14

Post by pixl97 »

sfink wrote: post #10

I largely agree with the thrust of the article, but wow is it one-sided. Which is fine, I'd just like to read another article that discusses some of the issues as well. Like air quality—the mention of smoke being thick enough to drop stream temperatures by 2.5°F didn't seem quite as wonderful to me as the article implied. (Then again, that seems like an extreme case, and one where you're burning a lot of wet stuff. W…

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-to-burn/

This episode is great for anyone interested in the problem. At the end of the day most places in the US have been 'designed' over the last 50,000 to 100,000 years to burn, and to burn at pretty regular intervals. We've interrupted that burn cycle, and we've increased temperatures so we're well into megafire territory now. Even worse is we're building houses in places that must burn at a regular basis with houses themselves that are built-to-burn.

Re: Fire for Water: A tribe in California is helping to reshape fire management

#15

Post by adelie »

dmoy wrote: post #9
dragonwriter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the federal vs. state thing “the federal government controls most of the land at issue in the west and decides policies, not the states”. Because that's actually the situation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands#/media/File%3A...

Yea I think that's it Though I don't know the exact details on that w.r.t. controlled burns, because parts of the federal government are definitely very on board with controlled burns (like say the US Forest Service). I dunno what's going on there.

i believe one of the issues with controlled burns is that there are specific conditions necessary for them to be controllable - and with the current state of the california fire season, it's actually really difficult to set them up.

here's a study on how climate change is reducing the window for prescribed burns: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-00993-1

Re: Fire for Water: A tribe in California is helping to reshape fire management

#16

Post by pstrateman »

dmoy wrote: post #7

It is worth mentioning that many states do significant amounts of controlled burns as a routine thing. Growing up in the Midwest, it was just a common thing, nothing out of the ordinary. I think in the southeast, it's even more common. It really helps limit the damage when an uncontrolled fire does start For some reason out here in the West Coast, there's an aversion to doing enough controlled burns. I'm not sure why…

In California to do a controlled burn you needed(need?) to schedule it way in advance because of environmental review.

Sounds fine, except that CARB can declare that day a clean air day and ban burns on the same day.

Both of these things individually are fine but together it's a problem.

Re: Fire for Water: A tribe in California is helping to reshape fire management

#17

Post by EricE »

sfink wrote: post #10

I largely agree with the thrust of the article, but wow is it one-sided. Which is fine, I'd just like to read another article that discusses some of the issues as well. Like air quality—the mention of smoke being thick enough to drop stream temperatures by 2.5°F didn't seem quite as wonderful to me as the article implied. (Then again, that seems like an extreme case, and one where you're burning a lot of wet stuff. W…

These areas are going to burn - whether we like it or not. You can either do it routinely in a controlled manor, or stick your head in the sand and the suffer catastrophe when they do eventually go up.

Re: Fire for Water: A tribe in California is helping to reshape fire management

#18

Post by nanomonkey »

If we're going to burn the dead standing wood and other organic matter, why not produce biochar and syngas from it? Companies such as All Power Labs (allpowerlabs.com) produce pallet size devices that can be taken to the source of the wood and convert them there. The biochar produced can be introduced back into the ground, or used on farmland, and is essentially carbon negative. The syngas can be used to produce electricity in a generator, or for heating purposes (boiling/distilling water, heating homes, drying foods, etc.). It seems wasteful to just inefficiently burn it and dump large amounts of smoke into the air when we can use it for energy purposes or to improve the soil. Allowing it to compost produces methane, which is a worse greenhouse gas, so that's not a great option, sadly.

Re: Fire for Water: A tribe in California is helping to reshape fire management

#20

Post by arminiusreturns »

dmoy wrote: post #9
dragonwriter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the federal vs. state thing “the federal government controls most of the land at issue in the west and decides policies, not the states”. Because that's actually the situation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_lands#/media/File%3A...

Yea I think that's it Though I don't know the exact details on that w.r.t. controlled burns, because parts of the federal government are definitely very on board with controlled burns (like say the US Forest Service). I dunno what's going on there.

Grew up in national forest, and my grandfather was a logger in the 70s. I remember him and the other old timers complaining the newer PhD's the forest service was bringing in were making dumb excuses for not doing control burn.

I'll never forget my thoughts at the time: "Those PhD's are so smart, surely they are right and these old-timers are just being curmudgeonly"... then years later the forest went up and over 450,000 acres burned, and then not many years later, another roughly 538,000 acres went up.

It was then when I realized how my putting of academia on a pedestal was a major mistake, and then I went and apologized to my grandfather for being dismissive.

My terse summary is that the forest service likes to ship people around, so they aren't in their local forest, so they end up in ecosystems they don't understand as well as the locals but because of their tendency to look down their nose at the locals, they would dismiss knowledge that was trying to be given to them.

I love the forest service, don't get me wrong (much rather have that than BLM!!!) but there are some major flaws in the forest management bureaucracy. To their credit, those fires basically forced change on them because it became too obvious their previous methods were so wrong.

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