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Let Forest Fires Burn

nytimes.com

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Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#51

Post by davidbanham »

bamboozled wrote: post #46
davidbanham wrote: post #23

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…

Not sure if you've ever been to parts of Australia where "fire-stick farming" [1] is still practised? 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 w…

I'm aware of the practice, but haven't specifically sought out fire stick farmed areas to travel to. I'll have to check some out.

The literature you've read is _probably_ mostly focused on the Rural Fire Service (RFS) HR program. Their focus is protection of life and property in settled areas.

The land management burns are undertaken by National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS). RFS often assists with these to provide extra manpower.

I imagine the various State Forestry agencies also have similar programs, but I don't know anything about them.

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#52

Post by falcolas »

planteen wrote: post #47
mschuster91 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Where are you talking about? That isn't true on the plains of North America. The plain was very treeless, save next to water, where there are plenty of trees. Man has created far more barriers - roads, wind breaks around farms, etc. East of the 100th meridian, most land is divided in a perfect grid with roads along section lines in both the US and Canada. Further west, the lines may be further apart, but there still…

Roads don't do much to stop wind. I've never seen many man-made wind breaks which weren't directly related to stopping snow drifts in specific areas.

Embers travel over roads remarkably well.

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#53

Post by planteen »

falcolas wrote: post #52
planteen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you talking about? That isn't true on the plains of North America. The plain was very treeless, save next to water, where there are plenty of trees. Man has created far more barriers - roads, wind breaks around farms, etc. East of the 100th meridian, most land is divided in a perfect grid with roads along section lines in both the US and Canada. Further west, the lines may be further apart, but there still…

Roads don't do much to stop wind. I've never seen many man-made wind breaks which weren't directly related to stopping snow drifts in specific areas. Embers travel over roads remarkably well.

Going back to what OP said:

> In earlier times, farm fields actually were separated by bushes, patches of rocks, tiny rivers, whatever.

My point is that the modern prairie is far more divided than it was 200 years ago. And groves of trees are not just for snow drifts. They provide much protection from wind. To protect from snow drifts, you typically build a very distinct looking snow fence which allows you to control where the drift forms (e.g., not on a road).

If you look at pictures of homesteads of South Dakota in the 1880s, there are virtually no trees anywhere, including around farms. There are far more today. Hence why I am asking where the OP is talking about.

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#54

Post by warrenm »

hammock wrote: post #3
warrenm wrote: post #2

There are trees that cannot reproduce unless their seed pods are baked open Animals coming back to scorched areas carry all kinds of seeds with them that love the mineral- and carbon-rich environment Some deer can grow beautiful atypical racks only when feeding in areas ravaged by fire And burning-out old growth and underbrush allows whole new generations of forest to start because their impediments to growth are gon…

>There are trees that cannot reproduce unless their seed pods are baked open Aspen and lodgepole pine

I knew somebody'd find the species names

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#55

Post by maxerickson »

planteen wrote: post #47
mschuster91 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Where are you talking about? That isn't true on the plains of North America. The plain was very treeless, save next to water, where there are plenty of trees. Man has created far more barriers - roads, wind breaks around farms, etc. East of the 100th meridian, most land is divided in a perfect grid with roads along section lines in both the US and Canada. Further west, the lines may be further apart, but there still…

Even when there are no obstructions, there are regular jogs in the PLSS (because a grid doesn't lie flat on a spheroid):

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.5653133,-95.6495983,2380m/da...

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#56

Post by VintageCool »

notatoad wrote: post #39
aphextron wrote: post #6

The problem with this is local politics. "Let wildfires burn" sounds great when it's not your multimillion dollar vacation home going up in smoke. Yes, in the long run it would be better for everyone involved. But we humans are anything but longsighted when it comes to dollars and cents.

I don't think "let wildfires burn" is an accepted strategy anywhere that those fires could be threatening homes. It's a policy for wilderness fires, where it threatens a community it's not better in the long run for everyone involved. It would be disastrous to let a fire rip through a town just to reduce the fire hazard. It's entirely possible to do proactive controlled burns and fuel reduction near towns, and let th…

Sure, but people are building really nice homes deeper and deeper into the woods. The area that we would consider safe to 'let burn' keeps shrinking as people move in to those areas.

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#57

Post by jlarocco »

notatoad wrote: post #39
aphextron wrote: post #6

The problem with this is local politics. "Let wildfires burn" sounds great when it's not your multimillion dollar vacation home going up in smoke. Yes, in the long run it would be better for everyone involved. But we humans are anything but longsighted when it comes to dollars and cents.

I don't think "let wildfires burn" is an accepted strategy anywhere that those fires could be threatening homes. It's a policy for wilderness fires, where it threatens a community it's not better in the long run for everyone involved. It would be disastrous to let a fire rip through a town just to reduce the fire hazard. It's entirely possible to do proactive controlled burns and fuel reduction near towns, and let th…

I think the biggest problem with a "let wildfires burn" strategy is that most forests in the continental United States are too small (or too populated) to make it feasible. Any "large" fire will always be near a town or homes.

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#58

Post by jonnycoder »

SandersAK wrote: post #31

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…

Speaking of eastern Oregon, the environmental lobby has a huge influence on this as they sue the USFS quite often. They never did salvage log from the Canyon Creek fire right?

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#59

Post by wahern »

elihu wrote: post #14

I asked a firefighter what she thought about controlled burns awhile back. She said that one of the advantages of controlled burns is that you can set them when conditions are favorable so that they won't get out of control and burn areas they didn't want to burn just then. So, the "just let it burn" strategy when fires start might lead to a lot more property damage than a strategy of proactive burning. Also, from a…

  So, the "just let it burn" strategy when fires start might
  lead to a lot more property damage than a strategy of
  proactive burning.
The U.S. is _huge_. There's too much land to do controlled burning. And an intentionally set fire is morally perilous, so there are strong incentives to avoid burning except where it's easy and obvious; that is, _away_ from housing or in only very small patches to create fire breaks.

  Also, from a carbon footprint point of view, it seems
  advantageous to mix burning and logging, so that not all the
  carbon returns straight into the atmosphere.
But loggers are gonna take the good trees and leave behind the young ones, precisely the opposite of what a fire would do. I know this isn't how it's supposed to work on paper, but the incentives aren't well aligned. A natural fire isn't going to lobby Congress to increase its quota of high-value trees.

I think any practical land management plan that has a shot at restoring forest health requires letting many more natural fires burn, and to burn more widely. The dilemma is that things are so bad that these fires are much more dangerous than they'd normally be. But I don't see how you ever get over that hump unless you can send out an armada of autonomous, self-replicating robots to cut down the underbrush. Perhaps we'll just have to wait for that solution.

Re: Let Forest Fires Burn

#60

Post by maxerickson »

jlarocco wrote: post #57
notatoad wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "let wildfires burn" is an accepted strategy anywhere that those fires could be threatening homes. It's a policy for wilderness fires, where it threatens a community it's not better in the long run for everyone involved. It would be disastrous to let a fire rip through a town just to reduce the fire hazard. It's entirely possible to do proactive controlled burns and fuel reduction near towns, and let th…

I think the biggest problem with a "let wildfires burn" strategy is that most forests in the continental United States are too small (or too populated) to make it feasible. Any "large" fire will always be near a town or homes.

A fair number of current active large fires aren't expected to be contained for weeks:

https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/

(clicking the markers brings up an info window with expected containment dates)

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