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To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

nytimes.com

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Re: To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

#51

Post by bamboozled »

Some might find reading about a an Indigenous Australian practice known as “fire stick farming” [1] to be relevant and interesting.

TL;DR version is tha by intentionally burning areas of bushland, Aboriginals decreased the intensity of fires thus reducing damage to plant and animal life which worked to their advantage of course.

I’ve personally witnessed this happening in North Western Australia where FSF is still practiced in a rather traditional way and the scrub land looked incredibly healthy It’s a place where I’ve never heard of out of control wildfires occurring.

Since witnessing the practice I’ve always found it really fascinating.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-stick_farming

Re: To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

#52

Post by almost_usual »

moultano wrote: post #28
deedubaya wrote: post #22

Forest fires (used) to be a natural occurrence which was healthy for forests. 70 years of "put every fire out" has resulted in forests with excess fuel. That coupled with dry spells and warmer temps = a powder keg instead of natural burns.

The places these fires are burning have no natural sources to start fires. California never gets lightning except in the Sierra's.

This doesn’t matter. The only thing to realize at this point is it’s going to burn extensively and it’s out of our control.

Re: To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

#53

Post by bluGill »

dfsegoat wrote: post #46
bluGill wrote: post #36

Note that the situation in California is VERY different from most of the US. In California (this probably only applies to parts of California - it is a big state) the trees are high oil and very flammable. When there is a fire after a drought (which is common) it will be big and hot. The only way to deal with it is to not build near these forests and let them burn naturally.

Do you have any links to support such a broad statement? I've lived in Northern CA almost my entire life, and I would not classify the Oaks etc. as "high oil" or any more flammable than trees in the rest of the continental united states. In fact, looking at this study utilizing GIS data - it looks to me like the SE US actually contains some of the largest concentrations of fuel / fire risk: https://eos.org/articles/a…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Control_of_Nature is where I read this. The types of timber in the area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Gabriel_Mountains are known as high oil which means they burn hotter. Oaks are not high oil. Cedar and Pine are though.

Note that current concentration of fuel/fire risk is NOT what I was talking about. There are big problems all over the US because of mis-management. Different areas need different management.

Re: To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

#54

Post by JoeAltmaier »

decebalus1 wrote: post #50
mbrumlow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure you can say any region "never" gets anything. But even so, the region seems perfect for spontaneous combustion.

> But even so, the region seems perfect for spontaneous combustion. Forests don't spontaneous combust. I don't believe there was any forest fire proven to have started via spontaneous combustion.

http://www.borealforest.org/world/innova/forest_fire.htm

It happens

Re: To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

#55

Post by paganel »

npongratz wrote: post #20
paganel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also help if the local authorities would not give people permits anymore to build houses close to forested areas. Instead more emphasis should be put on building taller houses/buildings which would accommodate more than one family.

If I own the forested land and I want to build there, I should be able to. Or we should be honest about property ownership in the US: if I have to beg permission from someone calling themselves an "authority", I don't actually own it.

> If I own the forested land and I want to build there, I should be able to.

That's where we disagree, as I think that the greater societal good is to not let people build houses that might burn at a moment's notice because of forest fire (as was the case with the Paradise town in CA). This would be similar to how in my country you are not allowed to build an apartment building that doesn't respect some earthquake-resistance rules.

Re: To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

#56

Post by io_io »

StephenConnell wrote: post #29
ceejayoz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you're the expert (contesting the named expert cited in the article), why don't you point us in the right direction? Googling "modern logging practices" brings up Wikipedia, some industry websites, and a variety of random articles.

Not the parent, but what I've recently seen in Northern California is all underbrush and low branches gone. They were specifically prepping the area to manage fire. Quincy area.

This would equate to forest management practices, not logging. They likely chipped or burned the underbrush and low branches after removing them from the forest, which wouldn't be a profitable business practice.

Re: To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

#57

Post by Robotuxin »

zaroth wrote: post #26

How realistic is it for vastly improved monitoring and rapid response to be able to snuff out a major fire before it develops? For example, what if you had the surveillance coverage to detect a fire before it covers, say, even 1 acre, and if you could respond with a tanker of Phos-Chek (or whatever) within some number of minutes? Aside from actually achieving the detection ability for alerting on a new fire, and havi…

Controlled burns don't destroy the bigger trees the way unintentional, out-of-control fires do. So, your stats aren't very applicable to mature (sparser and taller) forests in which underbrush is managed more effectively. This is not a novel approach, and while there may be problem species in California, in the areas that have burnt and are prone to create the most dangerous fires, I don't think enough attention is paid to what kind of forests can be catered to be more fire-resistant (less brush and slower burning).

Trump is apparently an insensitive moron for putting the blame on forest management, but I don't understand why the spotlight isn't already on them since things aren't improving year over year. PG&E power lines caused multiple fires last year as well. I wonder if raking and cleaning and doing things underneath power lines would have helped. That may be simplistic logic, but the logic behind recent policy seems even worse and this article makes it sound like they are still figuring out the basics. I am not sure why that is the case.

Re: To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

#58

Post by decebalus1 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #54
decebalus1 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But even so, the region seems perfect for spontaneous combustion. Forests don't spontaneous combust. I don't believe there was any forest fire proven to have started via spontaneous combustion.

http://www.borealforest.org/world/innova/forest_fire.htm It happens

that's not proof of anything. https://www.nps.gov/articles/fire-prevention-52-spontaneous-...

Forests don't spontaneously combust. Sawdust does, manure does, compost piles do but there's isn't near enough fuel in a forest without human intervention to cause spontaneous combustion.

Re: To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

#59

Post by moultano »

bluGill wrote: post #33
zaroth wrote: post #26

How realistic is it for vastly improved monitoring and rapid response to be able to snuff out a major fire before it develops? For example, what if you had the surveillance coverage to detect a fire before it covers, say, even 1 acre, and if you could respond with a tanker of Phos-Chek (or whatever) within some number of minutes? Aside from actually achieving the detection ability for alerting on a new fire, and havi…

We don't actually have good records for the number of fires in the past. As soon as white men came to North America they started putting out fires. The natives here before then didn't keep detailed written records, though the general verbal reports suggest they were actually lighting fires) Letting the fires burns clears out the fuel. IF we go in next year and light that area again there won't be much fuel, so the fi…

Given the rate at which these fires are happening and the size of the regions they are burning, I'm not sure how "let it burn" is materially different from what is currently happening, even with our best efforts to put them out.

Re: To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn

#60

Post by all2 »

konschubert wrote: post #19

Isn't the frequency of fires mostly caused by the drought, which in turn is caused by climate change? How do all of these policies matter of there is no more rain in California?

Smaller forest fires manage dead wood. If a forest burns on a regular basis, felled trees (naturally fallen, in this case) will burn more often and there will be less fuel for a bigger fire in the future.

This is a big issue on forestry management across the entire United States (and probably elsewhere).

[0] https://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=15218114

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