have wildfires ALWAYS been so common?

[vash]

i cant remember. seems like they are everywhere in my favorite mountains. have they always been as numerous? or is it just that i am more interested since i have started doing more outdoorsy things?

[quicksix]

One hundred years of fire suppression policy instead of prescribed burns. So after that long the fuel is built up,add lightning,or some dicknozzle with a smoke,and viola.

[stomachmonkey]

The natives used to practice "land management" before the euros arrived.

They purposely set the plains on fire because the regrowth / new growth attracted herds of of grazers like Buffalo.

Why chase your food when you can make it come to you.

[fast_e_man]

fire suppression + drought = high risk. Pick your favorite state; Cali, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho, Texas. All have had major fires the last 20-25 years going back to when Yellowstone caught fire.

It's not if, it's when.

[romad]

over population in arid climates you get what you get.......forest fires in general are important part of the ecosystem......but the rest of the country is sick of hearing about it....reporting fires in the dry west is like reporting rain in the tropics.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by romad

over population in arid climates you get what you get.......forest fires in general are important part of the ecosystem......but the rest of the country is sick of hearing about it....reporting fires in the dry west is like reporting rain in the tropics.

Oh come on. Yosemite is burning. That is important to folks all over the world.

[Evans, Marv]

Back when I worked I fire control in the late '60s, those who should know always said fire suppression had led to the build up of fuel to the point if it caught fire, it would burn trees that would normally survive. We used to do small control burns occasionally. I always wondered why there weren't more aggressive programs for reducing the amount of fuel on the ground resulting from decades of fire suppression. I guess the current fires are a result of reaping what you sew.

[glewis80SC]

Originally Posted by quicksix

one hundred years of fire suppression policy instead of prescribed burns. So after that long the fuel is built up,add lightning,or some dicknozzle with a smoke,and viola.

+1

[cockerpunk]

hate to PARF it, but there is a reason why forest fires are getting worse.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Forest fires are a part of the natural forest lifecycle. Because of human development in forested areas we have done all that we can to stifle this natural occurrence because we don't like our houses burning. The end effect is a critical mass of fuel leading to immense fires.

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by quicksix

One hundred years of fire suppression policy instead of prescribed burns. So after that long the fuel is built up....

Originally Posted by cockerpunk

hate to PARF it, but there is a reason why forest fires are getting worse.

Bushes fault?

[RWebb]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

The natives used to practice "land management" before the euros arrived.

They purposely set the plains on fire because the regrowth / new growth attracted herds of of grazers like Buffalo.

Why chase your food when you can make it come to you.

True. Can we call those wild fires?

Warmer temperatures and drought are fueling more fires in the West, and much more severe fires.

Warmer winter temperatures allow insects to survive and they are eating and damaging trees (already weakened by drought). Those trees make good torches.

Beyond the effects of climate change, clearcutting and failure to thin, along with other poor land mgmt. practices exacerbate fire danger.

Further, the forests that do grow back will be altered - pinion and juniper and lodgepole will replace ponderosa pine forests, for example.

The West will look a lot different in the future.

I have done little research on southern forests, but we do know they are changing also.

The development of the wildland urban interface with cabins, etc. means a much greater $$ damage from fires. But adding roads to get to those cabins means you have some small firebreaks added.

[gatotom]

Well, after living the last 30 plus yrs in the mtns, yes, fires have increased.

My take on the subject:

Logging has become extinct, got to save the owls or whatever.
Since no more logging no more land management which leads to over growth of the woods.
no more land management also leads to more bug infestation which leads to more dead trees in the woods.
More dead trees give the natural lightning more fuel to burn.
More forest fires.

Does Europe have as many forest fires as USA??? probably not because they are active on land management with thinning of the woods almost to the point that makes them like parks.

In my eyes it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the problem, now we have to convince those environmentalists which leads us back to the good old political system where the problem started in the first place.

[RWebb]

these forests have been heavily logged; the time to regrow (fully) is 200-300 years

a few small areas have been preserved and it is known that "old growth" is less likely to burn than logged over areas

it is not logging per se, it is the type of logging - to make it (overly) simple: thinning = good & fire resistant

problem is: thinning often costs more $$ than it generates

[fast_e_man]

We haven't seen the worst of it yet in Colorado. the 200k+ acre "Haymen" fire in 2002 will look tame when the beetle-killed lodgepole forests on the western slope catch fire. Millions of acres of dead lodgepole at mid-elevations across the west.

The increased influx of subdivisions/homes into forested area + "the big one" will be really destructive for personal property.

It takes prolonged cold snaps at -30F to kill the pine bark beetles. Colorado has not had those prolonged cold snaps the last 10+ years. Global warming or just a run of warm/dry winters linked to El Nino, La Nina, and the 11 year solar cycle? beats me.

[RWebb]

Very True.


Here is some simple background reading:

Why Big, Intense Wildfires Are the New Normal

[jyl]

The kind of forests we have in the Sierras benefit from periodic moderate fires. The mature trees survive, undergrowth is cleared, pine seeds are distributed, soil is fertilized, new trees seed The forest is re-invigorated.

Intense fires are different, They kill even the mature trees and the forest takes many decades to return. In the Yosemite NP area there was a huge fire in the early 1990s, the Foresta fire. It happened about when I started going to Yosemite. For a decade after, the area looked like Hiroshima post-B29. Black, barren, dead. Now, two decades on, it looks green - but green like a Christmas tree farm, not a real forest.

An intense fire like that is more devastating than anything except clear cut logging. That also wipes out everything, and doesn't even blanket the soil with fertilizing ash. Which is why logging stopped being the answer to forest management. Loggers got greedy, they don't thin forests anymore, they clear cut them and leave the mountains worse than even a huge fire does.

The Rim Fire currently burning is the 7th largest fire in CA history, and growing daily. Something like 170,000 acres and counting. It has burned well into the park, is headed for the giant sequoias, and on its south side it obliterated the camp that we've been going to sinc be kids were little, where my daughter has been working the last two summers, where my son was planning to work, where four generations of Berkeley residents have grown up. It has been like a death in the community. The camp may be rebuilt - or may not - it depends on the forest. If that part of the Sierras has been fire-killed, it won't be fit for a camp for many decades. But if the fire moved through quickly, there's hope.

Sorry it wearies people to hear about fires in the West every summer. I suppose we get sick of hearing about those tiresome hurricanes, tornadoes, snowstorms, floods and so on. At least the Western fires are relatively cheap as disasters go. Firefighting and rebuilding costs are measured in the tens or occasionally hundreds of millions, not the billions that we all pay for the Eastern Seaboard every decade or so.

Fires will be more common and bigger in the coming century, for the reasons stated already. States not currently accustomed to big forest fires will start getting them. We'll need more water bombers.

Oh, the reason there are fewer big fires in Europe is climate. Most of Europe is much cooler and wetter than the US. How often is it a sustained 100F, 0% humidity, during a two year drought, in Germany or France? Never. Anyway, the Europeans cut down most of their big forests, hundreds of years ago.

[RWebb]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/us/homes-keep-rising-in-west-despite-growing-wildfire-threat.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&hpw

[dafischer]

Originally Posted by cockerpunk

hate to PARF it, but there is a reason why forest fires are getting worse.

No you don't, you live for it.

[Tobra]

Why do you guys pay any attention to him. Like listening to static

You thwart mother nature long enough, she is going to make you pay. Fires are part of the natural cycle in forests. You let enough fuel build up, you have big trouble.