Quote:
Originally Posted by jyl
Western forests have been quite affected by climate change. Heat and drought and less subfreezing periods have stressed trees and made them more vulnerable to disease, you see a lot more dead (brown) trees in the forests. I just lost a 100’ tree on my own property and am watering the others now. I think this sort of intense fire season is going to be The New Normal.
A friend was telling me about one proposal to cut very wide firebreaks to essentially separate areas of the mountains and contain fires.
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That is the main driver for the severity of these fires. Climate change weakens the trees, makes everything dry out more, drives intense winds, and allows insect pests to breed all year long - plus a longer list of things
wildfires are generally very commonplace and a normal part of
this ecosystem - it is the severity of the fire that has gone way up (W. conifer forests; also true of southern pine forests)
2/3 to 90% of ignition events are due to humans - the above is what happens after a fire is ignited
USFS is now spending most of its entire budget on fire suppression; leaving little money for everything else - Congress just this year altered the funding pools, but it will be a long time before the forests can be thinned to make the fires less intense
thinning means removing some trees - usually the small "doghair" trees
all branches within 8 ft. of the ground need to be trimmed off
then it is all piled and burned just before a rain
the above is labor intensive and has to be done over thousands of square miles of forest
the other fly in the ointment is ecosystem conversion - again caused by climate change
- that means the ecosystem will change to a different type of ecosystem
all the Douglas Fir forests that the enviros have fought so hard to "save" will change to some other type of plant cover
with luck and a lot of work, some can change to Ponderosa Pine
it won't be fun and you are seeing the future coming at you hard