4 ms·

> I don't much care for hiking in burn scars and dealing with muddy places in the Winter, so I'm pretty interested in what's happening to the forests right now.

> I don't much care for hiking in burn scars and dealing with muddy places in the Winter, so I'm pretty interested in what's happening to the forests right now. So I'm from Colorado and spend a decent amount of time in the mountains. I've read an argument that our over protection of the forest is potentially to blame for some of the problems right now. We do everything we can to protect it from forest fires, and now its being chocked out by dead trees and overgrowth. If this argument is wrong however I would like to understand it better.

thaumaturgy 10y ago
Yeah, fwiw that argument has become pretty convincing to me too. I used to be staunchly opposed to any kind of forest management, and now I'm much less bothered by seeing a carefully-thinned forest area. Manzanita is one of the bigger reasons (for me). I hate that damn plant with a fiery passion, and it's one of the first things in the sierra to come back and take over an area after it burns. Well-managed forest areas tend to have much much less manzanita.
- thrownblown 10y ago
  +1 to yucky manzanita. pollen stinks so bad. only worthwhile thing they produce are the burls, but those are worthless for turning since they have a high likelihood of containing rocks.
jobu 10y ago
They talked about that at Yosemite as well. Before they were driven out, the Ahwahnechee would periodically start fires that cleared out the undergrowth and made the valley much more open. Here's a drawing from 1855 of Yosemite Valley from Inspiration Point by Thomas A. Ayres: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/hampton/images/fig8.jpg https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/hampton/images/... And here's one from Inspation Point in 2013 : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Yosemite_Valley_from_Wawona_Tunnel_view,_vista_point..JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Yosemite... The forest has become very dense which makes fires larger, more intense, and incredibly difficult to control. It also makes the forest more susceptible to pine beetle outbreaks (they spread faster when the trees are close), and that makes fires even more likely.
wwweston 10y ago
It's now the accepted understanding that past aggressive fire prevention contributed to giant burns. There's a lot of substance to that, and letting smaller burns happen and even introducing some controlled burns are considered part of good management practices now. This is not all that's going on, though, in the Sierras and elsewhere. Other contributing factors: 1) Drought. Severe drought. Trees need water. There's less of it. 2) The heat. Higher average temperatures (climate change!) affect how living trees use/need moisture and how dead trees turn to tinder. 3) Where these don't kill, they stress, and things like the current bark beetle infestation epidemic happen: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-milne/pine-tree-deaths-plague_b_10429442.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-milne/pine-tree-deaths-p... Fortunately, in the United States, we have several robust federal agencies dedicated to... wait. We massively cut funding to all of them years ago (http://wilderness.org/blog/sequestration-continues-threaten-national-parks-wildlife-and-public-safety http://wilderness.org/blog/sequestration-continues-threaten-... ). Largely under pressure of wild fantasies from the growing unhinged wing of the Republican party (which, let's hope, has reached its apotheosis in Trump) whose economics and governing philosophy are on par with their ability to recognize and admit science into a discussion of how we handle our environment. So, yeah. Overprotection has been a problem. But prescribed burns have found their way into Forest Service philosophy (http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/management/rx.html http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/management/rx.html ). And it's not going to solve the problem. If only we were as able to let observant study and good stewardship guide us in other areas.
- catscratch 10y ago
  > 1) Drought. Severe drought. Trees need water. There's less of it. Due to alfalfa, almond/pistachios, pastures, rice, corn, other field crops, vineyards, other truck crops, cotton, grain, and tomato, primarily, according to: http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/05/11/cows-not-almonds-are-biggest-water-users http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/05/11/cows-not-almonds-... I was surprised about alfalfa and pasture. And "The cattle sector of the Brazilian Amazon, incentivized by the international beef and leather trades, has been responsible for about 80% of all deforestation in the region, or about 14% of the world's total annual deforestation, making it the world's largest single driver of deforestation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_rainforest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_ra... Convince your friends not to eat as much meat, especially beef. It's bad for the environment.

thaumaturgy 10y ago

Yeah, fwiw that argument has become pretty convincing to me too. I used to be staunchly opposed to any kind of forest management, and now I'm much less bothered by seeing a carefully-thinned forest area. Manzanita is one of the bigger reasons (for me). I hate that damn plant with a fiery passion, and it's one of the first things in the sierra to come back and take over an area after it burns. Well-managed forest areas tend to have much much less manzanita.

thrownblown 10y ago
+1 to yucky manzanita. pollen stinks so bad. only worthwhile thing they produce are the burls, but those are worthless for turning since they have a high likelihood of containing rocks.

jobu 10y ago

They talked about that at Yosemite as well. Before they were driven out, the Ahwahnechee would periodically start fires that cleared out the undergrowth and made the valley much more open. Here's a drawing from 1855 of Yosemite Valley from Inspiration Point by Thomas A. Ayres: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/hampton/images/fig8.jpg https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/hampton/images/... And here's one from Inspation Point in 2013 : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Yosemite_Valley_from_Wawona_Tunnel_view,_vista_point..JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Yosemite... The forest has become very dense which makes fires larger, more intense, and incredibly difficult to control. It also makes the forest more susceptible to pine beetle outbreaks (they spread faster when the trees are close), and that makes fires even more likely.

wwweston 10y ago

It's now the accepted understanding that past aggressive fire prevention contributed to giant burns. There's a lot of substance to that, and letting smaller burns happen and even introducing some controlled burns are considered part of good management practices now. This is not all that's going on, though, in the Sierras and elsewhere. Other contributing factors: 1) Drought. Severe drought. Trees need water. There's less of it. 2) The heat. Higher average temperatures (climate change!) affect how living trees use/need moisture and how dead trees turn to tinder. 3) Where these don't kill, they stress, and things like the current bark beetle infestation epidemic happen: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-milne/pine-tree-deaths-plague_b_10429442.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-milne/pine-tree-deaths-p... Fortunately, in the United States, we have several robust federal agencies dedicated to... wait. We massively cut funding to all of them years ago (http://wilderness.org/blog/sequestration-continues-threaten-national-parks-wildlife-and-public-safety http://wilderness.org/blog/sequestration-continues-threaten-... ). Largely under pressure of wild fantasies from the growing unhinged wing of the Republican party (which, let's hope, has reached its apotheosis in Trump) whose economics and governing philosophy are on par with their ability to recognize and admit science into a discussion of how we handle our environment. So, yeah. Overprotection has been a problem. But prescribed burns have found their way into Forest Service philosophy (http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/management/rx.html http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/management/rx.html ). And it's not going to solve the problem. If only we were as able to let observant study and good stewardship guide us in other areas.

catscratch 10y ago
> 1) Drought. Severe drought. Trees need water. There's less of it. Due to alfalfa, almond/pistachios, pastures, rice, corn, other field crops, vineyards, other truck crops, cotton, grain, and tomato, primarily, according to: http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/05/11/cows-not-almonds-are-biggest-water-users http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/05/11/cows-not-almonds-... I was surprised about alfalfa and pasture. And "The cattle sector of the Brazilian Amazon, incentivized by the international beef and leather trades, has been responsible for about 80% of all deforestation in the region, or about 14% of the world's total annual deforestation, making it the world's largest single driver of deforestation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_rainforest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_ra... Convince your friends not to eat as much meat, especially beef. It's bad for the environment.