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> It is likely a fairly minor player in the uptick in major wildfires over the past few decades. That is more due to mismanagement of forests, and a "zero toler

> It is likely a fairly minor player in the uptick in major wildfires over the past few decades. That is more due to mismanagement of forests, and a "zero tolerance" policy towards fires allowing a huge build up of fuel loads. Don't want to sound combative, I'm actually very interested. Do do you have any proof of that?

waterphone 8y ago
It's a fairly firmly established fact and widely understood as a major cause within firefighting and forest management circles, including the Forest Service, who is largely responsible for such practices over the past century. The natural fire regime kept forests thinned and healthy with lots of relatively small and low intensity fires that would remove standing dead and the understory while largely keeping the healthy stands intact, with occasional pockets of higher intensity fire that would open up areas in the forest (creating meadows, etc.) and making for natural buffer zones and breaks in the fuel, which further reduced the spread of bigger fires, as well as keeping the forest healthier and reducing disease. Indigenous peoples in the Americas are very well known to have managed forests with prescribed fires for centuries, if not millennia, too. Climate change is definitely a factor for fires in the southwest as well, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wildfire_suppression_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wildfire_suppressio...
simongr3dal 8y ago
https://youtu.be/Y27lFsPEZ30 https://youtu.be/Y27lFsPEZ30 Tom Scott made a little 4 minute video about the topic. Basically by letting the forrest burn more often there would be less fuel available for the next fire. And when the fires got smaller the biggest of trees in the forrest would also be more likely to survive through the fire. So in some forrests that’s what they do in some forrests now.

waterphone 8y ago

It's a fairly firmly established fact and widely understood as a major cause within firefighting and forest management circles, including the Forest Service, who is largely responsible for such practices over the past century. The natural fire regime kept forests thinned and healthy with lots of relatively small and low intensity fires that would remove standing dead and the understory while largely keeping the healthy stands intact, with occasional pockets of higher intensity fire that would open up areas in the forest (creating meadows, etc.) and making for natural buffer zones and breaks in the fuel, which further reduced the spread of bigger fires, as well as keeping the forest healthier and reducing disease. Indigenous peoples in the Americas are very well known to have managed forests with prescribed fires for centuries, if not millennia, too. Climate change is definitely a factor for fires in the southwest as well, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wildfire_suppression_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wildfire_suppressio...

simongr3dal 8y ago

https://youtu.be/Y27lFsPEZ30 https://youtu.be/Y27lFsPEZ30 Tom Scott made a little 4 minute video about the topic. Basically by letting the forrest burn more often there would be less fuel available for the next fire. And when the fires got smaller the biggest of trees in the forrest would also be more likely to survive through the fire. So in some forrests that’s what they do in some forrests now.