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California has been burning for far longer than people have been here. Human presence did, of course, alter things, but natural ignitions due to lightning strik

• njarboe 8y ago
  This looks like an interesting paper. I'll read in over in detail, but from the abstract this paper is discussing the suppression of fire after Euro-American settlement in the 1800's. Fires caused by Native Americans is discussed as the cause, along with lightning, and I don't think lightning is a big factor in (Northern) California wildfires. While lighting is a major cause of fire throughout the Rocky Mountains, they are less of a factor in California, especially along the coast and central valley. I have lived in Oakland for over two decades and the number of thunderstorms I've seen/heard here is less than a half-dozen. We don't get the same kind of bad lightning storms that occur in the Rockies where the monsoons bring up thunderstorms from the south during otherwise dry summers. Maybe in the San Bernardino mountains near LA get a few of these summer lightening storms. It would be interesting to read about pre-human fire occurrence rates in the grasslands of California but, as this study states, preserved evidence of grass fires more than 15,000 years ago are rare.