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2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's oldest state park
- justinzollars 6y agoIf you tour Muir Woods, many redwoods feature fire damage from fires ages ago.
- khuey 6y agoRedwoods are adapted to fire, yes, but surely there's some limit to how much they can take. Thankfully it seems this event may have been below that limit.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago“Withstand” is a funny word. Forests need fire. Fire is destructive to the organs (flora and fauna) but beneficial to the organism (a forest). I’m thinking of all of the sequoia seeds, now germinated from the fire[1], that will sprout next year into full sunlight that hasn’t touched the forest floor in hundreds of years. It is sad though that it’s also destructive to the lives of so many people. May everyone find safety who is now in harm’s way. 1. https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/why-the-giant-sequoia-needs-fire-to-grow https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/why-the-giant-sequoia-n...
- hanniabu 6y ago> It is sad though that it’s also destructive to the lives of so many people. Eh, maybe it's just me but I've always felt worse for the animals than the people.
- ummonk 6y agoProbably just you.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoPeople are animals and also part of nature, no matter how far above it we think that we are.
- dfee 6y agoThere shouldn’t be any Sequoia seeds in the Basin. They’re much further inland.
- URSpider94 6y agoUm, there aren’t any giant sequoias in the areas impacted by these fires. The range for giant sequoias is a few hundred miles to the East, on the slopes of the Sierras. They don’t grow in the coastal mountains.
- eatingCake 6y agoFYI, 12,000 acres are on fire in the Sequoia National Forest, where giant sequoias grow. https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/7048/ https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/7048/
- enigmo 6y agothe fire is moving away from the nearest Sequoia grove near Freeman Creek. wind forecast looks alright too.
- samcheng 6y agoNote that the trees in question are Coastal Redwoods, not Giant Sequoias, in Big Basin, maybe five miles from the coast, near sea level. They are TALL trees, with some over 300 feet tall. The Giant Sequoias in the article you linked are in the Sierra Nevada mountains, at a few thousand feet elevation and a couple hundred miles from the coast. They are MASSIVE trees, truly awe-inspiring, a bit shorter than the Coastal Redwoods but with trunks 30 feet across. I don't think Coastal Redwoods have any trouble propagating or germinating. I have one in my back yard. Apparently they can be germinated in tap water. https://www.treeseedonline.com/blog/germination-of-coast-redwood-sequoia-sempervirens https://www.treeseedonline.com/blog/germination-of-coast-red... Giant Sequoias, on the other hand, I view as truly irreplaceable. Some are over 3,000 years old. I hope we can protect them as long as possible. The two species are cousins, but it's important to differentiate between the two.
- brudgers 6y agoPedantically it ain’t so straight forward. Coastal redwoods are taxonomically in genus Sequoia while giant sequoias are in genus Sequoiadendron. And of course “pedantry“ is the answer to “What is the practical utility of learning Latin?”
- mytailorisrich 6y agoI don't know about sequoias but some species' seeds need to "feel the heat" before they can germinate. For example acacias in Australia, if you just sow the seeds the germination rate is very poor. The trick is to put the seeds under boiling water before sowing them... I know that for some species of cycads people actually burn hay in the crown to induce fruition.
- quixoticelixer- 6y agoThe forest needs fire but the individual trees certainly don't like it
- DoreenMichele 6y agoRedwoods not only survive the fires, they tend to proliferate afterwards. After lesser trees have been cleared out by the fires, redwood seedlings take root. Redwoods also thrive in low rain areas that are prone to fog because they benefit from the fog in a way that other trees do not. I once suggested redwoods as an alternate or additional metaphor for giftedness re Stephanie Tolan's "Is it a cheetah?" https://www.stephanietolan.com/is_it_a_cheetah.htm https://www.stephanietolan.com/is_it_a_cheetah.htm My idea didn't get any traction, but I think we need more mental models than the "cheetah" one because that not only implicitly suggests that gifted kids are always fast, it also implicitly suggests that they are dangerous predators. While it is true that intelligence can make you a danger, I would like to see myriad metaphors proliferate and redwoods are at the top of my list as a metaphor I would like to see proliferate.
- mdonahoe 6y agoI was thinking redwoods are like rich people. Their scale gives them unfair advantages compared to other plants. Also metaphors make weak arguments.
- jupp0r 6y agoThey also get thousands of years old, which rich people might achieve in the future.
- phkahler 6y agoMaybe they already do.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- DoreenMichele 6y agoAt the time, I may have been Director of Community Life for The TAG Project, which I believe is the the oldest set of email lists for the gifted community on the internet and they were trying to make the transition to a formal charity and never completed the process. So the audience would have been parents of gifted kids in need of support for how to effectively raise their kids and my opinion was somewhat respected for a fairly brief period of time in gifted circles online. It wasn't an argument. It was an attempt to share my thoughts with people who liked my thoughts on certain subjects well enough that it got me started blogging because there was demand for my point of view on some subjects.
- bamboozled 6y agoI guess 2000 is a long time biologically and I suppose those trees have seen bad fires before climate change really kicked off. I'm sure there were very dry and warm periods before this too. Even thought we might think we're dominating nature, I'm sure it has a few tricks up it's sleeve yet.
- URSpider94 6y agoThe concerning issue with this fire is that humans have spent most of the last 100 years suppressing wildfires in these forests. This leads to an unprecedented amount of fuel built up on the forest floor, which leads to abnormally large and hot wildfires. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to be too much for the redwoods, though time will tell.
- h0l0cube 6y agoNot sure what fire plans California have, but prescribed burning is a thing. https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/prescribed-fire https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/prescribed-fire
- bamboozled 6y agoAustralia is slowly moving back to using "cultural burning" to help tackle this problem. http://www.walkaboutpark.com.au/aboriginal-culture/cultural-burning http://www.walkaboutpark.com.au/aboriginal-culture/cultural-...
- kaikai 6y agoIt’s a thing, but it’s not being done on a large enough scale. It’s and incredibly difficult, decade long process to get plans approved on public lands. Private lands are much easier but still need extensive permitting through fire and air quality officials. We’re just starting to acknowledge the former extent of cultural burning in California, and the current need for fire on the landscape. It’s gotten easier to get the general public on board over the last couple years, and hopefully that trend continues!
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- runamok 6y agoI was just at Big Basin Headquarters on August 17th for a hike and some trails were closed due to fire then. It's hard to believe that's all gone but I am really happy the huge ancient trees survived. It's one of my favorite places in the world. I did the skyline to the sea trail with my wife a few years ago and it was fantastic. The redwoods are really incredible. An article about their fire resistance: https://sempervirens.org/redwoods-and-wildfires/ https://sempervirens.org/redwoods-and-wildfires/ A donation link to the Sempervirens Fund which helps protect these incredible trees: https://secure.sempervirens.org/onlineactions/l2kebl2BfkqzEy9l0oZQcA2?ms=10ZW100_F https://secure.sempervirens.org/onlineactions/l2kebl2BfkqzEy...
- samcheng 6y agoA hundred miles north of this fire, at the Armstrong Redwood State Park, there is another lightning-caused wildfire that is burning through an old growth grove. That fire is burning through the forest floor only, and is significantly less dangerous. The 1400-year-old Armstrong tree, and park buildings, have been protected, while the fire is free to burn through the surrounding undergrowth. Everyone involved seems to suggest that the fire is a net positive for the forest, and an overdue ecological renewal. https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/flames-yet-to-reach-armstrong-woods-old-growth-forest/ https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/flames-yet-to-rea... While it's definitely sad to see historic buildings destroyed, not to mention hundreds of homes, I look forward to returning to Big Basin over the next few years to witness this renewal first-hand.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> The 1400-year-old Armstrong tree The bare fact that a tree is 1400 years old is pretty strong evidence that it's unlikely to be harmed by a fire.
- zorpner 6y agoThe global temperature anomaly is already out-of-range for not only the lifetime of this tree, but much of its evolutionary history. We are entering an out-of-context situation for a large portion of the earth's extant lifeforms.
- samcheng 6y agoAgreed. Also, these trees must now survive a hundred years of aggressive fire suppression, which (ironically) allows fuel to build up to dangerous levels. Either way, these trees are a lot safer after surviving a fire.
- pvaldes 6y agoAgain, the forest does not burn each summer. Is the job of arsonists in the majority of the times. This is a criminal problem. Is domestic terrorism Claiming that fuel is increasing and somebody should burn the forest attract lunatics and does not help to have a future with water, or to decrease the levels of CO2 in the air. We desperately require the CO2 stored in plants and in soil and this is not compatible with the old "time to burn" parties and traditions. Brazil and half of Africa is burning today and this is not acceptable. We must change our speech. Now.
- onetimemanytime 6y agoYoung man, do you know many fires I have seen and survived over my years? (In other words, fires are part of nature.)
- dmckeon 6y agoBig Basin has burned before, and was “doomed” in 1904: https://mobile.twitter.com/DustinMulvaney/status/1297766363457400832 https://mobile.twitter.com/DustinMulvaney/status/12977663634...
- rootsudo 6y agoWhy are there always so many fires in California?
- 0_____0 6y agoAlways have been. It's a part of our state's ecology. Our forests require them in order to stay healthy, and native peoples were mediating the process for thousands of years before Western settlers decided fire was dangerous and had to be stopped. Now our forests and the fuel structures therein are way out of whack and we're finding our way back toward balance.
- conception 6y agoDraught and historically poor land management.
- dmode 6y agoCombination of multiple reasons that are coming to a head now. Massive heat waves, long running droughts, decreasing rainfall, with more development farther out from urban core etc.
- brudgers 6y agoIt’s big, dry, and mostly remote rugged terrain.
- jlmorton 6y agoBecause it's wet in the winter, and hot, dry and windy in the summer. Everywhere with this weather pattern sees frequent wildfires. California used to have more acres burned annually a hundred years ago, but the amount of land burned has decreased since then, as a result of suppression efforts. This may be increasing the severity of fires, as there's more fuel to burn.
- hadlock 6y agoCoastal California sees rain from about the end of October through February, then tapers off to about nothing by May. It then does not rain again until Halloween. I used to think "doesn't rain" meant "half an inch every couple of weeks" but it does not rain in fact at all, it's totally bone dry for the hottest part of the year, until late fall. Getting three inches over the weekend is enough precipitation in the bay area to warrant flood warnings for several days. Compared to Dallas Texas where three inches in an afternoon might cause very localized flooding for an hour or two. It's quite bone dry here in the summers, the ground is literally "tinder dry" for months on end. If you look at meso scale weather, there's a high pressure zone that develops between San Fransisco and Hawaii every summer which wards off low pressure (rain) systems. Generally develops by early June and lasts through August. Research "Pacific High" or "TransPac weather routing" or "Pac Cup weather routing" it's a major component of Pacific Ocean sailing races
- loxs 6y ago"What did you think, you stupid apes? We were here long before you and we will be here long after you are gone!"
- remote_phone 6y agoSo many on HN were talking about how these fires were so much more intense than the other fires, and that probably Big Basin would be gone forever, etc. Just another example of how people especially on HN read a few articles and then think they are experts on the topic. The ancient redwoods survived and will thrive, as fully expected. It’s not that forest fires are great, but it’s a natural process of life and people thinking “this time it’s different” are usually wrong.
- yogavini 6y agoNice info
- huffmsa 6y agoLindy
- waihtis 6y ago+1
- maerF0x0 6y agoi believe ^^ is referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect This concept could be applied to mean that because the forest survived this event, we should expect to last much longer than previously assumed. (something like that at least...)
- huffmsa 6y agoCorrect. Not sure who these unread swine with their trigger happy downboat buttons think they are. As well, that the tree is already 2,000 years old, we shouldn't be surprised it's survived this fire. It's survived many fires.
- pvaldes 6y agoAnother demonstration than ancien forests are fireproof whereas young forests aren't. This is the reason that makes centenary trees so valuable and so rare. But each fire gnaw a little of this protection. Arsonists should be more severely punished. Is the same as terrorism, just much more insidious, causing a bigger economical damage and a durable damage at long term. Not to mention that also kills people... Why is so well accepted as unavoidable by the public opinion still amazes me
- sradman 6y agoThe coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) [1]: > In response to forest fires, the trees have developed various adaptations. The thick, fibrous bark of coast redwoods is extremely fire-resistant; it grows to at least a foot thick and protects mature trees from fire damage. In addition, the redwoods contain little flammable pitch or resin. If damaged by fire, a redwood readily sprouts new branches or even an entirely new crown, and if the parent tree is killed, new buds sprout from its base. Fires, moreover, appear to actually benefit redwoods by causing substantial mortality in competing species while having only minor effects on redwood. Burned areas are favorable to the successful germination of redwood seeds. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens
- waihtis 6y agoOfftopic: anybody else find it hilarious how this completely serious news piece is followed by a section of spam-grade garbage "advertisements?" [1] How the hell does a news organization decide this is a worthy way of pumping up revenues? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taboola#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taboola#Reception ps. not on my usual computer, yes I know of adblocking :-)
- justforfunhere 6y agoThis has been the case with most News Sites, information portals etc for the last 2-3 years. They have semi-porn pictures with click bait titles after the news story that lure users into shady sites with shady intentions.
- BurningFrog 6y agoNews sites are dying, and can't afford to worry about "worthy".
- syshum 6y agoI mean they are 2,000 years old. Does NBC think this is the first fire in 2,000 years?
- umvi 6y agoLet's take a moment and recognize the fear-mongering going on a few days ago where there were articles saying "this time is different because of climate change, this time climate change super fires have caused a national treasure to be destroyed"
- crawsome 6y agoAre you saying there's not enough evidence to associate the wack storm that prefaced this with climate change? The Bay area NEVER gets rain for like almost, 8 months of the year. This was a freak event.
- umvi 6y agoI'm just saying there was a lot of mourning and saying "the redwoods are gone". When people responded "you don't get to be a 1000+ year old tree without being able to survive fires" the response was "yeah but that was before climate change. These trees are likely gone forever now because climate change combined with fire suppression is causing super fires that burn much hotter"
- nitrogen 6y agoI grew up in a place where people would talk about "that one storm in '62" (year made up) or even further back, either from direct experience or retelling an older generation's story. Given the bay area's high flux of people in and out, how many people have lived there long enough for generational knowledge of the weather 50 or 100 years ago to exist?
- 01100011 6y agoIt is not uncommon for tropical moisture to reach the coast of CA in late summer/early fall. It has happened a few times since I've lived here. The lightning is more uncommon but also not unheard of.
- woofie11 6y agoI'm not quite sure that was fearmongering, so much as people operating from limited information. It's reasonable that people will make mistakes.
- gdubs 6y agoI was elated to read this, and then disappointed at the comments here. It seems to be feeding an argument of “see, fires are natural and these trees are old - Climate Change is a fear-mongering hoax!” Firestorms are not the meandering fires that have long been a natural part of ecosystems. Ladder fires — where fire leaves the forest floor, up to the crowns, creating a wall of fire that can change weather patterns — are incredibly powerful events. Despite how much fire these trees have survived over their long lives, they dodged a bullet here. As an environmentalist, seeing that these trees won this battle is stirring. But it’s cavalier to assume they’ll win the next fight, or the one after that. Fires are becoming more intense, more frequent, more damaging. Part of this is because the yearly burns the Native American Indians did to maintain the habitat have gone the way of history. Part of it is due to natural drought cycles. Part of it is our increasing development of the urban-wilderness interface. And part of it is climate change. The world is getting hotter, and drier. We are in the midst of a mass extinction event. These trees survived today, but will we do anything to help them survive this century?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- eloff 6y agoThe world is getting hotter, but only parts of it are getting drier. Parts of it are getting wetter. Overall it will get wetter. For each 1C rise in temperature, the air can hold about 7% [1] more water vapor. Warmer air above warmer oceans will pick up more water and dump it over much the same places as it does now, although the prevailing winds and ocean currents changing will also change that up. I think the effect will mostly be that dry places will get drier and wet places will get wetter. Which is a disagreeable change, to be sure. [1] http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr_oa/c047p123.pdf http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr_oa/c047p123.pdf
- maerF0x0 6y agoLuckily we dont have to just sit idly and watch it, we can redistribute water intelligently rather than just letting it flood rapidly back to the ocean. I'm all for avoiding climate change, but also want us to be real that we dont have to play an entirely passive role in adapting to what might be a new normal
- d33lio 6y agoThe fires ravaging these forests is really sad, although I was pretty meh on living in the Bay Area, the immediate access to amazing state wildlife parks was absolutely unparalleled. IMO, who cares if it's torching scrubby LA hills or hollywood mansions? My visit to Big Basin after huge rains in 2017 (arguably a stupid decision) was basically the first time I could say I had a "religious" experience in nature. Forests are most alive after a big rain, the entire day I spent there is absolutely seared into my mind. Every conceivable part of the forest was alive, surging out of the ground and out to take a look at what was new. It's important to note that tragedy is an all too common step in evolutionary time for forests, this is the way that they continue to evolve and move forward. The last time I visited was after huge mud slides and rivers overrunning their banks. Many of the trails were blocked by 12' diameter trees that had fallen when the soil beneath their roots became too waterlogged or washed away. I can only hope that these forests will continue to thrive beyond my lifetime. I will say though, visiting Big Basin really made me question how we could actually cut down forests like this just to build stupid houses. And we still are, logging trucks and signs for logging companies are all over the roads surrounding Big Basin.
- blhack 6y agoClimate change is real, but climate change includes both changing temperatures and rain patterns AND change to the local climate of the forest. When we prevent small fires from happening that burn out all of the small bushes and trees on the forest floor, we dramatically change the climate of the forest. When we build houses in the middle of the forest and then fight the fires that threaten them, we just build up more fuel that will eventually result in giant fires like the ones we are seeing now. Of course temperature changes and changes in rain make this all worse as well. But if we're going to be honest about climate change, then we need to be honest about climate change. We have entire government agencies whose sole purpose is to fight against the natural ecology of the forest. Something big that we can do to both allow for houses and towns to exist in the forest, and live harmoniously with the environment: allow logging companies to come in and tend to the forest. Just regulate them.
- greentimer 6y agoMany commentators have blamed climate change for the fires because it is fashionable, especially on the left, to do so. The reality is that the very small change in temperatures produced by climate change isn't sufficient to produce a change in the rate of fires. We'll have to wait a long time for climate change to produce such effects, if it ever does. I would lay the blame more on our society's technological stagnation in terms of its inability to come up with better technologies than those that have existed since the 1950s to fit fires. We haven't buried our power lines, we don't have strategically positioned water storage systems, we don't have huge drones specifically for firefighting that could dump more water on the fires than an ordinary helicopter could. I'd say this article barely meets HN's standards of something that garners intellectual interest and is more the type of thing I'd expect to see on Reddit alongside cat videos. And then of course there is the environmentalist bent that the redwoods of at most sentimental value were the important thing that burned down, rather than things of material value to people. I wonder if anyone ended up homeless as a result of the fires. According to the theory of radical skepticism it is very tough to put a probability bound on supposedly low probability disasters like fires, and so we must be prepared for them.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y agoToday, there's more low hanging fruit in the world of fire prevention than fire fighting. It's mostly low-tech work that just needs adequate funding and the political will: manually clearing out brush, using grazing animals like goats, controlled burns. Ultimately, the overgrowth has to go, one way or another. Controlled burns especially have become politically unpopular in recent decades, but they're tremendously effective. With controlled burns, we can burn small amounts of brush when the wind is blowing gently away from major population centers. If we want to fund technical solutions, I'd invest in software that models the best times and places to conduct these controlled burn operations FAR before we start discussing firefighting drones.
- leafboi 6y agoYou need to live in California where these fires have been ravaging the state year after year for the past decade.
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- maerF0x0 6y agoselective harvesting (thinning), controlled burns and other tasks are hard sells to tree hugging Californians. However, it could be someone's livelihood AND a partial solution to the issues that come up. How much do we spend on forest firefighting? How much do we spend on "no logging" lobbying? How much do we spend on smoke inhalation property damage and all the public communications? All that could be recouped AND an industry could be revived.
- blhack 6y agoIt's frustrating that such an obvious solution to this problem exists. Logging will create jobs, stimulate the economies of rural towns, help the forest ecology. Imagine this: what if we could create a biomachine that pulls CO2 out of the air and turns into carbon bricks. Now imagine that we not only have this biomachine but we have a use for all of these bricks. People want them really badly. So there is a huge incentive to speed up the process of pulling the CO2 out of the air. We have that. The biomachines are trees, the bricks are wood, and the industry is logging. Why people who claim to care about the environment are opposed to it is baffling.
- danans 6y ago> Logging will create jobs, stimulate the economies of rural towns, help the forest ecology. The types of plant growth that significantly increase wildfire risk significantly (by providing kindling) are not the big profitable trees, but rather the low growing brush and low diameter trees, for which there isn't much of a market (although Sierra Pacific Co. in CA is trying to turn those in to particle board). Also, the forestry industry is very mechanized, and doesn't rely on a lot of human labor compared to the past. https://www.npr.org/2018/08/29/642955787/will-more-logging-save-western-forests-from-wildfires https://www.npr.org/2018/08/29/642955787/will-more-logging-s...
- blhack 6y agoOne of the ways that the USFS will negotiate with the loggers is essentially to require them to do forest management in the areas that they are logging.
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- mleonhard 6y agoOriginal article: https://apnews.com/ce2946afbc66040260cc76ffbbe744ca https://apnews.com/ce2946afbc66040260cc76ffbbe744ca The nbcnews.com site refuses to show content in Firefox Focus on mobile.