8 ms·

> For millennia, wildfires sparked by lightning, or lit by Native American tribes, regularly shaped the landscape of the western U.S. It'd be interesting to le

by davidw 5y ago

> For millennia, wildfires sparked by lightning, or lit by Native American tribes, regularly shaped the landscape of the western U.S. It'd be interesting to learn more about the differences between the two. There are places that don't get a lot of lightning and would probably not burn that regularly on their own. So in those places a truly 'natural' state would look different from a 'managed by native peoples' state.

amacneil 5y ago
You might find this book interesting - Native American management of land via fire is a central theme: Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources by M. Kat Anderson
cf100clunk 5y ago
The topic of "cultural burning" is now being taken very seriously amongst non-indigenous wildfire response organizations worldwide: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28087406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28087406 Smokey The Bear needs to be retired.
- tclancy 5y ago
  Well, I dunno about Smokey. Here's there to remind people drinking around a campfire to be careful about it. I can't imagine people sitting around a campfire drinking is a recipe for controlled, limited burns.
cf100clunk 5y ago
This site offers a Global Lightning Map of events in progress: https://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en#m=oss;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=;ts=0;y=25.958;x=-11.2001;z=2;d=2;dl=2;dc=0; https://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en#m=oss;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=;... I don't know of a resource that overlays histories of such events with indigenous cultural burning activities, but maybe the data is out there somewhere.
smallerfish 5y ago
The early european colonists & explorers reported vast pristine forests covering the land. There's some evidence to suggest that these were very recent second growth, the diseases from the europeans having wiped out 50-90% of the native american population, and having spread much faster through the continent than the europeans did. Without the native americans maintaining the land with controlled burns and rotations, forests quickly regrew over their pastures and plains. Of course, by the late 1700s, colonists were themselves clearing forests and converting them to farmland.
lazide 5y ago
Pretty much all of California matches this description. Lightning, outside of a few areas, is rare. Precipitation varies heavily, from short but wet winters to months of zero precipitation. When europeans arrived, the state had regular fall wildfires (smoke was constant during this time) from natives setting regular fires to burn out undesirable plants and keep things useful for them. In Yosemite for instance, this allowed the land to support them with acorns from the black oaks there. Trees were monstrously huge compared to areas now, and relatively sparse and manageable. No known mega fires, although it probably still happened from time to time. Now in most areas, it’s tangled brush and super dense and diseased trees (or just tangled brush where it is too dry for trees), with large scale mega fires and tree mortality due to disease. Cutting down the old growth didn’t help of course - but even in places where trees have regained nearly the same sizes or were kept intact, the brush growth is a big problem. It’s natural for regrown forests to be dense, and the weaker trees die as they get crowded out. It isn’t normal for nearly every forest to be doing this all at the same time in a region due to suppression of the fires that normally clean out the junk and/or reset the clock in small areas. Big Basin state park for instance was not logged, and it burned to the ground during the CZU complex fires due to all the built up fuel. If burned every year, it would have died out before being able to do much if any damage.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Where does evidence of tribes starting burns for plant management come from? All I've ever heard of is fires used in hunting and buffalo runs/ jumps. Anything beyond that implies a level of sophistication in planning and environmental knowledge that seems far fetched at best.
  - lazide 5y ago
    They weren’t dumb? And even if they were, it doesn’t take a genius to notice that where fires have been the land is more accessible, and certain plants and animals thrive - and where a fire hasn’t been for awhile the opposite happens Here is the National Park Service page, but there are hundreds of papers on it I’m sure [https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/firehistory.htm https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/firehistory.htm]. There is extensive archaeological evidence of frequent small scale fires in the Sierras.

by davidw 5y ago

amacneil 5y ago

You might find this book interesting - Native American management of land via fire is a central theme: Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources by M. Kat Anderson

cf100clunk 5y ago

The topic of "cultural burning" is now being taken very seriously amongst non-indigenous wildfire response organizations worldwide: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28087406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28087406 Smokey The Bear needs to be retired.

tclancy 5y ago
Well, I dunno about Smokey. Here's there to remind people drinking around a campfire to be careful about it. I can't imagine people sitting around a campfire drinking is a recipe for controlled, limited burns.

cf100clunk 5y ago

This site offers a Global Lightning Map of events in progress: https://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en#m=oss;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=;ts=0;y=25.958;x=-11.2001;z=2;d=2;dl=2;dc=0; https://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en#m=oss;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=;... I don't know of a resource that overlays histories of such events with indigenous cultural burning activities, but maybe the data is out there somewhere.

smallerfish 5y ago

The early european colonists & explorers reported vast pristine forests covering the land. There's some evidence to suggest that these were very recent second growth, the diseases from the europeans having wiped out 50-90% of the native american population, and having spread much faster through the continent than the europeans did. Without the native americans maintaining the land with controlled burns and rotations, forests quickly regrew over their pastures and plains. Of course, by the late 1700s, colonists were themselves clearing forests and converting them to farmland.

lazide 5y ago

Pretty much all of California matches this description. Lightning, outside of a few areas, is rare. Precipitation varies heavily, from short but wet winters to months of zero precipitation. When europeans arrived, the state had regular fall wildfires (smoke was constant during this time) from natives setting regular fires to burn out undesirable plants and keep things useful for them. In Yosemite for instance, this allowed the land to support them with acorns from the black oaks there. Trees were monstrously huge compared to areas now, and relatively sparse and manageable. No known mega fires, although it probably still happened from time to time. Now in most areas, it’s tangled brush and super dense and diseased trees (or just tangled brush where it is too dry for trees), with large scale mega fires and tree mortality due to disease. Cutting down the old growth didn’t help of course - but even in places where trees have regained nearly the same sizes or were kept intact, the brush growth is a big problem. It’s natural for regrown forests to be dense, and the weaker trees die as they get crowded out. It isn’t normal for nearly every forest to be doing this all at the same time in a region due to suppression of the fires that normally clean out the junk and/or reset the clock in small areas. Big Basin state park for instance was not logged, and it burned to the ground during the CZU complex fires due to all the built up fuel. If burned every year, it would have died out before being able to do much if any damage.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
robbedpeter 5y ago
Where does evidence of tribes starting burns for plant management come from? All I've ever heard of is fires used in hunting and buffalo runs/ jumps. Anything beyond that implies a level of sophistication in planning and environmental knowledge that seems far fetched at best.
- lazide 5y ago
  They weren’t dumb? And even if they were, it doesn’t take a genius to notice that where fires have been the land is more accessible, and certain plants and animals thrive - and where a fire hasn’t been for awhile the opposite happens Here is the National Park Service page, but there are hundreds of papers on it I’m sure [https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/firehistory.htm https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/firehistory.htm]. There is extensive archaeological evidence of frequent small scale fires in the Sierras.