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Here in California, 2 million acres burned last year and we may well have 2 million acres burn this year (we're up to at least a million). And before 1850, 2 mi

Here in California, 2 million acres burned last year and we may well have 2 million acres burn this year (we're up to at least a million). And before 1850, 2 million acres also burned, so we're essentially catching to the average - in the worst way possible. It's global warming and an abused, fire-based ecology, together. And people imagine "plant a tree" is the solution. So forests here are very ephemeral indeed. The idea that people keeping a forest here forever would fight global warming is mind boggling.

ajross 5y ago
You're mixing some stuff up here. Land area "burned" isn't literally deforested, don't be ridiculous. Only in the worst-affected regions of the biggest fires do you see acreage where the majority of trees are killed. And even there the trunks of killed trees tend to remain standing; their carbon doesn't enter the atmosphere until they fall and rot. What happens in a fire isn't that the forest goes away, it's just that the dead fuel burns. In fact in a healthy forest, total carbon uptake significantly increases after a fire (as younger, faster-growing plants rush into the voids left by the removed cover). Yes, "plant a tree" is absolutely part of the solution. It's not sufficient, but it's important. Turning forests into low-productivity farms is a disaster, and reversing that is a huge win for carbon balancing.
- lazide 5y ago
  Depending on the area, some of them are destroyed. Yosemite has been changed dramatically by some of these fires for example, with the areas burned in 1990 still scrub manzanita instead of the 100+ ft tall timber that used to be there. In some of these dryer areas, it isn’t clear it will ever come back the way it was, or if it does it may be hundreds of years from now.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  You're mixing some stuff up here. Land area "burned" isn't literally deforested, don't be ridiculous. You're right and that doesn't change the basic point. That is: California and the West broad has an excess of trees and tree-density so keeping a given forest as a carbon sink is ridiculous and impractical. In fact in a healthy forest, total carbon uptake significantly increases after a fire (as younger, faster-growing plants rush into the voids left by the removed cover). California has insufficient wetland and grassland. Some of a given burned forest will become that. The ultimate, stable California ecology has a substantially lower density of trees than the existing ecology and so the fires that happen in that context tend to just clear the existing brush, leaving the trees, etc. And still, doesn't change the basic point. Edit: Reading my original post, I can't see where I claim fires "deforest" a region. Fires do lower tree density, how could they do otherwise? Edit again: there's a limit to how much carbon a given landscape can absorb, determined by its ecology broadly speaking. Through fire suppression, California and the West have managed to go past that limit. It's biting us, I'm wearing two masks outside and this is the present reality. How hard is that grasp?

ajross 5y ago

You're mixing some stuff up here. Land area "burned" isn't literally deforested, don't be ridiculous. Only in the worst-affected regions of the biggest fires do you see acreage where the majority of trees are killed. And even there the trunks of killed trees tend to remain standing; their carbon doesn't enter the atmosphere until they fall and rot. What happens in a fire isn't that the forest goes away, it's just that the dead fuel burns. In fact in a healthy forest, total carbon uptake significantly increases after a fire (as younger, faster-growing plants rush into the voids left by the removed cover). Yes, "plant a tree" is absolutely part of the solution. It's not sufficient, but it's important. Turning forests into low-productivity farms is a disaster, and reversing that is a huge win for carbon balancing.

lazide 5y ago
Depending on the area, some of them are destroyed. Yosemite has been changed dramatically by some of these fires for example, with the areas burned in 1990 still scrub manzanita instead of the 100+ ft tall timber that used to be there. In some of these dryer areas, it isn’t clear it will ever come back the way it was, or if it does it may be hundreds of years from now.
joe_the_user 5y ago
You're mixing some stuff up here. Land area "burned" isn't literally deforested, don't be ridiculous. You're right and that doesn't change the basic point. That is: California and the West broad has an excess of trees and tree-density so keeping a given forest as a carbon sink is ridiculous and impractical. In fact in a healthy forest, total carbon uptake significantly increases after a fire (as younger, faster-growing plants rush into the voids left by the removed cover). California has insufficient wetland and grassland. Some of a given burned forest will become that. The ultimate, stable California ecology has a substantially lower density of trees than the existing ecology and so the fires that happen in that context tend to just clear the existing brush, leaving the trees, etc. And still, doesn't change the basic point. Edit: Reading my original post, I can't see where I claim fires "deforest" a region. Fires do lower tree density, how could they do otherwise? Edit again: there's a limit to how much carbon a given landscape can absorb, determined by its ecology broadly speaking. Through fire suppression, California and the West have managed to go past that limit. It's biting us, I'm wearing two masks outside and this is the present reality. How hard is that grasp?