Don't see jimlad so I can only assume you're serious. It's called forest management. And yes, it means cutting down SOME trees.
West Coast fires
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Don't see jimlad so I can only assume you're serious. It's called forest management. And yes, it means cutting down SOME trees.
Last I knew much of that is cutting trees to let the undergrowth grow up for the lumber industry.
I'd imagine the amount of money needed to cut and remove enough trees down to avoid fires like this is not readily available, nor would it leave the forest itself in a sustainable state. I see enough lots cleared out for future housing in sparingly populated areas in the north woods to make me think it's straight up lousy out west.
Fires happening more often+overpopulation is a bad mix.
First re: climate change, harvesting trees that are mature maximizes CO2 sequestration. Once they start dying they are net CO2 emitters, so that’s one case for harvesting in addition to preventing fires.
Second, the state of CA is funding ISU and an Ames company to demonstrate forest residue to fuels:https://www.biorenew.iastate.edu/research/thermochemical/autothermal/
The harvesting (waste, transportation) and turning trees into something has a CO2 cost as well that's immediate.
Anyways there's an entire forum labeled for this topic.
The area these fires cover is massive and many of the areas are very rugged and hard to access. That is possible, but also quite an effort.
Something a lot of us don't realize out "east" (AKA Midwest) is that there are actually government organizations dedicated to doing this kind of work. I went out west for a while doing some work and ended up meeting various people involved in managing public land. There's an entire federal government organization called the Bureau of Land Management (always called BLM, not to be confused with that other BLM) which has a lot of responsibilities but one is managing forests. It's like the summer detasseling equivalent out there for college age kids to go work as a fire fighter for the BLM.
Anyway, not that I'm some great expert on this at all. Just happen to work for a midwestern utility that had a pipe dream of expanding into southern California and Arizona, so I got to meet with various public officials in charge of things like running irrigation districts, etc. It was a really cool experience and it's hard to imagine what life is like out there. There's rural Iowa, and then there's remote wilderness.
Yep, it's not as simple as 'drive up, clean it up'.
A couple of years ago in the Bighorns, there was a huge blow over of trees from tornados a few weeks prior. A ranger was going out to clear the trails, and a main rule was that they couldn't use gas powered tools like chainsaws to do the clearing. He was out there alone and had to have hiked in at least 5 miles with just a hatchet to get started. These were huge pine trees scattered like matches across the range.
Putting that to getting to a fire or even clearing the area out for preventative measures sounds unrealistic.
We can ignore most of the thread before this post because this is pretty critical truth.
I do long distance backpacking in the Sierras and there are miles I cover in 12-15 minutes and there are miles I cover in an hour, that's with a trail. Much of the land in danger of wildfires would take hours to cover a mile or be nearly impossible on foot or in land vehicles.
Most of the Sierras fires aren't the situation people are talking about building new settlements. A small handful are arson or bad human behavior.
Also if we can't discuss climate science we should ban wildfire discussion in this forum because what a completely worthless discussion to have.
Climate science and forest management practices past and present are joined at the hip. I appreciated an earlier post about "climate" in the west pointing out the historical norms are and have been warmer, drier and burning more often than not when measured over hundreds of years - not tens of years.
Mankind is a force of nature but nature always has the final say.
I know of a family that lives on Cheyenne mountain above Colorado Springs. Each family member has a box. They are to keep anything that they value in the box. They all know that when a fire occurs, they are to grab their box and get off the mountain. If it isn't already in the box or is too big to fit it gets left behind. No hesitating, just grab and go.
