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Dr. Christ
Mountain climber
State of Mine
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The environmental factors that determine the fuel moisture of a fuel particle are:
Air Temperature
Moisture content of the air
Solar radiation (as modified by cloud cover)
Rainfall (amount and duration)
None of which have anything to do with climate change.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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"immanent" you say?
Spell check is a wonderful tool.
"ive also well proven.."
No, you haven't. I saw where you tried. You failed to prove any such thing.
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Dr. Christ
Mountain climber
State of Mine
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Once again your perception of reality is askew and your uninformed, arrogant insistence that you know what you are talking about turns an otherwise interesting topic into absolute rubbish. Enjoy!
Forests should absolutely be "treated." But that doesn't mean the effects of climate should be ignored. Personally, I'd like to see more Rx burns and mechanical treatments with low pressure equipment. I know from experience this equipment has very low soil compaction. Less ground pressure than a human foot print. Seems to be the way to go.
http://www.timberlinemag.com/articledatabase/view.asp?articleID=110
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guyman
Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
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Ron... Good post.
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Dr. Christ
Mountain climber
State of Mine
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you'd probably continue to stew in your own ignorance.
v you are welcome. sorry a little slow this am... didn't sleep until 7am, got up a 10am.
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Dr. Christ
Mountain climber
State of Mine
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a million regenerated trees in one winter.
I thought the idea was to reduce fuel loads and mimic a more natural balance. A million regenerated trees in a winter is not natural, nor does it reduce fuel loads.
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Dr. Christ
Mountain climber
State of Mine
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khanom, I have no idea who wrote that. It was just the first article that popped up when I searched for Rottne CTL Holland. But I have worked with Jeff Holland and he is a good guy, doing good work that needs to be done.
Ron, please explain the natural process associated with fires that tills the soils and generates "a million trees" over winter.
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Social climber
SLO, Ca
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Many fires are located in vegetation with no commercial value and /or near populations with no tolerance for controlled burns. Thinning is too laborious to do on any large scale. I've thought a lot about this and conclude that really nothing will be done aside from some improvement in isolated pockets here and there.
In timber old-growth stands are the most fire resistant-- Logging circa 60s-80s pretty much took care of those however. Logging slash is the worst / heaviest fuel for fires.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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The properly thinned areas look exactly like a paper company long term lease.
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Dr. Christ
Mountain climber
State of Mine
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TGT, that is because you are a idiot and have no idea what you are talking about... specifically size-class distributions, soil cover, and soil compaction.
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Social climber
SLO, Ca
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Most pulp from paper comes from south eastern forests that grow like weeds. Pretty sure they are straight up feller-buncher operations in rotating crops.
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Dr. Christ
Mountain climber
State of Mine
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Dingus, how do you propose we get rid of the built up forest fuels that used to naturally burn every few decades?
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Dr. Christ
Mountain climber
State of Mine
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^ improper size-class distribution and undoubtedly excessive soil compaction. I'm sure you guys did the best you could, but they can do better nowadays. Looks like many of the ~50 year old scars you can find all over the NF in the area... and nothing like areas than burned naturally.
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Social climber
SLO, Ca
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And build that nice comfortable home of yours in suburbia USA.
I think you mean "and ship raw logs (and jobs) harvested on public lands to Asia for substantial private profit"
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Dr. Christ
Mountain climber
State of Mine
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I hear ya Dingus, and agree. Current thinning/sales (at least in Tahoe) have pretty well established prescriptions for size-class distribution, "habitat trees", decaying logs (for soil quality), etc. My job used to be making sure those were implemented properly. Cutting for fire management involves thinning out many of the smaller trees... which doesn't provide much useful produce for the timber industry. There are efforts to stream the product into biomass energy facilities, but there ain't too many of those around.
The LTBMU now offers a permit to collect wood from certain burn piles around the Basin... free firewood!
Much of the soil in that pic is actually volcanic rock. Hawkins pk in the back ground.
No sh#t sherlock... volcanic soils are more susceptible to compaction than coarse granitic soils. Trust me, I've analyzed more than my fair share.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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I wasn't referring to Eastern timber plantations, but to NE Arizona.
Back in the 1980's my folks retired to Show Low Arizona. At the time there was still an operating paper plant, complete with a narrow gage rail road for log transport.
Driving around, you always knew just by the condition of the forest if you were on, Indian reservation, USFS, or timber lease.
The reservation land was completely brush choked and dying, USFS somewhat better, and the leased areas, healthy and properly thinned.
Then in the late 80's the paper mill shut down and the entire forest reverted to a brush choked unhealthy state. The result was the Rodeo Fire.
the only places the fire laid down and burned in a healthy manner were a few remaining logging leases along the Salt River. Everywhere else was incinerated to bedrock.
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bergbryce
Mountain climber
California
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my dad's house is about 5 miles from a paper mill. when the wind blows from the south it smells like a nacho fart. not many people want to smell perpetual nacho fart. not to mention it's way cheaper to produce paper from malaysian rain forests than anywhere in north america.
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Social climber
SLO, Ca
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Clear cuts and logging don't help because of the logging slash-- fires rip through that stuff. I'm not saying we don't need timber for building or whatever but the idea that logging prevents fire is absurd.
Thinning is a ruse-- what it actually does is leaves more slash on the ground and opens up the canopy to allow more sun on the forest floor, thereby drying fuels more quickly. At the same time mature, fire resistant trees are removed to pay for the thinning.
Controlled burns- not viable beyond isolated pockets. I worked on a hotshot crew in a community that suffered major loss of life and property the prior season. The FS tried to do a controlled burn and the locals were up in arms about smoke! Saw the same public reaction again and again. Also, they are not as effective as people might think and burn downed logs and snags necessary in a healthy forest.
If anyone is worried about fire they should provide a 100 foot defensible space around their house and use non-combustible materials for the roof, etc. I'd set up a sprinkler system.
It is naive to think the forests can be "managed" to prevent major fires on any kind of scale- the acreage and inaccessibility alone forecloses that option. In any case, massive "catastrophic" fires occurred long before our current parade of smokey the bear / beetle / suppression horribles and will occur regardless of what we might do.
I think that was my longest supertaco post evah!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Ron, since nature is so variable there is very likely a time period in the past when there was at least a 100 year hiatus in wildfire and the forests naturally developed into a state like the one we find now. And presumably very disruptive fires, insects and disease had their run ending that natural "imbalance" restoring "balance" to the forests.
That's the way things go, we don't have a natural "garden" stable for long periods of time, variability is a fact...
Given that, the main interest in the current imbalance has to do with human intervention and human outcomes... preventing forest fires preserved forest resources for commercial use after WWII when the technologies and the workforce became available to suppress wildfire. Now allowing a natural restoration of the forests is untenable because of the habitation in those forests.
As untenable as letting the fires do their thing is, that is going to happen anyway, and there will be property destroyed. Assuming a very conservative approach where people are required to be evacuated from their homes in the face of wildfire, the position of the firefighting organizations cannot be that firefighter lives can be exchanged for property.
In some sense, these fires can be usefully employed to set the balance back, just as they have done in the past. While devastating to humans, it most assuredly has happened in the past "naturally." Why attempt to change what is natural?
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