I read this article which makes a couple of interesting claims:
I say “interesting,” because we’ve been hearing about the problem of deforestation and sprawl for a long time (though mainly in South America for the former).
So if we have too many trees, what can be done about it other than using fire?
The undergrowth density might be too high. You could clear excess brush, but that’s not easy to sell.
Some of our forests are dense. The bigger problem is usually too much accumulated debris and undergrowth.
But as far as Climate Change goes, we could use reforestation of cleared lands, not just keeping current forests.
Better forestry practices, a more reasonable fire fighting protocol, and fewer houses built in the middle of burnable terrain.
Deforestation IS a problem. So is blanket fire suppression. Both of these facts are in accord, not opposition. Deforestation leads to a whole series of knock-on effects like soil erosion. Fire suppression leads to more and more catastrophic fires.
The idea is to manage healthy forests that continue to be of benefit down the generations and not explosive hazards. Unfortunately untangling that now a century+ down the road is very, very hard. You can no longer tolerate uncontrolled ‘healthy’ fires because there is too much fuel for them to be healthy. Thinning and clearing underbrush and dead tree fuel loads mechanically and with controlled burns are probably the only way to go (aside from what can be done to mitigate anthropogenic climate change). But they are slowww and difficult with the current resources deployed and they require a certain tolerance for seasonally uncomfortable living situations. Like perpetual palls of smoke and the threat of a controlled burn going wild.
It’s not a problem I expect to get solved in my lifetime.
The OP clearly does not live in the American West. Those of us who do have known for years that fire is part of the forest’s natural cycle–one that the Forest Service tried for decades to stamp out. And now we are reaping the whirlwind.
This article may shed light on the subject.
More from the article:
A climate change-fueled megadrought of more than 20 years is making conditions that lead to fire even more dangerous, scientists said. Rainfall in the Rockies and farther west was the second lowest on record in April, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“It means that the dice are loaded toward a lot of forest fire this year,” said Park Williams, a UCLA climate and fire scientist, who calculated that soil in the western half of the nation is the driest it has been since 1895. “This summer we’re going into fire season with drier fuels than we were at this time last year.”
In addition, the western drought is deepening week by week.
So perhaps more light than we wished it did.
This might be an increasingly important part of managing climate change in the future. In some parts of the world, forestation is increasing because of slowed population growth and movement of rural dwellers to urban areas. Spain estimates that the amount of forested land in the country has grown from 8% to 25% in recent decades. I have read accounts that we have more square miles of forests here in the US now than we did two hundred years ago.
It’s another part of the complex puzzle of the global ecology.
I don’t think this is correct, it is possible parts of the US have are more forested now than 200 years ago, but very unlikely for the entire country.
From the arrival of Europeans through the 1920s deforestation continued in the US at a rate roughly close to the population growth. Mainly as wooded areas were converted to agriculture. Post war deforestation begun again at a slower rate as suburban sprawl became a thing.
Could it be one of those misleading stats? Two hundred years ago, the US didn’t have Alaska, for example. Alaska has more square miles than all of the 13 colonies, and might have more square miles of
forest than the 13 colonies + the Louisiana purchase, right?
200 years ago is a interesting point in time to use. We certainly cut down a lot of trees for farmland for a couple of centuries before that, but that would be primarily east of the Mississippi and land clearing from what I know continues to this day, now maybe more for residential and commercial space instead of farms. The west coast forests may have expanded somewhat in the last 100 years from trying to prevent forest fires, so possibly they are a bit overgrown in some places but it’s hard to see that exceeding the large amounts of clear cutting done. Some of this is also balanced out by preservation and promotion of forests for future harvesting. At least this is now often accompanied by replanting efforts.
Could be, as they say, nothing lies like statistics.
The estimates I’ve seen are that the land currently part of the US had about a billion acres of forest in 1620, and about 818 million acres today, having reached a low point of about 750 million acres early in the 20th century. The primary drivers for growth in the last century is the abandonment of marginal farmland in places like Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and the growth of timber plantations in the south. West Virginia, for example, was basically logged out: of 16 million acres of old-growth forest standing when the European settlers arrived, less than 300 acres remain, with some parts of the state having been burned down to bedrock. However, these days they’re back up to around 12 million acres of total forested area.
If the low point was about 100 years ago then it’s possible we do have more forest right now than 200 years ago. Perhaps not much more, we don’t have that much more than 100 years ago, but I do think land was being cleared at a furious pace 200 years ago. So maybe 800 million acres in 1821, it when down from there, and we’ve gotten somewhat past that recently. Perhaps.
What is considered forest would be important. We may have a lot of trees growing on median strips and patches of new growth between the houses built on old farmland, but I wouldn’t call that forest myself.
Exactly. Good forest management requires the litter to be burnt up every so often. It also takes out some of the larger, dead trees that allow new, younger trees to grow.
The management that consists of “NEVER TOUCH THE FOREST EVER!” is one of the main reasons that the wildfires in California are so devastating. It is illegal for people to clean up around their areas because of environmental regulations, which leads to massive fire explosions.
I live within a community in a forest, more mountainous, but mostly pine and aspen trees. The neighborhood was developed 35-40 years ago. It is an old growth forest. There has never been a large scale wildfire in our neighborhood. My house sits on a 3 acre lot. Our neighborhood’s foundation (think HOA) owns more common area property, in the form of buffer, boundary, trails, etc. than the total amount of individually owned homesites. The foundation has a forestry expert on staff. There is a very large herd (200+) of elk and large herd (+100) of mule deer, that live and roam in our neighborhood. Our community is also populated with fox, mountain lions, black bears, and many types of birds of prey.
My homeowner’s insurance requires me to take certain actions annually to attempt to mitigate risks associated with wildfires, i.e. removal of slash, trimming of trees near the house, etc. My house and contents are covered for replacement cost.
Is there a risk where I live? Sure, but the aesthetic beauty and peacefulness of living in this environment is worth it to me.
Where in the world are you getting this? It is fact mandatory in CA in many areas to clear underbrush within a variable distance of your home, depending on how exactly you are zoned. Unfortunately this is often ignored.
Fire storm.
This is hardly new insight; I remember forty years ago the same things being said in the west. The problems are, there have been encroachments so a fire threatens someone’s house, not just forest, and the accumulated undergrowth is to the point where a fire is much more fierce and hotter than before the “stamp out all fires ruthlessly” policy. The aftermath is literally scorched earth, not a rejuvenated forest.