"He wonders whether the forests and species will be able to recover. He was particularly concerned that rainforests and so-called "wet forests" had burned in northern parts of the state."
https://www.newcastleherald.com.au/s...ational-parks/
Bushfires devastate rare and enchanting wildlife as 'permanently wet' forests burn for first time
"We are seeing fire going into these areas where fire is simply not meant to go," says Mr Graham, a fire specialist with the Nature Conservation Council.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-...56?pfmredir=sm
Why are our rainforests burning?
Many of us may think the wet, humid conditions in a rainforest makes them unburnable, but bushfires in Australia and the Amazon are proving otherwise
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/artic...orests-burning
Do you have been bullied by a green when you were young or what?
"The idea isn’t new. For countless generations, Indigenous people have worked with fire to maintain healthy landscapes that are less prone to massive wildfires. While allowing natural fires to burn, Native Americans in California and elsewhere started some intentionally to clear dry brush, maintain species balance, and create prairies and meadows where animals graze. In the early days of Western settlement, some ranchers also adopted this practice to maintain pastureland for cattle.
But in the 1880’s, the US Army began to administer Yellowstone, the first national park, and developed the idea of “fighting” fire. In 1910, wildfires in Idaho and Montana burned millions of acres, destroying communities and killing 86 people. The US Forest Service subsequently adopted a policy of putting out all blazes, which state and federal land management agencies mimicked in an effort to protect timber supplies and human lives. Under these policies, Indigenous people and ranchers alike could be fined for burning their own lands.
In 1968, the National Park Service lifted its fire ban after noticing a decline in giant sequoia trees, which depend on fire to grow. Over the next fifteen years, the Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) gradually re-introduced fire to their landscapes. The Forest Service now admits that suppression backfired; excluding fire created an unnatural build-up of dry brush and overcrowding of trees that’s partly fueling today’s mega-fires. Scientists and policy makers increasingly agree that under the right conditions, intentionally burning away flammable vegetation is one of the most effective tools for reducing wildfire risk. And research shows that when wildfires do reach lands thinned by prescribed fire, far fewer trees die “even under extreme fire weather,” an effect that can last for up to 15-20 years.
Yet we still have a long way to go. A recent analysis of government data titled “We’re Not Doing Enough Prescribed Fire in the Western United States to Mitigate Wildfire Risk,” written by University of Idaho fire scientist Crystal Kolden, found that between 1998 and 2018, the amount of prescribed burning in the Western US remained stable and even decreased in some areas. According to the Sacramento Bee, fewer than 90,000 acres of California were intentionally burned in 2018. Kolden roughly estimates that the state should be burning at least five times that amount.
Yet not everyone is convinced that controlled burns are scaleable. Terry Warlick, a fire battalion chief with the US Forest Service who works in the Mendocino National Forest and attended the Karuk training, was enthusiastic about the “historical fire regime” modeled by tribes. But, he says not all communities will be.
“They don’t like the smoke, they don’t want to see it—until they have to experience a wildfire,” he told me, as volunteers followed the shin-high flames creeping across the hillside. “It kind of seems like we got to go through, you know, an event to change our thought process.”
“People are scared of any fire application,” says Hannan, the Cal Fire chief. “All they’ve known is these huge fires that burn down houses and sometimes kill people.”
He was referring to recent infernos like the Camp and Carr Fires, but prescribed fires occasionally wreak havoc, too. A controlled burn’s “escape” started the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire in New Mexico, which scorched 47,000 acres and left 400 families homeless. Such incidents can be almost completely prevented, says Preston, by fire crews that have intimate knowledge of the lands they are burning, and follow specific techniques.
Preston and other Karuk tribal members, in line with scientific consensus, believe there should be more prescribed fire throughout the year. The tribe’s plans for this year’s training burns were limited by a “burn ban” imposed all summer and reinstated this fall due to high winds and low humidity across most of California, the same conditions that prompted the utility company Pacific Gas & Electric to shut off power lines across the state, leaving millions without electricity. Yet Preston and others say the conditions in the mountainous region of Orleans were ideal for burning."
A long time ago, the practice of prescribed burns have been removed from US common routine.
Re: Is it Game Over on the climate front?
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Originally Posted by Genava
Anyway I got another point...if there are so many underwater active vulcanos/faults etc, so much increasing water temperature, should not we get even way higher increase of temps in air? Even if there is less active surface vulcanos, consider how much more energy it takes to heat up water vs air. Except...temp increasing due to volcanic activity is no issue at all...
