High Sierra Topix

Mike, Your statement was not boring. The truth about this fire is coming from people like you as opposed to the discord dependent media, the masters of "victimology" and (god help us) the legal "profession". I am glad your place survived.

Duane

I am just going bye what I read the Jeffrey's germination rates increase dramatically if the seeds are exposed to high heat from smoke, not neccessarily a direct burn. I don't no about sugar pines, or ponderosa'a I did read the lodgepoles also respond better to fire or high heat. The Giant Sequoias which at one time were a dominant tree from Colorado to the West coast requires fire to open its cones. I can tell you this about the pine needles, almost all the nutrients in a confiferous forest are tied up in the tree's, the forest depends on decomposition of fallen trees and pine needles to add nutrients back into the soil. So if you cleas cut, you have to use synthetic fertilizers in order to get newly planted tree's to grow. If you rake all the pine needles you are depriving the forest of nutrients, so its a catch 22. I still don;t think the pine needles are the problem, the fir tree's are unaturally abundant at this altitude.

I extended my irrigation to the perimeter of my property and I have Giant sequoias, red twig dogwoods and native maples than Im watering the native grasses.

Thanks Huts there was a few days there where we thought everthing was gone. I love the area, I love fishing and hiking in desolation and we have alot of memories with the Kids.

mikehike, I have read where lodgepole does better after a fire, but then I see it in thick groves too. Go figure. I understand the catch 22. I have a small creek flowing thru my property and I am maintaining half of it as is with removal of dead trees like willow and alder for firewood and a path thru it to walk down to enjoy. I love to hear the birds and it is so much prettier with the native trees and other flora growing and stays nice and cool when it gets hot. My piece of eye candy. A neighbor had some free fill brought in and I got a little, he knocked over all the brush, willows on his place and told me to do the same. No way. My greenbelt.

not necessarily.

Jeffrey pine, like all pines, germinates best on bare mineral soil, whereas true firs will germinate with a litter layer. But Jeffrey is not considered serotinous (needs fire to open the cones). Jeffrey, like most conifers, have 'cone years' where they produce a super abundant cone crop. They produce some cones every year, but about every 3-4 years on a fairly regular cycle the tree will covered in cones. If this cone crop coincides with some other event, like a nearby fire, people will credit the fire with stimulating the cone crop, but it may be just the natural cycle.

There are several different varieties of lodgepole pine (3, 4, or 5 depending on which botanist or taxonomist you talk to). The Rocky Mtn variety is serotinous. The Sierra Nevada variant is not. The giant sequoia is serotinous, its cousin the coast redwood is not. Knobcone pine is.

Ceanothus spp are not serotinous, as the term refers to conifers, but the ceanothus seeds, sitting dormant in the soil for years, will open after fire scarification. This is the reason ceanothus spp. is often the first woody shrub to revegetate a burn, and grows in very thick.

Fires don't always recycle nutrients. Even a low to moderate intensity fire results in a net loss of soil nitrogen. All the nitrates go up in smoke. Ceanothus is a 'nitrogen fixer' that will grow in low nitrogen soils, and begin to replenish the soil nitrogen. Hence it is often the first and only woody plant to re-colonize a burn for several years, until enough nutrients are restored for others to move in. Lupines are a member of the nitrogen fixing legume family, like peas and soybeans. Ever notice the abundance of lupines and fireweed the year after a fire? The only plants that will initially grow there. You also see lupines in road cuts, because the soil in a road cut is new soil with little to no organic material supplying nitrogen.

Thanks dave I stand corrected, from what I gathered the higher in elevation you go the less fire dependent the plant selection becomes.
I have heard on occasion people saying the Fir as non-native to Lake tahoe, which all my native plant books say otherwise. My point was the firs seem to be more abundant at lake level than they probably should be because of the extensive logging back in the 1800's.

mikehike wrote:Thanks dave I stand corrected, from what I gathered the higher in elevation you go the less fire dependent the plant selection becomes.
I have heard on occasion people saying the Fir as non-native to Lake tahoe, which all my native plant books say otherwise. My point was the firs seem to be more abundant at lake level than they probably should be because of the extensive logging back in the 1800's.

As elevation increases in the Sierra Nevada the longer the historic mean fire return interval. The return interval across the entire region varies greatly from one location to another, so as a general rule, fire frequency decreased with elevation, but do not assume this holds true across the entire Sierra as a hard and fast rule. As fire frequency decreases the less fire adapted species increase. And when a fire does occur at the higher elevation stands the fire tends to be a higher intensity with high mortality.

White and red fir are native to the Sierra, but historically was in lesser numbers than commonly found now. West Side Sierra forests historically had a lot less old growth than most people assume -- 25-30% is the most commonly held figure. The rest was young- to mid- aged forest, with as much as 1/2 of the area as natural openings, meadows, brushfields and young reproduction patches. The forest was not the classic multi-aged forest, but was mostly a mosaic of small even-aged patches created by fire and other disturbances. These patches were often, but not always, a single species or a few closely related species. Multi-species mixed age stands were uncommon. Pine was dominant with true fir as a small minority. True fir is relatively shade tolerant and pines are shade intolerant. This is why as you look at typical Sierra west side forests today you see fir understory with a pine overstory. Pine does not regenerate well in the shade, and fir does quite well. This is another reason individual tree selection is not always a good choice as a harvest method and often group selection or clearcutting is better. You need a canopy opening large enough to let in enough sunlight to allow pine to regenerate rather than fir. Larger openings also replicate the historic disturbance patterns and over time will lead to the historic even-age mosaic. But clearcuts are ugly to look at so people oppose them.

Right on Dave! Just the facts, please and thank you. To get the beautiful pines to regenerate sans fire, the best thing one can do is to take a bulldozer to a property to expose the the mineral soil. And bust down the canopy. Then sprinkle in some pines on the way out. Works every time it's tried. Of course it is a little ugly for a few years. jls

As elevation increases in the Sierra Nevada the longer the historic mean fire return interval. The return interval across the entire region varies greatly from one location to another, so as a general rule, fire frequency decreased with elevation, but do not assume this holds true across the entire Sierra as a hard and fast rule. As fire frequency decreases the less fire adapted species increase. And when a fire does occur at the higher elevation stands the fire tends to be a higher intensity with high mortality.

White and red fir are native to the Sierra, but historically was in lesser numbers than commonly found now. Pine was dominant with true fir as a small minority. True fir is relatively shade tolerant and pines are shade intolerant. This is why as you look at typical Sierra west side forests today you see fir understory with a pine overstory. Pine does not regenerate well in the shade, and fir does quite well.

Dave,

Great stuff, helps me realize my memory is actually semi-intact. The shade tolerant firs makes sence, just from my late night "5 glasses of merlot" walks in my backyard looking at the tree's and drawing conclusions on evolution is the highlite of my saturday night..shows you how boring my life is. Back to the firs, they have such a quantity of branches and an abundance of leaves giving them maximum "solar panels" which is exactly what a shade tolerant tree would need to survive a pine overstory. Anyways science is work in progress, no one ever has all the answers but it makes for interesting discussion...

I hope the TRPA and forest service are as passionate about the Sierra Neavde coniferous forest as we are in this thread.

Hey Duane,

Don't forget the Big rainBird Impact heads to water those tree's and grasses

"...I hope the TRPA and forest service are as passionate about the Sierra Neavde coniferous forest as we are in this thread..."

The FS is as concerned as the regulars here. Unfortunately, their hands are tied. The public lands are no longer managed by natural resource professionals, they are managed by judges and lobbyists and environmental industry lawyers. Sound science and managing the resources for the future takes a back seat to slick PR campaigns and 30 second sound bites.

Hey Dave, our tax dollars at work. Too bad the money spent fighting lawsuits couldn't go towards maintaining trails. You sound like one of the fire crew bosses down here I know and spoke to about lawsuits holding up work around Meadow Valley which has since been started and finished now I think.