High Sierra Topix

Timely article in LAT that discusses interesting different perspectives on forest management in these times.
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... management

Some interesting lines from the article:
“The fact is that forest management is not stopping weather- and climate-driven fires,” said Chad Hanson, a forest and fire ecologist and the president of the John Muir Project.
“This is a climate change issue, and you can’t address it with chain saws and bulldozers or even drip torches,” Hanson said. “The only effective way to protect communities from wildland fire is to focus directly on homes.”
A 2008 study published by Forest Ecology and Management similarly worked to combat misconceptions. It took a more tempered approach, noting that some forest thinning can be helpful, but also said that removing vegetation to reduce the size and frequency of wildfires is “both futile and counter-productive,” and warned that fuel reduction should not be viewed as a panacea for reducing fire hazards.

Won't have to worry about forest management if they all burn. Take Eldorado for an example. The forest hasn't really burned for a century.
Forest thinning would help and prescribed burns in late spring as well. Could also bring back a timber industry.

Blaming everything on "climate change" is a misdirection. Fix the problem in front of you. Climates always change. Remember when the Earth was a molten ball and then a frozen ball?

rlown wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 9:06 am Forest thinning would help and prescribed burns in late spring as well. Could also bring back a timber industry.

The article's experts specifically argue that hardening homes against fire is probably a better use of resources than fuel reduction.

Most people can't afford that approach.

interesting/sobering article, thanks.

an interesting counterfactual from the creek fire:
https://www.kqed.org/science/1973159/ho ... ooperation

Good article, fronzentintime, thanks.
I have long assumed that the Edison stewardship, including the logging, has benefited those lands.
I have no patience with people who insist on building poorly/in bad places, and expect my tax dollars to bail them out when they have predictable and recurring mudslides and fires.

El Dorado Forest seems to be managing itself now. Let's see how it ends.

Seriously, drop every other tree. Bring back logging.

How do you "manage" a forest that has been knocked out of its climatic zone by climate change? Trees that over many years get significantly less water then they need, more heat or less cold than they are adapted to, will become unhealthy when the rate of changes are faster than they can adapt. Disease then sets in. The surrounding ecosystem changes too- like insects that do not get killed of with sufficient cold in winter- hence the bark beetle damage. The weather also gets more intense too. More wind, more lightning. Less trees, more carbon in the atmosphere, more climate change, more fires, less trees. A downward spiral. Protecting development in the urban/wilderness boundary is to me just chipping at the edges of the problem.

Wandering Daisy wrote: ↑Thu Sep 02, 2021 8:42 pm How do you "manage" a forest that has been knocked out of its climatic zone by climate change?

This strikes me as a defeatist attitude. "We can't stop climate change, management won't stop fires, boo-hoo". Plenty has been written on the subject. Florida is actually the state that burns the most acreage in prescribed fires. California isn't in the top 10. California has some of the most restrictive building codes in the nation. In my town, it was illegal to build an apartment building taller than 3 stories until a year ago (despite a housing crisis), yet we keep churning out tinder box homes in the wildland-urban interface. ~85% of wildfires are caused by humans, but rangers are more focused on explaining what leave no trace means (it's very complicated ).

IDK, it seems like we know what the fixes are. Sure, climate change is a problem that isn't fixable. But we can mitigate the fire problem caused by climate change. The huge machinery of government just can't move fast enough, and people don't want to pay the money & put in the effort.