[Terrapreta] wildfire

[Tom Miles]

In all my experience of burning fields or slash in temperate or tropical
environments on various continents I've never seen  "slow cool burning as a
landscape management tool" in fields or forests. That means you can control
the fire by managing the fuel load, fuel moisture and wind. And you need
luck. If you're lucky you can pick conditions that hopefully will be
predictable. In wet conditions there will be a high number of fire failures
before you get a successful one so your efficiency at "landscape management"
will be low. The local agronomic impact is predictable: two or three years
of fertilization from concentrated nutrients in the ash and then the need
for long fallow. The agronomic effects of open burning in slash and burn or
modern agriculture are well documented and also discussed in the terra preta
literature. 

 

We've changed the world. There are no more "long-standing fire ecologies".
We need to find ways to use tools like terra preta to change and adapt. 

 

Tom Miles

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org
[mailto:terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of lou gold
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 10:12 PM
To: Michael Bailes
Cc: Terrapreta
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] wildfire

 

Yep, it seems that indigenous peoples around the world used slow cool
burning as a landscape management tool, but not the kind of inferno shown in
the photo. It's not that large hot burns never happened but the incidence of
them was far apart. Many long-standing fire ecologies are now being
threatened as hot burning become more frequent. 





On Nov 10, 2007 3:05 AM, Michael Bailes <michaelangelica at gmail.com> wrote:

Yes probably true
The Australian Aborigines always used fire to manage the land here for over
40,000 years.
 Many believe they used 'cold' burning and protected productive areas of
rainforest fruit.
Now bushfire control people do try to burn the bush in winter to reduce the
fire hazard. 
ma

On 10/11/2007, David Yarrow <dyarrow at nycap.rr.com> wrote:

dry wood versus green & wet.  burning trees and brush in a drought will
yield more ash.  a rainforest of lush green growth will burn lower and
slower and yield more charcoal.  also depends on speed of the fire's
movement.

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Michael Bailes <mailto:michaelangelica at gmail.com>  

To: David <mailto:dyarrow at nycap.rr.com>  Yarrow 

Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 2:26 AM

Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] wildfire 

 

Unfortuntely David Wildfires mainly makes more ash than charcoal.
Certainly that has been the recent Australian experience.
MA




-- 
Michael the Archangel

"You can fix all the world's problems in a garden. . . . 
Most people don't know that"
FROM
http://www.blog.thesietch.org/wp-content/permaculture.swf 
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