[Terrapreta] wildfire

[lou gold]

i was actually speaking of ancient forests david. large landscape
catastrophic fire has become much more prevalent due to woody debris on the
ground and more ladder fuels that carry fire into the crowns. i know of what
i speak as i personally experienced two of the largest fires.

you are absolutely correct concerning broad scale clearcutting. i would add
that small scale clearcuts and even selective logging have also created a
fire prone fragmentation. the young forests (plantations) returning after
clearcutting and now also following catastrophic fire (dense early natural
succession) are truly explosive tinderboxes that throw the fire upward into
the crowns of nearby ancient forests.



On Nov 10, 2007 9:32 PM, David Yarrow <dyarrow at nycap.rr.com> wrote:

>  indigenous people never clearcut entire mountainsides.
>
> the whites first act to destroy the land balance was to cut down all the
> ancient forests. what grew back was no forest, but a tortured tangle of
> fast-growing, ground hugging species.
>
> a forest is much more than trees, and removing trees ruins the soil and
> habitat for all else.  even if the trees grow back in another 200+ years,
> the deeper diversity and complexity of the entire living forest as a
> community will need at least as long beyond to reassert its implicit order
> and balance.
>
> current so-called "forests" with their thick undergrowth are early stages
> of regeneration and succession after the chaos of clearcut logging.  they
> are choking with the dead debris of shrubs and trees of the early stages of
> succession and regeneration.
>
> big old trees will normally survive a cool ground fire of wet, green
> growth.  a high temperature crown fire fed by dense dry debris at ground
> level kills everything except the hardest seeds.
>
> David Yarrow
> "If yer not forest, yer against us."
> Turtle EyeLand Sanctuary
> 44 Gilligan Road, East Greenbush, NY 12061
> dyarrow at nycap.rr.com
> www.championtrees.org
> www.OnondagaLakePeaceFestival.org
> www.citizenre.com/dyarrow/
> www.farmandfood.org
> www.SeaAgri.com
>
> "Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times,
> if one only remembers to turn on the light."
> -Albus Dumbledore
>
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-- 
http://lougold.blogspot.com/
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