You wrote “After over 200 years of abuse, our native seed bank, for the most part, was nearly dead.”
From what I’ve read, weren’t most of California’s native plants perennials, not annuals? Aren’t most (all?) of the annual grassy weeds non-native invaders?
During the LA fires, I read that the perennials stayed moist and fire resistant throughout the entire year make such raging wildfires much less likely. The invasion of annual grasses is what made the huge conflagrations possible.
Of course, the oily chaparral still burned, but, without the annual grasses, the fires were probably smaller.
Counted by species perhaps, but not by counts of individuals. BTW, I'd be dubious about what is in print.
Aren’t most (all?) of the annual grassy weeds non-native invaders? Absolutely, most of which are from North Africa.
>i>During the LA fires, I read that the perennials stayed moist and fire resistant throughout the entire year make such raging wildfires much less likely. The invasion of annual grasses is what made the huge conflagrations possible.
Nonsense. What made the conflagrations possible was a lack of vegetation management.
The big problem remains with academic prattle is that they are still dominated by the Memoir of Francisco Palou, who had systematically redacted mentions of Indian burning (and grizzly bears) from the original diarist of the Portola Expedition, Juan Crespi. Palou's intent was clearly to attract Mexican ranchers to relocate to California del Norte. If you want the best account of that first work of real estate fraud, there is no better synthesis of first contact accounts as combined with inferences from the patterns of recovering plants than the Wildergarten site history.