FReepmail me to be added or removed to the ECO-PING list!
Posted on 10/07/2005 8:39:10 AM PDT by george76
The opposing hillside was a stark scene of skeletal trees creating a jagged horizon reaching for a backdrop of cloudy sky. Up close, you could see the charred bark peeling away from the petrified tree trunk.
The ghost forest, a product of the 2002 Big Fish Valley and Lost Lake fires in the Flat Tops Wilderness in Garfield and Rio Blanco counties, may foreshadow the future of the Vail Valley.
After suffering a beetle infestation in the 1940s and 1950s, similar to the infestation attacking our valley now, wind swept through the wilderness downing trees.
...lightning struck twice July 17 and 18, 2002. Two months later, 23,040 acres of forest were charred.
As the fire escalated, firefighters worked to protect buildings, but eight burned. Ironically, some buildings that hadn’t been protected survived unharmed because people had cleared the land surrounding the structure of trees and other fuel for the fire.
“The bottom line is that people need to take the initiative to clear around their homes,”
Burnt toothpicks
In the Vail Valley, the primary concern right now is the eyesore of the dead red trees. Tom Talbot, Vail’s fire technician and wildland coordinator, had mused about who would vacation in the valley if there were only burnt toothpicks to gaze on.
One of the biggest challenges the forest service now faces is reestablishing a trail system, Cox said. The fire cooked the soils leaving crumbling ash. The ash is unstable and has washed away in some areas, smudging out existing trails.
(Excerpt) Read more at vaildaily.com ...
FReepmail me to be added or removed to the ECO-PING list!
I was there for a convention earlier this year. That beetle is a serious problem. Not noticeable until someone points it out, then you realize that 1 in 10 trees is affected. That valley could go up like a box of matches.
Hitting the reset button on an ecosystem isn't a bad thing in my mind. We need to let nature carry out its cycles and not aim for static ecosystems.
You could tarp a pine with clear plastic leaving about one inch of air space at the bottom early in the morning on a hot, sunny day and in the evening light the fumes by sticking a fireplace match inside.
If this was 1910, I would agree with you, but it is 2005. Allowing forests to burn like this after interrupting the historic fire cycle for the past 95 years is irresponsible.
The fire cooked the soils leaving crumbling ash. The ash is unstable and has washed away in some areas,...
Given the unatural fuel build-up, nature is not "taking it's course". This arguement is a cop out, designed to provide cover for federal mismangement of the national forests.
Well the truth is there is no such thing as a true historic fire cycle. Fires happened at random and varying degrees of intensity (including catastrophic fires). I'm not by any means saying hitting the reset button is the most desirable outcome, but it's not as bad as most make it out to be (ignoring the economic impact). If maintaining diversity is a goal, having communities at different stages of succession can only promote it.
Given the unnatural fuel build-up, nature is not "taking it's course". This arguement is a cop out, designed to provide cover for federal mismangement of the national forests
So your trying to tell me fuel didn't build up like this 200 years ago? Of course it did. Was fuel build up as widespread as it is today? Probably not. So your really just talking about varying percentages across a forest gradient. So if everything is over-forested and loaded with fuel, whats wrong with some being wiped out by fire and letting secondary succession take place.
I concur with your reply and I REALLY like your tagline!!!
GF: What you say has elements of truth. The problem I have is in taking relatively rare events in the past and using that to justify current (bad) decision making. In addition, some of your assertions run contrary to what I studied in college, such as:
Well the truth is there is no such thing as a true historic fire cycle.
So the studies of Steven Arno, George Gruell, M. Dodge, B.M. Kilgore, J.R. Parmeter, H. Weaver, C.D. Leaphart and others that date back over fifty years are now irrelavent? If I quoted all of these studies, would you even read them? I detect a subtle bias in what you are telling me - in which it is O.K. to just let nature take its course - despite the fact that this is a man-made problem...this is a cop-out and is disengenious
Those pics remind me of what it looks like in the Mason Gulch now.
Yes there is. Indigenous peoples burned the forest on a regular basis. In the late 1900s there were 20 trees/acre in the Sierra Nevada mountains. There are now 300/acre. That is not natural. Our forests evolved with management and they need to be returned to that.
Not to mention Finney or Bonnicksen.
I didn't think you would let this one go. That a government herpetologist feels the need to instruct a forester on fire ecology is really telling. I've been around on this one with GF before, and his spin on his own words demonstrated his urgent need to fall in line with the Wilderness Society prescription, an infatuation with a cheap "solution." It may be one thing to blow out a stand of white fir with a catastrophic event, but applying that method to most ponderosa pine forests (for example) while in their current condition would be enormously destructive, particularly where weeds abound.
Nature doesn't come with a reset button.
NO it didn't. See my other post.
For a period of time perhaps. Forever? Most likely not.
Yup, just take a match to it. That'll fix things.
Those are the ones. Shows the difference between land that is managed and land that is left alone.
I've have photos of areas in the northern Sierra in the late 1800 to early 1900's that show ridge upon ridge of NO trees. The environmentalists will swear that there are old growth forests growing on these same ridges today.
Most then were logged for the Gold Rush and later city building.
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