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1. GeniusMusing (geniusmusing@nu.federati.net)'s status on Monday, 14-Sep-2020 23:06:35 EDT GeniusMusing
   Interesting reading.
   
   What turned California forests into a tinderbox Fire suppression, paradoxically Valerie Trouet | Opinion | The Guardian
   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox
   
   >Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.
   >
   >Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.
   >...
   1. lnxw48a1 (lnxw48a1@nu.federati.net)'s status on Monday, 14-Sep-2020 23:14:09 EDT lnxw48a1

      in reply to
      I have a dim memory of a forestry management intentional burn that escaped to become a destructive fire. It could have been the turning point in the way forests are managed in #CA.
      1. GeniusMusing (geniusmusing@nu.federati.net)'s status on Monday, 14-Sep-2020 23:36:25 EDT GeniusMusing

         in reply to
         @lnxw48a1 Back in Illinois, they regularly burn the forest preserves in a controlled way for as long as I can remember. Not all the preserves are forests, some are just fields and those are burned as well, usually in the fall and it may be a few years before they are burned again.
   2. mangeurdenuage (mangeurdenuage@loadaverage.org)'s status on Tuesday, 15-Sep-2020 00:00:31 EDT mangeurdenuage

      in reply to
      Was there a forest before the settles came in california ?
      Or are forest only burning since settlers are in california ?
      The problem of groudfires is that they are damaging to the micro biology that establishes itself.
      As for how to avoid such fires ? idk. Dryness is a problem an can be more or less solved by maintaining a few inches of mulch, but human stupidity starting fires and not maintaining infrastructures like power lines are also one.