At least once a day I look at the InciWeb site to see the latest information on wildfires burning across the nation, mostly in the west. Every year the fire situation only gets worse and I amazed some of these areas still have anything left to burn. Most of the Mendocino National Forest in northern California burned up last year. This year much of the Plumas, Lassen and Eldorado National Forests in California won't have much remaining green forests. Even the Umpqua National Forest close to home is losing much of it forests to fires over the last five years.
The primary cause to these increasing fires is the changing climate with longer and warmer summers, years of drought, over a hundred years of fire suppression letting forest fuels buildup and a decreasing number of initial attack fire crews stationed in the forests during the summer months. My first summer job with the Forest Service in the summer of 1969 was on the Big Valley District of the Modoc National Forest in northern California. There were six guard stations scattered over the district where seasonal fire crews were stationed for initial attack on fires, mostly caused by lightning. Now a days there are very few of these guard stations and on many Forests there are none. Even the logging crews working on the National Forest timber sales were required to respond to fires within 25 miles of their sale area. Now there are very few logging operations on National Forests. Once a fire is allowed to take off it soon forms its own weather pattern and depending on the forest fuels and terrain it can become a monsters in a matter of hours. In my opinion there is a need for more controlled burning, more thinning of forests, and more people working in the forests during the summer months.
I've also been regularly viewing the InciWeb and Douglas County's interactive GIS mapping of the wildfires. I agree with you about forest management. The bottomline for me is that human manipulation of the environment should be based on and mimic nature that has had eons to adapt and keep the Earth functioning. Scientific truths are explanations and theories that correctly predict new results, observations or experiments. They bring us closer to a true understanding of nature and the rules by which it operates.
ReplyDeleteWhile scientific laws or facts aren't considered absolute truths, I know what's scientifically valid. Validity is when concepts, conclusions or measurements are well-founded and correspond accurately to the real world.
Since the beginning of time, politicians, policymakers and other scientists have tried to manipulate validity to their own advantage. For example, it wasn't so long ago that we "cleaned" streams ... now we're returning coarse woody debris to them in efforts to restore them and fish habitat. Last night I again watched the PBS "American Experience" show about the 3-million acre mega-burn of 1910 in the Bitteroot Mountains. IMHO, forest management policies should be subjected to close and regular scrutiny by a very high level of visionary scientists and policy-makers who can effect change for the better. Unfortunately, politics, greed and just plain ignorance often limit the best laid plans and courses of action.
InciWeb is a great tool. Even Minnesota is burning. They closed the Boundry Waters Canoe Area for the first time in 40 years. The largest fire up there is the Greenwood fire at 19,000 acres.
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