Bush Fires

[Jay-qu]

Victoria burns. That is, my home state of Australia, has had almost 200,000ha of land burnt to a crisp over the past week due to raging bush fires.

 

I awoke yesterday and could smell smoke, everywhere i went during the day was blanketed in a thick cover of smoke. As you can see with this NASA image of victoria

 

I was going to post them in the thread but they would blow the size of the page out to much, the pics are best left big, so I just attached them ( I think they got resized )

 

The first is a normal shot from google, the second was taken yestday - the red spots are where fires are currently burning.

[Drip Curl Magic]

hmmm, how often do massive bush fires like this occur down there?

[HydrogenBond]

There should be a law against brush and forest fires due to the high volume of CO2 and particulates that are generated. Why doesn't the EPA step in and give the woods a hefty fine, since they are contributing so much to global warming.

 

When I saw the title, "Bush Fires", what came to mind were fires, i.e., figuratively speaking, that were started by President Bush. I had a comedy moment but decided against sharing it.

[Racoon]

There should be a law against brush and forest fires due to the high volume of CO2 and particulates that are generated. Why doesn't the EPA step in and give the woods a hefty fine, since they are contributing so much to global warming.

 

.

 

Sometimes those fires start by accident or by arson HydrogenBond.

 

Should the EPA be responsible for those fires? I don't think Jay-q said whether the fires were intentional and controlled, or naturally occurred and they're out of control. Only that brush fires are raging.

 

We get lots of huge wildfires here on the West Coast.

 

[InfiniteNow]

EPA is a US agency, Rac. Perhaps you meant the Aussie version, NSW. However, they likely have their own scope and guidelines seperate from EPA...

 

 

Such fires are almost always the result of lightening strikes (so perhaps the ionosphere should be fined, HB ), and there are several factors to be considered in terms of their intensity and frequency:

 

• temperature
  
• precipitation
  
• wind conditions
  
• plant biomass
  
• plant spatial distribution
  
• natural or manmade spaces known as firebreaks (like a river or paved multi-lane road)

 

Right now, Victoria is enduring it's worst drought in recorded history, and that is another thing that any environmental or nature agency can do nothing about...

[Taildragerdriver]

I have been a wildland fire fighter since 1958 to a greater and lesser degree. My current job is involved with fire and fuels computer modeling. I am very involved in work in fire in the US and to some degree world wide.

 

Wildland fire is a very complex issue. The first thing about the fire issue in the US at least is that the problems are as much political as scientific. I suspect there is at least an element of this in Australia.

 

Since the 1970s in the US we have had the Environmental Movement which has gained political power and espoused the idea of letting nature take its course. ie. natural is better then human manged. This has made it much more difficult to do the things on wildlands to limit the impacts of fires. So like anything there are the good and bad results from the Environmental Movement.

 

I will put a few concepts here and see where the thread goes.

 

I recently read a very interesting book "1491-New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" by Charles C. Mann. This book covers a lot of ground but one of the main ideas is that when Columbus came to the "New World" he brought sickness like smallpox that may have killed up 95% of the people here. So what Europeans saw when they explored looked to them like natural unmanaged wildlands. In fact the lands they saw had been under management for 2000 years or more. In other words Native Americans (Indians) had figured out long ago living in Natural conditions in fire adapted ecosystems is not very nice.

 

Now we are learning that again throughout the world and especially in the western US.

 

If we want to change that fire situation our only option is to get back into managing our forests and rangelands. We also need to learn from the reasons the Environmental Movement got started and not make those kinds of mistakes again.

 

Good discussion

 

Thanks

 

Taildragerdriver

[Zythryn]

Welcome aboard Taildragerdriver!

 

Part of the issue, from what I have read, is that we didn't really go to a fully natural response. While we limited logging and other manmade incursions into woodlands, we also stopped the smaller natural fires. This led to no natural controls on the amount of undergrowth.

 

I don't think it is possible for mankind to not have an effect on the forests, even if he/she never steps foot in the forest. So some level of management seems to be advisable, if not downright required.

 

I would love to hear more from your experience.

[Taildragerdriver]

Zythryn:

 

I think you understand the issue pretty well. The proverb you have attached is a good point to start from.

 

In fact our current management of public lands is kind of like the U.S. Military policy. Its kind of like we tell other countries " You can kill, steel and treat you neighbors however you want (Darfor sp?) unless it affects the US economy if it dose we will fight" (Iraq) We now manage our public lands with the same policy.

 

So our policy is "Nature (fire) do what you want (let burn) unless it affects us (burns our developments) we will fight" Not a very enlightened way to think and in fact it doesn't work much better with nature than it does with other countries.

 

So we can choose to manage but it doesn't have to look like it did in the 1960s when the Environmental Movement came into existence. What people may want is management that produces forests and rangelands that look more like they did when Europeans took over from the Native Americans. That could make a lot of sense but them we need to let scientists manage our wildlands not politics. Let politics set the goals and let the scientist do what they need to to achieve that goal.

 

Unfortunately a lot of restrictive laws would need to be changed to allow that to happen. So what I work on most days of my life is to build the science that allows us to better demonstrate what vegetation we now have on the landscape and how it will burn. We also use models to show how it will be in 40 years if we continue on this track which unfortunately is worse than it is now.

 

The great thing is that we can prove that are some real exciting alternatives to what we are doing now that could be great for the environment and reduce fire intensity as well.

 

Maybe in the next few years we can start to change our ways a bit. In fact I am beginning to see it to a small degree.

 

Thanks

 

Taildragerdriver

[Cedars]

A few links that might be helpful

 

Annual Rainfall in Victoria

Bureau of Meteorology - Average rainfall annual and monthly

 

In case above link doesnt work:

Average Annual Rainfall High-Res Australian & State Maps

 

Land Use Satellite (image click will open a bigger pic)

 

Satellite Image of Victoria

 

Vegetation information on regional VRO websites offer greater information

Vegetation

 

Theres quite a variation in precipitation in Victoria in normal circumstances. The only prescribed burning I am familiar with is in the pine barrons of western wisconsin. They try to burn areas under management every 5-8 years to maintain what they believe is the natural cycle for that area. Having almost 20 years of informal visits to this region, all around generally I think they are on the right course. But thats not to say a fire starting in that area couldnt explode into home loss regardless of any previous burnings held in that region.

[Jay-qu]

Thank god we had a cool change come in today and the temp has dropped around 20 degrees, that should help out with snuffing out those fires!

 

As to the cause of them, I am not sure how they started, but EPA (yes we have EPA) had nothing to do with it.

[Taildragerdriver]

Cedars:

 

Your information makes some good points. You note the natural variation across the world in wildlands that have large fires. The management needed on each of these has to be locally tailored.

 

I some cases prescribed burning is a vary valuable tool in fact it is used a lot all over the US and World Wide. But in many cases prescribed burning is not feasible and treatments including timber harvest are required to reduce the fuel loads and create fuel discontinuity so if a wild fire starts it is easier to contain and is of acceptable intensity. This is where the current situation creates an untenable longterm condition for the future if we can't remove commercial size trees we can't reduce the stocking enough to reach desired conditions. This is the the problem the current laws in the US create and will need to be changed if we want to improve conditions in the future.

 

Also we can't afford to put the large amounts of smoke into the air every year so we need alternatives to burning.

 

Some new ideas for biomass use are also needed for bush type landscapes such as described in the first post and your sites. Lots of work to do and all the methods need to be available.

 

Taildragerdriver

[Michaelangelica]

Thanks for the pics from Victoria. My computer seizes up when I run Google Earth so they were appreciated.

I have a friend in Beechworth who says she can barely breathe with the smoke.

 

The Victorian fires were started by lightening strikes. The pyromaniacs don't get going until the school holidays (in two weeks time)

 

I heard yesterday that the fires may be linking up to an area of 600,000sq Hectares

 

Some say that pollution helps cool the planet. So could bush fires be helpful?

Fires also produce some little charcoal which can sequester CO2 for thousands of years.

Australian soils are deficient in phosphorous which the ash provides

 

The Australian bush has been burnt by Australian Aborigines for 60,000 years. Many native plants cannot propagate without fire.

 

Where Aboriginals have been given back control of their land such as around Ayes Rock they conduct regular controlled burns. They see grassland that has not been burnt as "neglected" and "unkempt" just as we would see an un-mown lawn. They protect rain forest areas containing native fruit trees by burning fire breaks around them.

The fires encourage new growth which provides food for kangaroos (and therefore dinner).

Coastal walking tracks also used to be kept clear by burning.

Cook in 1776 remarked on the fires he saw up the East coast of Australia.

 

Fire Authorities in Australia do do "control burns" in Winter; but conditions are rarely right and safe enough for this to be done on a large scale.

 

Areas that have not been burnt for along time (3+ years) often have cataclysmic fires that kill many animals and destroy native plant seeds with intense heat

 

PS

Aboriginals had one other interesting use for fire. They would often "hollow out" gum trees with fire providing nests for native animals- possums etc. They would then come back, some time later, and trap and eat them. These 'slow burns' do produce a lot of charcoal (see terra preta thread).

 

PSS acording to Stephen Joseph who spent some time in NT with aboriginies, they start "cold fires" on days that are still and cool and the fire burns slowly and probably produce more charcoal to nourish the soil. A 'hot' fire on a windy,dry day produces a lot of ash which is blown away.

[Jay-qu]

Cool info, thanks

 

I know they are an essential part of nature and stopping them completely is not only impossible but unnessisary BUT its just terrible when whole towns must be evacuated and peoples houses get razed to the ground!

[Taildragerdriver]

Jay-qu

 

This is great Michaelangelica has an understanding of how fire can be both good and bad. It like all things in nature almost all natural processes produce desirable and undesirable outputs, at least as far as humans are concerned.

 

So the discussion around Terra Preta offers some great opportunities to utilize biomass around human habitation to create better more productive farm soils and reduce the fuels in areas we don't want to burn.

 

So we have an opportunity today to learn from aboriginal peoples on the role of fire and wildland fuels to see how we can produce a world which has a healthy natural environment but gives modern human populations firesafe zones to live in.

 

These are new concepts that are still being developed but these ideas could produce reduced dependence on oil for fertilizers on farms and spur production of biofuels from farm product the opportunities substantial.

 

How this concept is moved forward is still difficult but possabilites exist.

 

Thanks

 

Taildragerdriver

[Michaelangelica]

BUT its just terrible when whole towns must be evacuated and peoples houses get razed to the ground!

Busfires are VERY SCARY.Even from adistance.

To loose you life, colleceted in a house over decades, would be devastating

[Cedars]

Cedars:

 

Your information makes some good points. You note the natural variation across the world in wildlands that have large fires. The management needed on each of these has to be locally tailored.

 

I some cases prescribed burning is a vary valuable tool in fact it is used a lot all over the US and World Wide. But in many cases prescribed burning is not feasible and treatments including timber harvest are required to reduce the fuel loads and create fuel discontinuity so if a wild fire starts it is easier to contain and is of acceptable intensity. This is where the current situation creates an untenable longterm condition for the future if we can't remove commercial size trees we can't reduce the stocking enough to reach desired conditions. This is the the problem the current laws in the US create and will need to be changed if we want to improve conditions in the future.

 

Also we can't afford to put the large amounts of smoke into the air every year so we need alternatives to burning.

 

Some new ideas for biomass use are also needed for bush type landscapes such as described in the first post and your sites. Lots of work to do and all the methods need to be available.

 

Taildragerdriver

 

Agreed on the locally tailored approach to wildfires.

 

 

What laws/current procedures are being suggested for change and why? I am curious to see if I agree with them. Having traveled a few logging roads in N. Minn and W. Wisconsin, (and other western states to a lesser degree) I have both appreciated the access (allowed me my first moose sighting) and been dismayed at the loss of everything taller than my knee for what seemed miles and miles.

[Cedars]

A few more maps for reference.

 

Fire area map with roads, town names and some topography:

Map of Australia

 

Topo map of Australia:

Digital Elevation Model of Australia (2001, Geoscience Australia)

 

 

Links to more maps (the geology map is pretty detailed):

 

Geoscience Australia: Maps of Australia