I've been reading excerpts from a book titled Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares, by Nancy Langston
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/522 ... Nightmares
This may or may not be thread drift, but since much of western Oregon is living in a forest nightmare, I thought it might be of interest.
She writes about the complexity of wildfire's effect on the Blue Mountain forests in such a way that one can get a sense that this is an almost
unmanageably complex, inter-related system. As in, to some degree, we're not going to be able to predict and manage the forests in terms of fuel load, preferred species of trees and other plants, and wildfire. There are almost too many variables to control in making a management plan.
For example, if there are regular light fires (not the truly devastating fires), there is more sunlight hitting the forest floor, and plant roots dig deeper in the soil, because the forest floor is warmer and dryer. If fire is suppressed for a period of time, litter on the forest floor builds up, which cools the soil and allows it to retain moisture. Given that new source of easy water, the plants grow more roots closer to the surface. Then, when a fire eventually does come, even a light fire, their roots are damaged by the fire. She explains that big old ponderosas can die in this circumstance, even though those trees are
supposed to be quite fire resistant.
In another example, the Douglas Firs in the western Cascades behaved very differently from those in the Blues- they're a different subspecies, and while the coastal trees benefited from fire because it helped their seeds germinate and it cleared out densely shading coastal tree competitors, the inland trees' seeds didn't need the fire-cleared soil and had no trouble growing up in the partial shade of spaced out ponderosa trees. So when it came to managing the Blues, many wrong assumptions held about the very species in question.
Also, though it has become common place to talk about the "natural" nature of fire in the Northwest, she points out that the fire regime witnessed by early European colonizers was a product of First Peoples' long and active tradition of setting fires to clear land and improve hunting and gathering conditions. Lots of those fires were light and contained, but sometimes those fires got completely out of control and destroyed large areas of forest.
Finally, she points out that the amazing forests Europeans witnessed (parklike stands of huge ponderosa in particular) only grew in the last several thousand years. In evolutionary terms, these forest were brand new, and the plants there had not co-evolved. Because western science first observed these forests in what was possibly a transitional moment, trying to revert back to some historical example might not even be a sensible goal.
Given the complexity of the fire ecology, it's no wonder the Forest Service (which actually did a lot of serious, well-intentioned research on the subject) just decided not to allow fires at all.
Which unfortunately leaves us here. Whether or not fire is good for the USDA's management goals for that forest, or "good" for the forests ecologically, where we are now is that there are a lot of dense forests out there with lots of fuel, in an age of warmer average temperatures. The forests are beautiful and dangerous.