Could changing the flora reduce West coast fire risks?

In Northern California, the redwood trees need annual fires before they can propagate. Also they grow in symbiosis with 'Creosote bush' which is a dense bush up to 8 foot tall that drips flammable oil from its leaves.

 

You are referring to "succulents", I believe. I see a lot of them growing along roadsides in San Diego, but I'm not sure whether the highways departments do anything to maintain them. If not, it does seem like a reasonable solution for a .5 to .75 km fire-resistant perimeter, as you propose.

 

I think this would mean wholesale destruction of native flora (and therefore fauna too), especially considering that human housing is not confined to compact cities and towns, but is effectively distributed over most of the non-government-owned, non-agricultural lands. Not only would this be a massive environmental change and disruption with yet-unknown unintended consequences, there would be a lot of homeowner resistance from folks who want their homes in their current settings.

The primary Washington, Oregon, and Northern California fires are not in deserts, but in very highly different environments than what you saw in SoCal. And representing much of the nation's future supply of lumber.

Building standards do need upgrades, starting with abolishing wood shake roofing in fire zones. Screw the HOAs that require it.

 

Well, the cultivated are would require a lot of work to keep the natives from reclaiming it, or the introduced species will invade the native areas.

 

Much less disruptive would be to ban residences in Chaparral, as Manzanita can't reproduce without the seeds being exposed to fire.

Chaparral - Wikipedia
Arctostaphylos - Wikipedia

It is not inappropriate vegetation, it is inappropriate land use.

This is like blaming the weather for folks losing their homes to hurricanes. They should not have built homes there.

 

Yes, markedly different climate in northern CA and our neighbors further north.

The humans alone are responsible for getting their own houses in order. Literally among these things are building codes - buildings need to accommodate the current and future climate. Roofs should have concrete, tile, slate or similar material; walls should be made of stucco or concrete with insulation to withstand at least an hour of fire, no unprotected air infiltration pathways for embers, etc. The humans should also not be permitted to build or rebuild on the highest risk areas.

And let's not forget the taking anthropogenic climate change seriously part, better forest management, etc.

The native forests get to stay.

 

Forest management by humans is a large topic. Within it, very important is ~110 years of fire suppression in western US forests. Climate change may not yet have surpassed that; signal to noise ratio is still low.

AFAIK there is no wood-possible land on this planet where one cannot find charcoal in soil, if one looks. They all burn, it is only a matter of how many zeros come after years in 'fire return time'. Suppression makes it shorter, as one would not wish.

Human (building) encroachment on wood-possible land cannot be stopped*. Boxes built could be made much less flammable, but with more cost up front. I would not at all support an idea that local herbiciding is a fix.

Topography is a factor well understood by the 'pyro' community. Fires run uphill unless fuel is absent there. Forest users miss this entirely (I'd claim).

@fuzzy1 #4 raised a very important related idea - that forests 'exist for' marketable wood production. One may say so, but it excludes human occupancy of forests, and (more importantly) everything else that forests do. Nobody has a handle on that. Certainly not in context of future woo-woo climate excursions.

*By means known to me

 

Yup!!

But what puzzles me is how the forests managed to survive for all those countless centuries until we came along to save them. Perhaps we should meddle less and marvel more. Building a flammable house in the middle of a forest is about as smart as building a house in New Orleans. Might as well stand on a flagpole on top of a mountain in a thunderstorm.

 

^ That.
This is probably more of a fauna problem.

California claims something like 12 percent of the US population and they're somewhat unevenly distributed.


I remember when I lived in South Carolina in the 80's, everybody took it for granted that it was their birthright to live in a wood frame, single family detached dwelling close enough to the beach to hear the surf, whereas other eastern seaboard towns and cities usually featured high-rise condos with 'rinse-out' parking on the first floor or two.

More people moved in....
More houses got built
Then...."forced urban renewal" occurred in the form of storms like Hugo.
The same process has more or less transformed bustling little beach cities like Pensacola.....Gulf Shores, etc.
Usually?
INSURANCE companies fix these sorts of things.

Fun Fact:
The Japanese fire balloons (Fu-Go) was the first ever weapon system possessing intercontinental range and was more or less intended to start large wild fires (they called them forest fires back then) on the left coast, because in 1944 fires were a 'thing' and everybody considered timber to be a strategic resource.
Fu-Go balloon bomb - Wikipedia

Even more Fun Facty...
They were NOT the first such attack!
Lookout Air Raids - Wikipedia

Something seemingly even more fantastic than over-educated rich white kids fire-bombing Oregon forests would have to be a Japanese aviator launched from the largest submarine in the world (at the time) unsuccessfully fire-bombing the woods of south-central Oregon.
The mission was 'successful' because the bomb went off and the pilot made it back to the boat.
The mission was unsuccessful because (shockingly) the woods were freshly rain-soaked and the fire didn't take off......



What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.

 

But it is pretty simple, really.
Trees that die and lay on the ground for a couple of years are then prone to EXPLODE.

It has got to be true. I heard it directly from the mouth of the One Who Knows it All.

 

Fluid mosaic steady state Conservation Techniques & Approaches / Shifting Mosaic Steady-State

Fires weren't big enough to destroy the entire forest. Areas that did get burned would go through a habitat succession. Something like; grassland, brush, secondary forest, and finally the original primary forest. With all the fuel being consumed, and perhaps the vegetation of the intermediary habitats being less prone to burning, the already burned areas were less likely to burn again until the habitat had fully returned to that primary forest. So old growth forests contained patches of burned areas, patches of disturbed areas that were "healing", and the end population of plants for that forest. New fires and other disturbances cause this patchwork to shift over time.

Isn't most of the Pacific Northwest rain forest?

 

18 months, specifically, is the point they spontaneously combust or detonate. At least on the piece of videotape I saw.

But like fish stories, the numbers change -- usually 'improve' -- each time the story gets re-told.

 

For one thing, ignition events were much less frequent. Ignitions still happened, but that degree was worked into the life cycles.

Also, saws, plows, and bulldozers had not yet been invented, so the forests didn't need to adapt to or evolve defenses against them.

Does that mean removing humans from the forest?

Of course, we should note that numerous of the wildfires are not in what is commonly thought of as "forest". Various other varieties of environments are also getting burned.

 

It simply means that if a human starts a fire, put it out. If lightning starts it, let it burn. Lots of those trees need the heat of a fire to open the pine cones for reseeding. If you let the fuel build up by putting out naturally occurring fires, you don't get the reseeding because you put it out when it could have been a beneficial fire and wound up turning it into one so hot later on that it kills everything. Now, the problem has become that we've let so much fuel accumulate that almost any fire will be too hot for the trees and their seeds to survive and we're caught in a vicious cycle. Essentially, we've screwed up a really good system because we thought were so smart. People do that all the time with cars and computers. Heck! I've done it myself.

Just the careless ones and especially the arsonists. Humans lived and hunted in those forests for millennia and the forests did fine.