Edit: My original question was more in mind with does this have same effect as controlled burning / prescribed burning. Thank you all for replies :)
So, given the same weather conditions, you should expect more fires next year.
It's amazing how fires can differ. Many "good" fires just essentially smolder for months, growing very slowly until the autumn precip douses them. The FS just lets them burn if they don't threaten any structures. I've even hiked directly over smoldering ground before, with no danger.
A douglasfir forest that burns is going to behave much differently than a late-successional hemlock one.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1561583588/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
Douglas-fir trees have very thick, insulative bark that prevents the live tissue from dying as readily when there's fire. Sequoia trees have cones that are glued shut by resins that only melt after a hot-enough fire, so they can then land and germinate in burnt-over ground.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_wildfires#List...
Using that, it should be possible to identify what percentage of fires were in fact started by humans who were never identified (due to there being no lightning bolt within a few hours of the fire starting)
Unless there were a committed group of arsonists that wanted to use the lightning storm as a cover and worked to set fires on the same day that has a similar signature to lightning.
I find the fact that people should be outraged over this incident ancillary. Hopefully these people owe tens of millions in restitution, as often seems to be the case. But, if the fire had started because of escaped monkeys starting fires, I think it would be equally as reported on because of the novelty, but sans outrage.
The “it’s reported on because it outrages/divides people” speculation is just lazy.
There’s definitely some portion of the US land mass that’s covered in either dry brush, dry underbrush, or dry grass. But that portion is pretty small, I would think. It could actually be that a fairly large portion of “potentially burnable” land-area catches fire each year. (That doesn’t imply anything about there being any less of it for next year, though; it recovers!)
a bad wildfire year is ~10 million acres or ~0.5% (https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf). It seems conceivable that we surpass that significantly this year.
https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-...
The region in question is one of the largest temperate rainforests in the world.
Now do take care going into how history [1] plays into the numbers as shown on Cato's page because the larger numbers in the 30s and 40s were over disagreements in proscribed burns. Yet the years before that pissing match weren't exactly fun.
[0]https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_totalFires.html
It also depends on the fuel source. Grasses and certain vegetation can build up fuel loads in a year or two. Trees are obviously slower.
The fires really didn't burn much total land though, so it's very likely we can see big fires next year. We regularly get fires all over the west, this is just a bad year.
Feedback loop thinking helps. This is a situation that creates conditions for more forest fires.
Linear thinking, as an example, would be something like world heats up -> forest is on fire -> post-forest-fire world. Instead we are living in a world where every factor influences every other.
As the decades roll on I imagine that as things get hotter and dryer one shouldn't bet on anything.
This article notes:
- In 2019, $160M was spent putting out wildfires in CA, but the economic damage was $80B
- 3M acres have burned in CA this year
- In order to manage wildfires appropriately in CA, 20M acres would need to be addressed (thinning or burning) every year.
- There are 48M acres of mountains, brush, and grassland in CA
Here's the Cal Fire map for California: https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/
These fires are certainly large, but there's plenty more that can burn.
It really depends on observations that you could get once we are in after spring 2021. Like how much of the fire spreads and if there is a drought next year.
Weather occurs in cycles but with climate change we may have a new type of cycle which makes it really hard to understand or even model in general.
What CA needs to proper forest management, which means different things to different parts of the state. Often parts of that mean regular prescribed burns (which courts have historically stopped - lesson learned: shoot smokey the bear...)