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Comment by zitterbewegung | Hacker News Reader

TLDR: Insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

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.

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True, but OTOH CA will likely start to change it's forestry management practices as a result of this. The distribution of surface fuel is a joint effect of drought and policy/management.

Why do you say likely? I would have said that after the Camp Fire and I would have been wrong.

The less forest that there is left after the fire, the easier it is to clear the rest and replant with tree species that are better at holding onto water in drought conditions, and/or species that are hardier in the face of heat exposure.

The native trees in CA are types that need forest fires for the next generation of seeds to grow. Obviously there are many different trees with different ways to breeding, but we would lose biodiversity if CA followed your plan.

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...)

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