Low-intensity fires reduce wildfire risk by 60% | Hacker News Reader

Low-intensity fires reduce wildfire risk by 60%

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62 pointsgeox64 comments

It's cool to do research and put some hard data and numbers behind common sense. But I feel like there's this weird phenomenon going on where people are pretending this is new information. I'm in my 40s, and I remember hearing about controlled burns when I was a little kid: I was told that we tried to stop all forest fires, but this had the unintended affect of making wildfires more common and harder to control in the end. This was at least 35 years ago, and common enough that a non-scientist (my dad) would tell it to a little kid. Lately I've been hearing it like it's some kind of new discovery.

>Lately I've been hearing it like it's some kind of new discovery.

I guess it is to some people. Every time there is a wildfire in California they want to use GW as a scapegoat. That might be part of it, but really they just don't do controlled burns; why I don't know. I think the "eureka" is for politicians to save face.

The Indians were doing controlled burns well before the Europeans landed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn

I assume that anybody who had a lot of land would figure this out pretty quickly. Certainly in the era where many generations grew up on large pieces of managed land surrounded by unmanaged wilderness (which is to say, most of history), you'd expect people to notice the difference. There's so much received wisdom about agriculture that comes down through the centuries, and this basic fact about forestry is (supposedly) a 21st century discovery?

in California, it takes 2 years+ and $15,000+ to submit a plan to change the forests on your land, including controlled burn permits.. last I knew

I think part of the reason it's not as prevalent as it once was is just because there's so much stuff out there these days that we don't want to burn. It's not as easy as it used to be.

Wildfire damage has very little to do with global warming. Spain and Greece have very similar, extremely fire-prone climates yet Greece spectacularly burns every year whilst Spain just manages its forests with regular controlled burns and artificial clearings.

Same. I've been hearing fire suppression was a mistake my entire life yet every year I see this come up in the news and especially HN as some kind of revelation.

I’m guessing it may have been common enough knowledge at some point, but it is counterintuitive if you don’t spend some time on the problem. So I guess we are seeing a new generation discover this - and posting about it.

I live in a rural area on the West slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains. There is a long history in this area of running cattle up in the high country during the Summer months. I've been told that when they were driving the cows out of the mountains in the fall, the old timers used to drag burning ropes behind their horses.

Fires are a part of nature. It's a hubris of people to think that forests are static.

Most forests need to burn periodically, if not for the trees, then for all the plants that take over until the forest reestablishes itself.

Towns and settlements need to have a solid firebreak. Then start controlled burns from the town. Done right, there should be basically zero risk.

> Fires are a part of nature. It's a hubris of people to think that forests are static.

Going off on a little bit of a philosophical tangent here, but I think a problem a lot of people have is the deeper implications of what accepting this idea might lead us to conclude about other parts of life.

If periodic death and destruction are critical part of maintaining a healthy ecosystem in forests, then it stands to reason that the same might be true for humans. What if attempts to extend our lives, keep people with debilitating illness alive, or reduce warfare and violence are ultimately analogous to controlling and stopping all fire in a forest that needs it to stay healthy and fertile. And as a result, society accumulates more and more kindling over the decades, setting the stage for a devastating wildfire at some unknown point in the future that's orders of magnitude more destructive than it needed to be.

What you're talking about is civilization, and it's great, being why we're here, living in comfort, with our belies full, having a conversation on armchair philosophy.

We're not plants dude.

That's one of my fun speculations for the drop in sperm fertility. There's less violence in the world; men spend far less of their time practicing and preparing for war. So, as well as the concomitant lack of physical exercise (which almost certainly plays a part) there is something in our biological makeup which says since there is less danger, there is less need to procreate.

There's some historical evidence to suggest that this is true for capital accumulation. Since the first agricultural settlements and civilisations, loans and debt became a feature of human life. This caused cycles of concentration of capital followed by a breaking point and revolt against creditors or some other way to redistribute (in some ancient fertile crescent civilizations, every king would wipe away all debt by decree when accessing the throne).

More recently, peaceful times have also consistently lead to very unequal growth. And it's only great crises such as world wars which ultimately resulted in social stabilization and marked improvements in the conditions of the common person.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_(biblical)

In Western forests, I don't believe it's known if they're "a part of nature". What is known is the pre-Columbian population regularly shaped forests using fire and so forests adapted over thousands of years to this, making it required now.

Fires are started regularly by lightning strikes, and would burn if not for human activity to suppress them.

False. If this would be true, then why we still have an Amazonas forest?. The empirically observed facts show that each time a lightning happens in the rainforest, its effects are short and limited. Is quickly extinguished by the humidity in soil, the rivers or by the daily five-o-clock rain.

Because not all forests are the Amazon, what about PJ forests with minimal humidity? Or the scrub oak chaparral of the California foothills?

Eucalyptus and sequoia are both fire adapted trees.

Before humans in NA it was a lot wetter (not because of humans obv). Fire wouldn't spread as much, just like it doesn't as much in the PNW.

Of course they are, lightning wasn’t a recent invention

It might be in the Bay Area and north bay. Heard thunder, but lighting was not a really a thing until 2020 from what the natives say.

Funny because it's true. Lightning is very rare in California, especially on the coasts. Chaparral is meant to burn at most every 30 years or so, more generally every 100. More often and you risk turning the biome into grassland.

Just because a plant has adapted to survive fire doesn't mean it needs fire.

This is incorrect. Many trees need fire for their seeds.

The natives are really bad for historical record as a proof of negatives.

> Most forests need to burn periodically

This is a myth. Mature forests rarely burn and mature forests (rainforest+taiga) include the majority of the current forests

We can accept it or keep doing it wrong, and craving for a miracle in the change climate problem. It will never happen if we keep burning the soil.

When forests burn too frequently what we have is the current situation with half of the megafauna extinct. Just because in the last 200 years we had some status quo does not mean that we shouldn't try to think better or that nature is not trying to return to the original state

Periodic wildfires are part of the lifecycle of many kinds of forests. Not every forest is a rainforest - most in North America are not, so they have different behaviors. Also, you are simply wrong that taiga rarely burns [0] - it burns quite often, and it is a normal part of the ecosystem. There is a whole field of study called fire ecology that investigates this.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga#Fire

Rainforest and taiga aren't the only types of forests. Sure, high humidity or low temperature will inhibit forest fires. But chaparral and other hotter dryer climates do experience regular fires absent human activity.

Megafauna extinction correlates with humans entering given regions, and occured even in places without forest fires (e.g. wooly mammoths).

This is wrong. Yes, Rainforests don't burn as often, by virtue of being extremely hard to burn. Forests in semi-desertic and temperate/dry climates naturally burn frequently.

> Forests in semi-desertic and temperate/dry climates naturally burn frequently.

Yep, and they are very important for biodiversity, but those aren't:

1) Most of the forests in the planet (If I'm not wrong, mature forests occupy more area still, 11% of the emerged areas is taiga).

2) neither mature forests (in the sense of "close to ecosystem climax"). They are either transitional (If let alone, they evolve to the next step that is a higher state of complexity) or trapped in a fire loop.

3) Fire loop that is not natural. We can't claim that something is naturally burn when in a 90% of the cases the culprit is the man.

Therefore claiming that "most of the forests need to be burnt regularly as good management practices" is not correct.

The problem with controlled burns is they don’t always stay controlled. [0] In California at least you would need to get buy-in from people living in the area to break through the gridlock. The concerns of people in say Susanville or Lake Berryessa are not unreasonable. Or you have to move people away from those locations. I have not seen a proposal that explains how to do this that is politically feasible.

[0] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-07-12/anger-bu...

.. like this ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Grande_Fire

Precisely. I was submitting from my iPad which is like typing with mittens. There are other examples. [0]

I really want this problem solved, because it's preventing us from managing forests in a way that's provably more sustainable than the current regime of putting everything out until there's a fire that destroys the entire forest ecosystem. It would be ironic if high insurance prices turned out to be the lever that restores a semblance of ecological balance. [1] Maybe there's a deal to implement sane forest management in exchange for reasonable insurance rates.

[0] https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/environment/...

[1] https://apnews.com/article/paradise-camp-fire-california-hom...

Would that be truly ironic, or logical? People make decisions on the margin, rising insurance rates seem a fairly humane way to incentivize people moving out of dry rural wooded locations.

Folks that really don’t want to move can pay the elevated public backstop options or if their house is paid off, run the risk of total loss. The longer people wait to leave the worse off they will come out because their property values will go to zero. I’d be in favor of public funding to help people relocate.

If we get through it all, recreation and tourism can bounce back with lightweight infrastructure that doesn’t need to be defended, and some better engineered permanent infrastructure.

Am I way off base?

and there is more - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calf_Canyon/Hermits_Peak_Fire

To avoid liability the USFS lets fires in the summer burn since they won't be responsible for it if it gets out of hand. Watch out for statements like "we can't find it" (said after a fire tower had sighted it directly) or "the terrain is too steep" (when retirement-age locals had walked right up to it). They'll only start fighting it if it starts to move near communities. Just a couple of years ago near me the fire they let burn suddenly blew up in a wind event and killed 5 people. Last year I nearly had the town I live near get burnt up because of the same tactic, had there been a sudden wind event (common here in Fall) I probably would have lost my house.

The state doesn't like these tactics from what I've heard, but they really dont have much say since it's Federal land.

Something else I found out by living in fire country is that the USFS will say anything to make themselves look better. I mean complete lies. They'll greatly exaggerate the number of helis working on a fire, when they're working and how many loads they'll drop. The fire containment line they just set up was actually a contentious logging job they'd been trying to get through the past year, which cut resilient old growth and was never used as a containment line. The firefighters will rob your house too and USFS will help keep it quiet.

/rant

In my limited experience dealing with the USFS on backcountry trips the org is choked with bureaucracy and completely ineffective at basic management. I remember one trip to Mt Adams where we had to register at least 3 different ways for a climb, including one that required internet access from the backcountry ranger station with virtually no connectivity. You couldn't just go up to the ranger sitting at the window doing nothing and handle the registration directly.

> had there been a sudden wind event (common here in Fall) I probably would have lost my house.

You should have. You're the reason for the problem. Stop building houses out of flammable materials in forests that need to regularly burn!

Depending on your state, there may not be many houses not vulnerable to forest fires. The 2020 fires in Oregon cery well could have burned their 2nd largest city.

Also consider that many of these forests are only here now because of modern forestry practices.

>Something else I found out by living in fire country is that the USFS will say anything to make themselves look better. I mean complete lies.

Unfortunately that seems to be the standard for government agencies in the US these days. The machine protects itself.

try the book "Scorched Worth" by Joel Engel. pointers to more documented cases welcome

Burning dried leaves used to be a tradition in my region. People would go in spring to the forest in groups and burn leaves. but got banned by our urban lawmakers, if I’m well informed

Let say it clearly, nature is not a lawn. In nature leaves don't need to be raked, this is the job of the earthworms and they bury leaves constantly. Controlled burns will kill the earthworm team and return mineral soil.

Forests just need to be granted by law a minimum amount of water to work. Second: We also need to put much more efforts to take care of the criminal activity, and third, we need to build better homes in the forests.

Related topic - there are trees like the Jack Pine that need forest fires to reproduce!

This was basic forest management dogma forty years ago. I can't vouch for longer, but I suspect so. Is the cycle now to have a bout of stupid followed by a revelatory "discovery" of the old info?

The problem with the old info is that is very romantic, but often really outdated. "Aborigins did it better", "the only possible management of forests is fire"... etc, may work in the past, but will not bring a future. We are much more people now.

Lets face it. The needs and requirements of our human project changed. To face modern problems first we need to assure to upgrade to the last version of our knowledge.

Considering that this pollutes the air we breathe and releases sequestered carbon, might I suggest interring trimmed brush deep enough to not burn but shallow enough to feed roots as it decomposes into the soil rather than air.

Obviously this entails some effort spent, but it seems correct, versus the old burning practices.

Might I suggest that at human current scale we can’t pursue the same ways as when we were few and low footprint per capita?

Seems like as long as the burned forest repopulates, it'll pull the same amount of carbon out of the air as the fire put in.

That carbon isn't really sequestered. Much of it becomes CO2 and methane as it decomposes.

I am also struggling to imagine how you would interr the mulch without damaging the forest itself. Most trees have root systems as wide as their leaf canopy- depending on the species, you'd end up killing or stressing most of the trees you dig around if you toss it deep enough to not burn during a drought.

Now, with all the dead or stressed trees, you've got another out of control wildfire waiting to happen.

Or maybe much of it became included in some form of life first

If you think that’s in any way equivalent or a functional alternative, you’ve never seen a forest a few weeks or months after it burned, or considered the various trees that require fire to propagate.

(I speak from a south-east Australian perspective where it’s really clear, but believe it largely works this way in other low-humidity forest environments too.)

"... might I suggest interring trimmed brush deep enough to not burn but shallow enough ..."

Your comment is ill-received so far in this discussion but I actually think this is a reasonable line of thought.

It is incredibly energy intensive and time-consuming to trim tens of acres of brush and then, on top of that, it is even more energy intensive to dig holes and bury it.

And so that is why your idea is typically implemented with goats.

I don't think it is nearly as effective as a wildfire but it approaches the outcome you're describing and is much, much better than nothing.

I will also point out that the carbon calculus that we are all obliged to consider is very complicated and very often produces results counter to what we thought was "the right thing to do".

Specifically: raising 200 goats, trucking them around from place to place, the human logistics (and their vehicles and food and supplies) and the cradle-to-grave carbon expenses of every piece of this activity ... it's not obvious that that is smaller than the released carbon of 10 acres of spindly brush.

> Specifically: raising 200 goats, trucking them around from place to place, the human logistics (and their vehicles and food and supplies) and the cradle-to-grave carbon expenses of every piece of this activity ... it's not obvious that that is smaller than the released carbon of 10 acres of spindly brush.

I think the advantage is that goats are easier to control than fire, especially in very dry conditions, which is why they are used in high fire risk urban areas.

>Obviously this entails some effort spent

Do you even begin to understand how big these forest areas are?

How can five generations of US Federal Forestry be held accountable for the train-wreck occurring in the Sierra and Rocky Mountains areas ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifford_Pinchot etc

Practically how can we prescribe burning? Like do we point at a forest, make a safe perimeter, pour gasoline and set it on fire?

I don't quite follow.

Where I live it is very common to do controlled burns in the spring time. The target is plains area that may include vegetation such as a forest area. You time it with the best conditions you can get:

1. Low wind day

2. Rain or humid days following burn

3. Moderate temps because it's early in the season

Then you just section off the land and work in fire teams. Typically part of the team has watchers that observe the boundaries of the burn at all times, and such boundaries are cut down and mowed/scalped to the dirt several swaths wide so that a worst-case burn could not jump it (see again, low wind)

Rake the leaves ie controlled burn. perfect example of trump saying the right thing but the media taking the words and face value and causing termnoil

Stanford agrees with Trump? Weird.

We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.

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Aww, I just spent time trying to reply in good faith :).

Your comment is great (thank you!), and a banned account can still reply. If the reply is good, users will presumably vouch for it - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cvouch

You phrased this poorly, but it's a worthwhile discussion to have.

People recall Trump as having said something about "forest management" as contributing to the California wildfires. That part is strictly true! The actual wording of his claims though, weren't for prescribed burns but rather [1]:

> "I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up."

That quote could be read in good faith to include prescribed burns, because it's not explicitly saying how to "clean" the forests. The article goes on though:

> Trump’s suggestions have prompted head-scratching from experts who say his prescriptions — more raking, less water released into the ocean for environmental purposes — suggest he does not understand the science of wildfires. Critics also point out that most of California’s wildlands are federally managed.

And re: the Paradise fires:

> Back then, he pointed to Finland, claiming its leader said the European “forest nation” had “spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things. And they don’t have any problem.”.

> Finnish President Sauli Niinistö later said he told Trump that Finland takes care of its forests but did not say anything about raking.

So he wasn't wrong that forest management matters. But he wasn't supporting controlled burns either. The combination of his control over federal forest land and this quote:

> “Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us,” he added.

is what rankled people.

Finally, while forest management contributed to the California wildfires of the last 5 years, PG&E's mismanagement of power lines and power line maintenance played a large role as well. Either way, having people rake the leaves wouldn't have done much :).

[1] https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/08/20/...

There is an interesting book called the Dao of Capital that relates this phenomena and the attempts to stop wildfires with interest rates and the boom bust cycle in the economy.

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