Wildfire ‘24

[old goat]

A wildfire in the Tahoe area might take a while to evacuate. Which should surprise no one.
https://www.moonshineink.com/tahoe-n...st-23-29-2024/

[XXX-er]

BC got wet and cold, no more evacuation alerts, we can even have campfires

[bodywhomper]

This is interesting. I can see where there are probably some significant issues with rugged terrain and scaling up to true landscape-sized treatments, but maybe useful on mellower terrain and in the urban interface. But the article mentions huge areas needing treatment without mentioning the potential amount of acreage these things could treat.
Silicon Valley Wants to Fight Fires With Fire

Thanks for sharing. I briefly met one of the people shown and mentioned in the article at a local rx burn site prep a few years ago.

Improved tech is one small item that needs improvement. More $$$ in actually doing the work and an improved approval pathway at the state and federal levels along with public buy-in are the biggest hurdles. The tech stuff is easier and that’s why it’s getting the attention. Dealing with the biomass is also a huge hurdle (briefly mentioned).

EMBER Act is hopefully getting updated, revised, and put into vote, hopefully in the next year. Hopefully, it throws a lot of money and some extremely helpful legislative environmental regulatory exclusions/exemptions in place.

Hopefully this makes it past the academic argument and turns to policy: https://fireecology.springeropen.com...08-024-00301-y

[Meadow Skipper]

Improved tech is one small item that needs improvement. More $$$ in actually doing the work and an improved approval pathway at the state and federal levels along with public buy-in are the biggest hurdles. The tech stuff is easier and that’s why it’s getting the attention. Dealing with the biomass is also a huge hurdle (briefly mentioned).

Pretty astute there, G.

Hopefully this makes it past the academic argument and turns to policy: https://fireecology.springeropen.com...08-024-00301-y

Yep, needed changes.

[claymond]

Thanks for sharing. I briefly met one of the people shown and mentioned in the article at a local rx burn site prep a few years ago.

Improved tech is one small item that needs improvement. More $$$ in actually doing the work and an improved approval pathway at the state and federal levels along with public buy-in are the biggest hurdles. The tech stuff is easier and that’s why it’s getting the attention. Dealing with the biomass is also a huge hurdle (briefly mentioned).

EMBER Act is hopefully getting updated, revised, and put into vote, hopefully in the next year. Hopefully, it throws a lot of money and some extremely helpful legislative environmental regulatory exclusions/exemptions in place.

Hopefully this makes it past the academic argument and turns to policy: https://fireecology.springeropen.com...08-024-00301-y

Yep. The guy in the article even says he moved to the woods looking for a problem to solve. He chose the easy "problem" with a flashy solution. I have zero interest being anywhere near a automated skidder driven by a tech bro in London.

[Meadow Skipper]

…I have zero interest being anywhere near an automated skidder driven by a tech bro in London.

Heh. Good instincts there.

[TBS]

This is interesting. I can see where there are probably some significant issues with rugged terrain and scaling up to true landscape-sized treatments, but maybe useful on mellower terrain and in the urban interface. But the article mentions huge areas needing treatment without mentioning the potential amount of acreage these things could treat.
Silicon Valley Wants to Fight Fires With Fire

Yeah I don’t see these UAVs cutting out a fireline by themselves through steep terrain with lots of slash and brush. At least in the next five years. The proximity sensors would go apeshit.

But yeah, in open, mellow terrain I definitely can see the value. Like widening firebreaks along roads.

That said, they are training the machines with human operators. So the concept of one “pilot” directing two skidders - at scale- is probably less than ten years away.

[byates1]

Volcanic eruption in MT? Bitterroot fire seen from Bozeman

Sent from my Pixel 8 Pro using Tapatalk

[bodywhomper]

That’s a beautiful picture.

I will always recall the huge pyrocumulus cloud from a large back fire light on the south end of the “north complex fire” a few years ago, southeast of oroville and northwest of Downieville, north San Juan, Nevada city, etc. it stopped the southward march of part of the fire front. The cloud was very large, ominous, and amazing.

I thought this journal article was really interesting. https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wi....1002/eap.2973

[Meadow Skipper]

I thought this journal article was really interesting. https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wi....1002/eap.2973

Understanding and appreciating indigenous fire practices is valuable and instructive. We kind of run into problems outside of a relatively few areas like the Klamath country. Population distribution and current vegetation conditions are a couple of things that were very different for historic indigenous burners.

I’m a little sensitive about this because I’ve been at places and meetings where someone will come in and strongly advocate for implementing indigenous burning practices without considering how that would affect nearby urban areas and/or rural residents. Then there’s the radical change in vegetation from a century of aggressive fire suppression and grazing/logging/exploitation. It’ll be a bitch trying to implement widespread indigenous burning practices. That ship might have sailed. But it’s valuable history, we just can’t flip a switch and go for it.

[bodywhomper]

I found it fascinating because it’s apparently pretty comprehensive. There are some big names in the author lists. It is interesting to read how they focused on a certain plant for certain uses but it resulted a lots of side benefits. Like burning in black oak/conifer woodlands for better shoot and then high nut production of hazelnuts, but that likely resulted in keeping general biomass down of a lot of other plant species and kept dead fuel generally low in that ecosystem.

Here’s some interesting observations from Lunder in an area of the Park Fire. The contrast between treated versus untreated is remarkable: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?sto...ibextid=6yaNxA

[Meadow Skipper]

I found it fascinating because it’s apparently pretty comprehensive. There are some big names in the author lists. It is interesting to read how they focused on a certain plant for certain uses but it resulted a lots of side benefits. Like burning in black oak/conifer woodlands for better shoot and then high nut production of hazelnuts, but that likely resulted in keeping general biomass down of a lot of other plant species and kept dead fuel generally low in that ecosystem.

Here’s some interesting observations from Lunder in an area of the Park Fire. The contrast between treated versus untreated is remarkable: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?sto...ibextid=6yaNxA

Well yeah, burning in the ‘indigenous’ way would definitely make things a lot better in our wildlands.

[chicken feathers]

Not to derail, but on the topic of indigenous burning, how rangelands were burnt in the past is fascinating as well. For some locales at least, I’ve read & heard old accounts of how grasslands used to have more grasses & forbes and less sage. This was due to indigenous people lighting fires behind them as they migrated for winter. In the spring there would be new growth of herbaceous plants for game.

As indigenous people were displaced and fire suppression was applied, along with fences and the concentration of grazing cattle, herbaceous vegetation decreased while sagebrushes were able to become more prolific.

[old goat]

In California the native grasses, which stayed green in the summer, were replaced by grasses from the east, which turn "golden" in the summer. That would affect how they burn, I would guess. I don't know if the same thing applies to the brushlands. The pioneers looked at the Central Valley and saw Eden--green savannah teeming with herds of deer and elk, rivers full of fish, the skies clouded with migrating flocks. (The occasional inland sea in the winter.) Not quite the same today.

[Meadow Skipper]

^ Not just California, but annual grasses (that only live one season, and many are from Asia) have, or are, replacing the native perennial grasses which live over several or many seasons (and are generally much less flammable and more nutritious for animals). Cheatgrass and similar invasive species like red brome have radically changed the ecosystem of the west. Blame things like industrial grazing and widespread landscape disturbances by humans. This drift is almost getting me going, so I’ll save the lecture for later.

But cheatgrass sucks! It burns like gasoline, as do a lot of the invasive annuals in California.

[bodywhomper]

My understanding of some issues with grasses, especially non-natives, is that fire based treatment that target is most effective in the summer. In California, that’s a no-go with Calfire. The air force base by me successfully broadcast burns hundreds of acres of grasslands every summer.

In the grassland of the front range west of Denver, I’ve heard local fire agencies encourage larger property owners to use fire to reduce grassland fuel loads and discourage herd grazing. Apparently. there’s been a lot of invasive spread through the use of grazing animals to reduce grass fuel loads.

On a landscape-ish level, it seems that indigenous style burning could be similar to a maintenance method once a baseline is established (if that could ever occur). Around me, a local tribe has acquired a few large-ish properties and their initial stewardship objectives seem to be biomass reduction and catastrophic wildfire mitigation. They’ve hired a local state-certified burn boss who also has a few goat/sheep herds, and they’re going through the process of site prepping with mechanical tools, grazing this time of year, and broadcast burning. At an easily accessible area that they’ve already treated, they’ve hosted some small cultural burn demos.

[old goat]

^ Not just California, but annual grasses (that only live one season, and many are from Asia) have, or are, replacing the native perennial grasses which live over several or many seasons (and are generally much less flammable and more nutritious for animals). Cheatgrass and similar invasive species like red brome have radically changed the ecosystem of the west. Blame things like industrial grazing and widespread landscape disturbances by humans. This drift is almost getting me going, so I’ll save the lecture for later.

But cheatgrass sucks! It burns like gasoline, as do a lot of the invasive annuals in California.

The man knows his meadows.

[Meadow Skipper]

The man knows his meadows.

Nerdness stemming from working on land management agencies for so long.

[byates1]

Double entendre. And here I thought he was a 3pingrin hippie meadow skipper. Certainly is also a captain on the meadows

[old goat]

My kid shot this on his way to work.


Lin fire in San Bernadino Country, burning towards Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear.

Maybe I should have posted in the distracted driving thread.

[Meadow Skipper]

SoCal is starting to get its ass kicked. Around 2 pm today, local time. Big air shows - each purple thing is a fire aircraft.


And that fire near Reno is getting some attention.

[bodywhomper]

The bridge and airport fires blew up today! The town of mt baldy (bridge) is definitely in a bad place, and wrightwood is now under evac.

It doesn’t look like the Line Fire has pushed more into running springs. I know Zeke lunder posted some interviews with local fire experts about the potential for it to burn into the big bear area…. Is SO early for this stuff.

[evdog]

The Santa Ana mtns can't catch a break ...3 fires in 7 years. First one set by a crazy guy who wanted to burn out a neighbor he was fueding with and then apparently went after responding firefighters with a sword. Second fire caused by explosives as CDFE worked with marines to blow up old check dams that inhibited steelhead movement. On a red flag day of course. The Airport fire was started by OC county works moving boulders to prevent illegal access by dirt bikes. Also on a red flag day. You'd think they would learn?

[lowsparkco]

Central Oregon is getting crushed at the moment.

Word on the street is that the state has spent all their resources and Kotek has been begging for federal resources for weeks now. It almost has a boy that cried wolf tone, as she scored a bunch of relief money for ranchers out east, but if she doesn't pay for caterers, heavy equipment, and air support on this Little Lava complex of fires we could lose Sunriver.

[Meadow Skipper]

Central Oregon is getting crushed at the moment.

Word on the street is that the state has spent all their resources and Kotek has been begging for federal resources for weeks now. It almost has a boy that cried wolf tone, as she scored a bunch of relief money for ranchers out east, but if she doesn't pay for caterers, heavy equipment, and air support on this Little Lava complex of fires we could lose Sunriver.

I’m hearing that feds are pretty much scraping the barrel on things like incident management teams, caterers, and maybe aircraft. SoCal is taking off and they seem to get the nod on scarce resources.