How Can Forest Fires Be Beneficial?

can't escape their path. But although, of course the loss of life and property from out of control fires is terrible, controlled burns are actually two hour and our ecosystem's advantage. Since two thousand and one, the US Forest Service has had a national Fire Plan to address the tinderbox conditions caused by decades of fire suppression, drought, and scores of residential developments neighboring forests. It is a multi pronged approach that includes fighting fires by land and air, as well

as controlled burns. These deliberately set and controlled fires are designed to take place under specific conditions and confine the flames to a predetermined area. The idea behind controlled burns is to reduce the fuel that could feed a wild forest fire should one start under uncontrolled circumstances. This dangerous scenario has become all too common in the American West, where peat and drought have turned entire sections of forest into kindling, ready to be sparked by blightening or lit

cigarettes and fanned by strong winds. Of the seven hundred and fifty million acres or three hundred million hectors of forest in North America, fifty seven percent is privately owned and becoming increasingly developed for residential use. This means wild fires are increasingly likely to harm people in property, hence the need to prevent them. So today let's talk about how controlled burns work and how they can actually help

a forest. In general. The boundaries of a controlled burn include natural fire guards such as streams, and human made fire guards such as tilled soil or gravel roadways. Before burn takes place, weather must be taken into account. A too windy and sparks could spread to unintended areas. Too wet and fuel won't burn a Most controlled burns take place when the wind is five to fifteen miles per hour that's eight to twenty four kilometers per hour and

coming from a consistent direction. In addition to notifying neighbors in local enforcement agencies of the burn, in many cases, those agencies require a permit. A local fire department should be on the scene in case the fire burns out of control. Controlled burns begin by lighting a backfire using a flammable liquid such as gasoline, along the down wind perimeter of the prescribed area. The fire will then burn slowly, usually with low flames because it's moving against the wind.

Additional flanking fires may be lit a long boundary parallel to the wind. Finally, a fire is set along the boundary opposite the downwind perimeter. The fires burn toward each other, consuming all the fuel in their path, and dying out upon meeting. By carefully controlling the burn, we can reap the benefits of forest fires while mitigating the risk. Forest fires are a natural and necessary part of ecosystems. Even

healthy forests contain dead trees and decaying plant matter. When a fire turns them to ashes, nutrients return to the soil instead of remaining captive in that old vegetation. And when fire rages through dry underbrush, it clears thick growth so sunlight can reach the forest floor and encourage new native plants to spring up. Fire freese these plants from the competition delivered by invasive weeds and eliminates diseases or droves of insects that may have been causing damage to

old growth. Wildflowers begin to bloom abundantly. Most young, healthy trees are resilient enough to survive a forest fire and will soon have a growth spurt thanks to flames that thin light banning canopies above, and scientists report that young growth forests recovering from a fire are home to more diverse species in both plants and animals. Although some animals are injured or die from forest fires, most survive. The majority of animals can smell a fire even when it's

quite small from miles away. Some animals, such as deer and bear will flee the area, while others like insects and small mammals will burrow into the ground until the flames pass. And even though some animals may be displaced during a forest fire, the scorched earth will eventually provide an ideal new home for others, one that's full of

thicker vegetation fed by that nutrient rich soil. Forest fires can create and all you can eat buffet and more than forty different kinds of insects, for example, will eat their way through fire ravaged territory as they burrow into the wood that remain. There's even a species of beetles that waits for forest fires, using heat sensors to come in from miles away to eat injured trees. These fattened insects then become food themselves as birds hunt for a

feast all their own. The shrubs and grasses fertilized by fire created nutrients will grow lushly as soon deer and other grazing wildlife like mice will make a meal of them. Then predators, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, wolves, and bears will

get there full of prey too. Years later, when the forest's growth has created a dark and damp interior framed by a leafy overhead canopy, the forest's remaining residents will move back in deep forest plants like mosses and lichens, and animals like spotted owls and woodland caribou will once again call it home. There are other options to get similar results, like hand and mechanical thinning, which is the logging of small diameter trees to reduce tree density and underbrush.

Thinning is more expensive and doesn't always return nutrients to the environment. Take, for example, an experiment at Tall Timbers Research Station in Tallahassee, Florida that lasted nearly four decades and provided telling results. The twenty three acre swath of land that's about nine hectores wasn't allowed to burn during that time, plant diversity fell by ninety percent, and one

species of bird, a type of woodpecker, disappeared entirely. In order to thrive, this ecosystem, like many others, needed fire. Today's episode is based on the article how does forest fire benefit Living Things? On housetiff works dot com, written by Lareel Dove. Brainstuff is production of Ihart Radio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by

Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,