Hot Trend: The Fiery Results of Prescribed Burning

in a recent video I did this small prescribed burn or I should say I attempted to but it got sabotaged when it started raining right after I lit it there were a lot of good comments on that video good questions and concerns I thought I'd address some of those by taking you over there to where I did one of these years ago and we'll look at the results I haven't been over there for a long time it'll be interesting for me to look at it too from where the Sawmill is we will be going right over where this Ridge comes down right about there this is that Ridge I pointed out this area I burned maybe six or seven years ago the bases of the trees have been blackened some of the stumps and other Woody debris have been blackened there were comments in the other videos people concerned when the fire was burning up the bark of the tree it's hard to imagine a tree could survive that intense heat but this is fire country and the trees around here are very much adapted to that this spot was a much more intense burn than the one we did the other day this spot had a pretty high accumulation of dry slash it burned so hot it scorched the lower needles off of this Douglas fur tree and the cedar behind it killing the branches but the folage above is still healthy all these trees look healthy the bases of the trees were blackened in between these Brown stretch marks show that the tree is still growing growing quite nicely same with these have the brown stretch marks in between the black which means the tree is expanding as it grows even the smaller trees did just fine this small Douglas fur was blackened but still growing nicely this small Douglas Furr which was close in where the intense fire was it's the one that got its lower limbs scorched does have a little bit of scarring from the Heat on these younger trees in the furrows it's thinner bark more prone to the heat but they're healing over nicely one of the advantages of fire in the forest is it can favor the larger trees it can take out the smaller trees especially smaller than this one reducing the competition for the bigger larger trees I think bigger and larger mean the same thing that's a little redundant the larger more vigorous trees there was also some concern about burning off the duff layer with the idea that the duff layer is important for holding in moisture I've often wondered is it better to leave the duff layer to hold in moisture or is it better to burn it off the natural thing for these forests is to have fire come through every few years and burn it off that's what these forests are adapted to I've asked Foresters about that and none of them have given me a good answer because I think they don't know the answer but the general consensus is it's natural to have these fires burn them off Burn It Off off burn the duff layer off yeah that shouldn't have been a mouthful but it was when these trees really need water is in the late summer sometimes we haven't had rain for months they have to go down deep to get that water and by that time the duff is very dry that's what fuels some of our forest fires is that dry Duff layer the duff layer can also keep moisture from getting into the soil when we have late spring rains summer rains and the rare occasion we have a summmer rain it's usually surrounded by dry weather the rain wets the top layer of the duff then it dries out within a few days especially this Pine Duff never actually makes it into the soil where the roots are so the duff layer could be a double-edged sword in these dry summer forests with all that said if the forest is still intact it doesn't take long for the duff layer to come back as I pointed out in that previous video when I do these borderline wet season Burns I'm not burning off the whole layer only that top dry layer most of it is left intact a few years after the burn the ground is all cleaned up if we do get a fire it's just going to be a low intensity ground fire not going to harm the trees the fire would just continue to maintain this area the grasses and Forbes have grown up after the fire the problem with trying to make a video about the after effects of one of these low intensity Burns is there's not a whole lot to show but that's part of my point which is these forests can Thrive just fine after a fire as long as it's not too intense these Dryland forests need to have fire or some kind of a disturbance every few years to maintain them to keep them cleaned up we're seeing a lot of the problems that happen now that we put out fire for over a hundred years we've taken it out of the forest you end up with situations like this the forests have become so full of fuel and so overcrowded when we do get a fire sometimes it ends up a catastrophic fire like this because it burns so hot even the large trees can't survive it let's go look at another one here's another spot where I burned the only way you can really tell it burned is the blackened bases of the trees and all the brush and slash is gone the base of the trees are charred but it didn't make it through the bark the tops of them are still green and healthy occasionally you can get a tree that gets a little too hot it had a little spot between the furrowed bark where it had a little injury but it's healing over nicely a lot of times that's just a little thin strip in that shallowest area and that's easy for the tree to heal over most of the time a tree like this wouldn't be injured by a low intensity fire but there was a big accumulation of Slash right there another spot I burned off a few years ago other than a few black things black bases of trees and the Slash and brush that used to be here that's now gone it would be hard to know that this spot burned this Douglas fur has a big root sticking up out of the ground but even the root has thick bark on it got a little bit blackened but otherwise this tree is just fine sometimes you can find fire scars on these big old trees this sugar Pine's been around for hundreds of years a lot of times this scar will be on the uphill side what I'm I'm guessing is a down tree rolled up against it when a fire came burned up that dry log that log burned so long and so intense up against it it burned through the bark but as long as the rest of the tree is unharmed they can survive for a long time when you see a fire scarred tree like this it's very common for it to be on the uphill side Sugar Pines are the world's largest Pine look at the pine cones here's an example of a log rolled up against a tree if there was a fire at the time of the year when this log was dry enough to burn it would probably scar up this side of this tree another example of an old fire Scar and look what else I found four point all chewed up this scar has healed over mostly the one next to it big scar it's black inside so it's obviously burned this snag down below has an old fire Scar and the Douglas fur down here has a healed over scar there must have been a bunch of Woody material that accumulated here for some reason rolled down the hill before the last Wildfire happened decades ago oh look it's the other half on the west coast we would call this a four point four on each side we don't total them up if there were three on this side four on the other side we'd call it a 3x4 which I think is probably the proper way to do it because here on the West Coast we like to think the world revolves around us the point of all this being what was my point oh yeah even if trees do get a fire scar they can still survive as long as most of the tree is left unscarred or a good amount of it is left unscarred but when I burn I try to do it with such low intensity there's going to be no scarring at all except for maybe once in a while just a small amount another concern since we took regular natural fires out of the forest 100 years ago when we started putting them out you start getting accumulation of Duff layer on the uphill side these pine needles rot very slowly they accumulate faster than they rot plus pine cones and bark flakes sometimes it could build up so thick at the base of these trees it could smolder long enough it could Scar the trees when we used to have fires that would come through every few years it would keep that cleaned up when you take nature away from nature sometimes it can cause problems and sometimes when you see a scar on the uphill side of a tree that can also be a logging scar as is the case with this one this scar happened when the road was being built when I burned this area a few years ago it burned about 12 feet up the tree burned over the scar that black and torrified wood can actually help preserve the wood make it less likely to rot the trees growing over the wound I prefer to not have scars on the trees but even if they do have a fire scar they can still survive that scar was caused by the road building not the fire the kind of low intensity fires I do very rarely cause any kind of significant scarring years later even with the scar it's still a very healthy tree another point that was brought up is burning poison oak poison ivy and related plants can be dangerous the fumes from burning these plants can get into your lungs they can cause irritation sometimes even severe reactions Wildland firefighters can have a problem with that if Fire gets into some poison oak they breathe the fumes it can put them out of commission but I have a solution to that and that is to have the kind of genes that make you not very allergic to poison oak and Ivy and such okay maybe that's not a good solution for everybody we don't have poison ivy we do have poison oak I've been burning poison oak since I was a kid with my dad I've never had a reaction from the fumes some people have a problem with that some don't some people have severe reactions to that so if you don't know where you fall in that category burn around these kind of plants with caution periodic fire is a normal part of our forest in the west it's natural for them to burn every few years that's the case here but what I've been talking about may not be the way it is where you are not every part part of the world is the way it is here we took the fires out a 100 years ago and that's created a lot of problems most of the forests in the west are no longer natural because we took that big natural force away trying to return fire to the forest is not an easy thing to do because our forests are overgrown the fuel load is so high it makes it difficult to have a low intensity safe burn now we have things like lawyers and liability and people building structures out in the forest this makes it very hard to return this vital component of the forest back into the forest which is why I can only do these little small I think little and small mean the same thing too these small low intensity Burns at the time of the year where it's hard to even get them to burn is about all I can get away with unless we got some State sanctioned crew out here to do it the proper way there may be some programs coming up with the state to make that more feasible in the future that's all I have for today be careful with fire don't burn things that you shouldn't be burning use common sense

Channel: Wilson Forest Lands

Views: 8,684

Keywords:

Id: FoACkNYVbt0

Length: 12min 8sec (728 seconds)

Published: Sun May 05 2024