Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brainstufflaurin boglabam
Speaker 1: here of forest fires started by humans or nature, whipped
Speaker 1: by wind and fueled by dry brush a curb one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand times a year in the US, consuming an
Speaker 1: average of five point eight million acres or two point
Speaker 1: three million hectors of land. These fires destroy everything that
Speaker 1: can't escape their path. But although, of course the loss
Speaker 1: of life and property from out of control fires is terrible,
Speaker 1: controlled burns are actually two hour and our ecosystem's advantage.
Speaker 1: Since two thousand and one, the US Forest Service has
Speaker 1: had a national Fire Plan to address the tinderbox conditions
Speaker 1: caused by decades of fire suppression, drought, and scores of
Speaker 1: residential developments neighboring forests. It is a multi pronged approach
Speaker 1: that includes fighting fires by land and air, as well
Speaker 1: as controlled burns. These deliberately set and controlled fires are
Speaker 1: designed to take place under specific conditions and confine the
Speaker 1: flames to a predetermined area. The idea behind controlled burns
Speaker 1: is to reduce the fuel that could feed a wild
Speaker 1: forest fire should one start under uncontrolled circumstances. This dangerous
Speaker 1: scenario has become all too common in the American West,
Speaker 1: where peat and drought have turned entire sections of forest
Speaker 1: into kindling, ready to be sparked by blightening or lit
Speaker 1: cigarettes and fanned by strong winds. Of the seven hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty million acres or three hundred million hectors of
Speaker 1: forest in North America, fifty seven percent is privately owned
Speaker 1: and becoming increasingly developed for residential use. This means wild
Speaker 1: fires are increasingly likely to harm people in property, hence
Speaker 1: the need to prevent them. So today let's talk about
Speaker 1: how controlled burns work and how they can actually help
Speaker 1: a forest. In general. The boundaries of a controlled burn
Speaker 1: include natural fire guards such as streams, and human made
Speaker 1: fire guards such as tilled soil or gravel roadways. Before
Speaker 1: burn takes place, weather must be taken into account. A
Speaker 1: too windy and sparks could spread to unintended areas. Too
Speaker 1: wet and fuel won't burn a Most controlled burns take
Speaker 1: place when the wind is five to fifteen miles per
Speaker 1: hour that's eight to twenty four kilometers per hour and
Speaker 1: coming from a consistent direction. In addition to notifying neighbors
Speaker 1: in local enforcement agencies of the burn, in many cases,
Speaker 1: those agencies require a permit. A local fire department should
Speaker 1: be on the scene in case the fire burns out
Speaker 1: of control. Controlled burns begin by lighting a backfire using
Speaker 1: a flammable liquid such as gasoline, along the down wind
Speaker 1: perimeter of the prescribed area. The fire will then burn slowly,
Speaker 1: usually with low flames because it's moving against the wind.
Speaker 1: Additional flanking fires may be lit a long boundary parallel
Speaker 1: to the wind. Finally, a fire is set along the
Speaker 1: boundary opposite the downwind perimeter. The fires burn toward each other,
Speaker 1: consuming all the fuel in their path, and dying out
Speaker 1: upon meeting. By carefully controlling the burn, we can reap
Speaker 1: the benefits of forest fires while mitigating the risk. Forest
Speaker 1: fires are a natural and necessary part of ecosystems. Even
Speaker 1: healthy forests contain dead trees and decaying plant matter. When
Speaker 1: a fire turns them to ashes, nutrients return to the
Speaker 1: soil instead of remaining captive in that old vegetation. And
Speaker 1: when fire rages through dry underbrush, it clears thick growth
Speaker 1: so sunlight can reach the forest floor and encourage new
Speaker 1: native plants to spring up. Fire freese these plants from
Speaker 1: the competition delivered by invasive weeds and eliminates diseases or
Speaker 1: droves of insects that may have been causing damage to
Speaker 1: old growth. Wildflowers begin to bloom abundantly. Most young, healthy
Speaker 1: trees are resilient enough to survive a forest fire and
Speaker 1: will soon have a growth spurt thanks to flames that
Speaker 1: thin light banning canopies above, and scientists report that young
Speaker 1: growth forests recovering from a fire are home to more
Speaker 1: diverse species in both plants and animals. Although some animals
Speaker 1: are injured or die from forest fires, most survive. The
Speaker 1: majority of animals can smell a fire even when it's
Speaker 1: quite small from miles away. Some animals, such as deer
Speaker 1: and bear will flee the area, while others like insects
Speaker 1: and small mammals will burrow into the ground until the
Speaker 1: flames pass. And even though some animals may be displaced
Speaker 1: during a forest fire, the scorched earth will eventually provide
Speaker 1: an ideal new home for others, one that's full of
Speaker 1: thicker vegetation fed by that nutrient rich soil. Forest fires
Speaker 1: can create and all you can eat buffet and more
Speaker 1: than forty different kinds of insects, for example, will eat
Speaker 1: their way through fire ravaged territory as they burrow into
Speaker 1: the wood that remain. There's even a species of beetles
Speaker 1: that waits for forest fires, using heat sensors to come
Speaker 1: in from miles away to eat injured trees. These fattened
Speaker 1: insects then become food themselves as birds hunt for a
Speaker 1: feast all their own. The shrubs and grasses fertilized by
Speaker 1: fire created nutrients will grow lushly as soon deer and
Speaker 1: other grazing wildlife like mice will make a meal of them.
Speaker 1: Then predators, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, wolves, and bears will
Speaker 1: get there full of prey too. Years later, when the
Speaker 1: forest's growth has created a dark and damp interior framed
Speaker 1: by a leafy overhead canopy, the forest's remaining residents will
Speaker 1: move back in deep forest plants like mosses and lichens,
Speaker 1: and animals like spotted owls and woodland caribou will once
Speaker 1: again call it home. There are other options to get
Speaker 1: similar results, like hand and mechanical thinning, which is the
Speaker 1: logging of small diameter trees to reduce tree density and underbrush.
Speaker 1: Thinning is more expensive and doesn't always return nutrients to
Speaker 1: the environment. Take, for example, an experiment at Tall Timbers
Speaker 1: Research Station in Tallahassee, Florida that lasted nearly four decades
Speaker 1: and provided telling results. The twenty three acre swath of
Speaker 1: land that's about nine hectores wasn't allowed to burn during
Speaker 1: that time, plant diversity fell by ninety percent, and one
Speaker 1: species of bird, a type of woodpecker, disappeared entirely. In
Speaker 1: order to thrive, this ecosystem, like many others, needed fire.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article how does forest
Speaker 1: fire benefit Living Things? On housetiff works dot com, written
Speaker 1: by Lareel Dove. Brainstuff is production of Ihart Radio in
Speaker 1: partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
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