Burn Baby Burn - Fire Ecologist Celebrate Fire Season

"Life goes on though, and fires are not unnatural"

Margarethe Brummermann

Image - CNN

Annimated Graph - USA Today

The quote at the top of the post is from Margarethe Brummermann, Biologist from Dortmund Germany who resides in the Tucson area. She had written a post about Mount Lemmon which towers above Tucson to the north. I made a comment on her page about how my wife and I had driven up to Mount Lemmon last year May 2016 and how sad we were to see so much of the forest destroyed by wildfires. I made mentioned how I had first visited Mount Lemmon back in the late 1970s and there was hardly ever a scene where wildfire had damage anything. There was always the occasional snag here and there, but forests and even the high desert scrub were always able to recovery properly. That has all changed now. But her reply to me was simply, "Life goes on though, and fires are not unnatural." Her viewpoint is reflective of most all fire ecologists who champion fire as natural, yet often times have a hard time differentiating between human (especially if Native American) and lightning caused fires. Earlier this year, Fire Ecologist, Jennifer Balch, and other researchers revealed that 84% of all wildfires are human caused. Oh, but it get's even worse. They found that the actual figure for California, Oregon, Washington and on up to British Columbia in Canada is actually a figure at 90% human caused. So it question begs, is that something we should consider natural or unnatural ??? I only ask because humans today are considered unexceptional and nothing more than animals if you read the latest scientific literature on the subject. Don't get me wrong here, I don't believe anything as asinine as that. But it does reveal how an ideologically driven worldview can infect and distort the practice of Science and create ignorance as opposed to understanding. Historically, the majority of wildfires on Mount Lemmon have had a human cause. This has also exacerbated theproblem of  human introduced non-native, Buffel Grass, to invade clear up through the Saguaro Forests into the mid-elevation ranges of the Mount Lemmon. Here is that interesting finding regarding the human 90% origined cause of most wildfires at present.

Science Magazine: "Who is starting all those wildfires? We are"

Aaryn Olsson, University of Arizona

Last year when we traveled up the Mount Lemmon highway, we were greeted all along the way by an overwhelming sea of Buffelgrass which blanketed all areas of the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson. Researchers say warming temperatures and fewer winter freezes are helping the invasive plant spread, posing a threat to saguaro cactuses and other native plants. The Tucson Sentinel even had an article with a chilling title, "Arizona without Saguaros? As climate warms, desert's future uncertain." The Saguaros are such an iconic symbol of Arizona and the Sonoran Desert. But they cannot take wildfire. They have no protection against it. I can't hardly imagine them being eliminated permanently.

Grant Martin/Cronkite News Service

Bromus tectorum, an invasive species commonly called “cheatgrass,” grows in an area of the Coconino National Forest burned in a 1996 wildfire. I strongly dislike Cheatgrass. This is the invasive noxious weed whose stickers you have to pull out of your socks every so often down the trail when you go on a hike.

Grant Martin/Cronkite News Service

Researchers say this area of the Coconino National Forest, which burned in 1996, is decades away from returning to its native state, if it ever does. They say rising temperatures have weakened trees, raising the potential for devastating wildfires that will open the door to invasive species. Don't expect recovery anytime soon.

Image - Getty Images

I remember reading the fire ecology literature some time back in 2006. There was an account written by Arizona Historian Marshall Trimball of the old west in New Mexico, when a Cavalry Officer was complaining to his superiors about his men smoking cigarettes and dropping them along the trail as they all rode horseback. The problem was they were starting grass fires from their careless bad habit. Of course this was in the 1800s, when Indians still existed and practiced their ecological conservation with fire. Yet hsitorical writings from the 1800s relay that they used fires to war against their enemies. Not exactly eco-friendly. I know, it destroys the narrative. This 1800s is the time period for celebration for most fire ecologists who champion how natural the forested ecosystems all were back then because of Indians. But as I've questioned this before, if fire ecologists were looking at the world back then and telling us how natural wildfire played in ecology of all plant community systems, how did they reconcile white European Soldiers starting fires with their cigarette butts ? Was that a good thing for Nature ? How did this factor into their research of what was good for the plant community environment ? Native Americans generally get a free pass on why they started fires and they really shouldn't. See the post, Dances With Myths. But now what about the white man back then ? Today there is a movement to down grade human beings as not being so exceptional. Mankind is now being considered nothing more than animals equal to everything else. Does this now mean that the research on wildfire causes being 84% human fault provide us a new designation of the term, "Natural"   ??? 😲 Would it mean that humans carelessly throwing down a cigarette butt today should now be considered perfectly normal behaviour ??? 😟 We seem to be living in a time period of redefining everything from it's historical normalcy.

But what about all those heavy Rains 🚿 ??? Didn't things get better ??? 🌳

Image - Pismo Hotels

This year's rainy season of 2017, California experienced one of those unprecedented rainy seasons, after four years of serious intense drought. But everyone cheered Hooray 🙌 and celebrated with waving pom poms that all was well again in California again. The drought was now over, or was it. Indeed, heavy rains came, even to the point of major flooding events up and down the state. While there were some very clear catastrophic negatives, one of the great joys of all that rain brought out a spectacular display of wildflower blooms. Starting in early March, flowers popped up all across Southern and Central California and produced some seriously spectacular scenery. The photo opportunity didn't go unnoticed nor wasted by many of the non-profit eco-activist groups hoping to cash in on a fund raising opportunity by posting pics on their website's & Social Network pages indicating that Nature seemed to have rebounded from the jaws of death. Or you know, that old Jurassic Park Cliche (a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought) "Life found a way." Except that things really were'nt all that rosey as they advertised. First, some of the people were a little too anxious about getting out there first with they cameras. Then it appears that much of the water came in so fat and furiously, that most of it raced back to the Pacific Ocean like a bullet train. Some water did fill up many of the State's reservoirs, but the surrounding landscape didn't have great percolation into the hills and mountains. 

Roger C. Bales

Even Merced hydrologist, Roger C. Bales, who advocated & pushed for increased logging in the Sierra Nevadas which he claimed would stop water hog trees from gulping down precious water which would have otherwise ended up in streams and rivers causing reservoirs to fill for his agricultural buddies to use downstream (See the Modesto Bee article: Overgrown Sierra forests gulping water that could flow to Valley ), jumped up and down when the rains came. Why ??? Because now his story has changed. He now claims to have been proven right because the 130+ million dead trees caused by the out of control bark beetle outbreak didn't have a chance to suck all that water which ended up in the streams and rivers and filled all the reservoirs. This is a farce folks. The great lack of water over the past five years had zero to do with there being too many trees sucking & gulping all the water down and had everything to do with the State's worst mega-drought in years. It hadn't rained in those five years (or extremely little rain coupled with high Temps) and with or without trees water eventually won't run in creeks, streams and rivers to fill reservoirs. Even a child gets that. I knew this from viewing early on all the photographs of dried dead invasive weeds and not all that long after the flowers died that the drought was not over. Now look where they are over there with heat waves and no more rain. Plus as indicated at the top of this post, lookie where we are now with the 2017 Wildfire season stats. So have things really changed for the better ? Nope, same old same old. 😏

Look, I refuse to celebrate and worship fire as some kind of animist Creator the way most fire ecologists worship it. Yes fire has always existed and is a reality in the natural world and can be used as an excellent tool for correcting problems along with other management tool like thinning forests in any ecosystem if done properly. And I've actually done that. But mostly humans have misused and abused fire, even the so-called experts. Prior to 2006 I never read much of anything about the science discipline of fire ecology, although I worked with people in the US Forest Service back in the 1980s who did prescribed burns. But I've also fought them tooth and nail against many of their ideas which are complete failures when it comes to reforestation techniques. Take the Fire Ecologist insistence that fire is needed for the wild seed germination. For example, Tecate Cypress is one of those trees in which Fire Ecologist have insisted for decades needs fire in order to propagate itself. Prior to reading their literature, in all my 30+ years of outdoors exploration experience and seed collecting, I never found this to be true of Tecate Cypress. There are numerous circumstances under which the seed is dispursed or spread and germinates fine without the need of fire within old growth chaparral which hasn't burned in a couple of hundred years. Same with Arizona Cypress. Fire is not always necessary, but you cannot tell them this. Science is not supposed to be about working in a Lab and venturing outdoors once in a while on a couple token field trips to make the research look legit. You have to live outdoors with nature. Look, I am not credentialed. I have no alphabet soup initials behind my name, nor some fancy coveted title before my name. Thank God. That allows me the freedom of not being shackled to a dogma and infected by the worldview biases and flawed presuppositions common to the Scientific Orthodoxy's industrial business model. I'm just one of 6+ billion people on Earth subjected to the negative consequences of inept decision making from a world leadership which has been weighed in the scales and found deficient. But it's allowed me to view things from a periferal viewpoint as opposed to tunnel-vission. 

Image from H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock

BTW, here is an example of Prairie Fire and a Steam Locomotive, 1872, whose smoke stacks belched cinders (pre-spark aresters) and started numerous prairie and forest fires in the days of the old west. Wonder if that was ever factored into the fire ecologist fire is a creator research ??? This video below from China's still operational locomotives servicing coal mines just question begs, "Do fire ecologists who insist that  fire is a natural necessary healthy component of plant ecosystems ever factor in human stupidity as part of that natural component mechanism ???" I know I know, because the Indians did it! 😕

Fire sparks of Steam in Sandaoling Coal Mine Railway China

References I've written for seed germination, not entertainment, just practical real world application and fun:

Seed Germination & Old School Ideology vrs How Nature Actually Works

How do ecosystems regenerate when Fire is absent ? Aw, the possibilities!

Breaking News: Fire Ecology Updates, Bird digestion aids Seed germination & Ed Morgan deserves an Acquittal

What We Need Here is Wildfire to Propagate !!!

Tucson Arizona: Regenerating Parks & Parkways through Biomimicry of Floodplains

2014 Regenerative Parks and Parkways: Local Harvests and Enhancements in Our Community Commons in Tucson Arizona

presented by Brad Lancaster

What is the story of your own place? What is your role in that story? What is the role of your public land (parks, parkways, rights-of-way) in that story? The Santa Cruz River was still a free flowing Sponge-like Drain in 1904 Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A as you can see in the photo below. This river use to flow year round. The Santa Cruz river in 2007 Tucson has been turned into a dredged out straightener &  deeper channel through Tucson as land was considered too valuable on either side for Cottonwood Forests and Mesquite Bosques which once acted to percolate water into the deeper aquafir like a sponge.

Historically the great floods that would occur every 100 years are now beginning to occur every 10 years. Especially after human development paves over the watershed and increases the rate and volume of stormwater flow running off site. No more percolating through sponge-like riparian woodland ecosystems along a meandering river floodplain. Just massive runoff, destruction and wasteful evaporation. The river only flows with un-natural street flooding runoff.

The long distance from which to transport Colorado river water to Tucson also means higher costs and more energy. We ignore, deplete, or pollute our local waters — then import ever more long distant water away from other peoples which must be acquired and transported from elsewhere. The largest consumer of electricity (and single source producer of carbon) in Arizona is the pumping of this water hundreds of miles from the Colorado River.

The average annual rainfall in Tucson is (280 mm) 11 inches Yet more rain falls on the surface area of Tucson in a year of average rainfall, than the annual consumption of Tucson’s water-utility water Said another way, in you were to divide the average annual precipitation falling on Tucson by its population, then divide again by 365 days a year, and you get. Can you image how much water they could save ?

Harvest and utilize on-site water (rainwater, stormwater, greywater, c ondensate, etc) as close as possible to where it falls within the oasis zone (your yard or public landscape strips) - within 30’ (9 m) of catchment surface. The illustrations below show how water falling on manmade infrastructure can be utilized to eventually created a lush garden around the home with beautiful small trees and shrubs for free and in the process drop the surrounding temperature around the house by 10 degrees. Also take note of the large desert trees on either side of a highway berm with culverts & storm runoff ditches on both sides and compare that to the surrounding wildland vegetation further away. Water is concentrated as it runs off the hard solid pavement into the culverts & ditches which in turn provide ideal habitat for larger desert trees and shrubs. This phenomena of large green strips of desert native tree vegetation within the ditches on both sides of desert highways can be seen and observed on all desert highways across the southwest. Pay close arrention nexxt time you travel through on a desert highway. This also provides a perfect blueprint for narrow landscape curb strips and medians to not only beautify, but also counter these man made heat island effects. Thus far main steam conventional science has rejected biomimicry with only a handful coming on board to the solutions introduced by non-scientists. Why is that ??? 

Below here I've gone on to further illustrate through a Google Earth satellite capture of what most all desert roads look like along side the roadways where what runoff does occur ends up in storms ditches on both sides and the effect of enhancing wild desert tree growth of native Paloverdes, Mesquite, Ironwood, etc. Now look beyond the ditches several meters and there is almost nothing by comparison other than tiny grasses or shrubs here and there and often just bare soil. This should well help you to appreciate the next animated illustration that follows regarding roadside landscape strips with desert city neighbourhoods and commercial Parkways.

Image - Google Earth - Route 60 - south of Vicksburg, Arizona

Below here provides an animated visial of Path to Scarcity Path to Abundance • Turns resources into wastes • Relies on the costly and imported • Consumes more than it produces • Disintegrated Drains • Turns ―wastes‖ into resources • Relies on the free and local • Produces more than it consumes • Integrated Harvests

In Tucson, Arizona, they are receiving on average 11 inches [280 mm] of annual rainfall. Most of tthat no doubt in summer monsoonal downpours. One mile of an average residential street runoff into storm drains is over ONE MILLION GALLONS of rainfall per year. That’s enough water to sustainably irrigate 400 native food trees per mile, or one tree every 25 feet on both sides of the street - irrigated by the street. One has to wonder why Southern California is wasting so much time and energy with inefficiently planned and ineptly designed storm runoff infrastructure ???

Above these residents of an early attempt at cutting street curbs was done on Sundays when inspectors were off for the weekend because it was at one time illegal. Later when they had done other streets and proved how envaluable this concept was in creating shady streets with nothing more than rain runoff as opposed to municipal drinking water sources, they then went to the city to legalize the practice. They convinced them how successful it was and they became incentivized, then it later became mandated in new city road construction and renovation.

In the street animation above, they created cutouts in the curb, evenly spaced to produce a half meandering effect of a floodplain storm runoff in a main river channel which spills water off to the side of a main river channel as is meanders back and forth. Of course the same happens on the other side of the street, so the snake-like 'S' movement is complete. So the animated scene above would be the finished product based on anticipated flow of the stormwater. Blow is the storm event and the hoped for result in filling landscape basins from the curb cut eddys and the added benefit not only of harvesting free precious freah water, but removing more water from the drain on down the line, removing road contaminants and less violent additional flow volumes once collective drains enter the natural desert wash. That being the case there world be less damage done to the environment and money saved in repairs by municipal street & flood channel maintenance departments.

Below here is the before and after photos of the house Brad Lancaster and his brother bought years ago in an older Tucson neighbourhood before they created this water harvest concept. 

All these slide presentation photos and video below are Brad Lancaster's work. I don't need to repost everything, but I want to provide something to illustrate what water harvesting was like in the desert citires in the southwestern communities. California in general doesn't do enough of these types of things and they should. I added the google earth image to further illustrate how the phenomena of landscape growth happens for miles on end in middle of nowhere desert areas and how we can ise biomimicry to replicate this within city limits anywhere. Below is a TedxTucson video which came out this past March 2017. It's only about 19 minutes long, but well worth a watch of the history of water havesting in Tucson as presented by Brad Lancaster. This was a supplement to another post on water harvesting concept in biomimicry of meandering floodplains in Southern California, but it was too much material here to add to that post, which is itself an extension or addition to another larger post in draft.

My main water harvesting Post which directs to this one: 

Rain Water Harvesting Infrastructure Design Concepts

References to Brad Lancaster's organization, websites and Slideshare presentation

https://www.slideshare.net/Tucson-water-harvesting

www.HarvestingRainwater.com

www.DesertHarvesters.org