Excellent information. I fought fires out of the Chester Ranger Station, Almanor Ranger District, Lassen N.F. for five years in the early 1960s. Fire severity certainly has changed since then.
I hope your work and filming becomes a documentary! I have watched most these videos and not only did it help me to understand but your teaching capability is truley appreciated! 👍💜
They often do a brilliant job on this channel. It's a long hard road to overcome over half a century of destructive practices and the devastating Smokey Bear indoctrination we were all sold.
I live in a part of Magalia that was *not* torched by the Camp Fire nearly 3 years ago, very grateful for the heroic work of firefighters who stopped the spread of fire from Paradise into Magalia less than a mile down Skyway. I take daily walks, often in areas nearby that got scorched, and drive thru the remains of Paradise to shop in the few places left intact amongst the many dead & cut-down trees & burned-out foundations. It's sad to see what I remember as a beautiful forest before the notorious Camp Fire, burnt to the ground with blackened dead sticks as a reminder, yet knowing that my own neighborhood still looks good, again grateful that the Dixie fire that originated fairly close did not spread here. Thanks for helping me understand what I see so close-by. I'm hoping that local officials are effective at mitigating the challenging risks of rebuilding our towns on a mountain ridge whose very beauty was largely responsible for making it so vulnerable. On a positive note, we'll eventually be able to see the forest thru the thinned-out trees!
Thing is, that thinning (mid video) was probably just fine for the fires we had 20-25 years ago. The event that destroyed that thinning was driven by unreal heat momentum over entire landscapes almost too large to comprehend. I don't know any answers either, it makes sense that 30' tree spacing is enough. But apparently not. And when these sites burned in the distant past, and produced the beautiful old growth forests that are 97% gone now, not only were the fuel loadings different, the climate was different also. A side note, I am trying to reduce fuels on my tiny postage stamp amount of private land in the western juniper zone. This is a brutal amount of hand work that can't really be mechanized. The lesson is that the path to getting thousands, millions of acres of our forests back in shape via slash treatments and thinning is not an easy or inexpensive one, and will require all our technology and ingenuity, to say nothing of backbreaking labor. And it's not "one and done", it's a continuous process.
I've used goats for years to keep the brush down on my ranch in the Sierra foothills (rough terrain). My herd is pretty well trained and all I have to do is let them out in the morning and they come back on their own in the evening. If they don't come in and get corraled at night, the mountain lions will take them. There is still a heavy fuel load on my neighbor's property so I always wonder if this will be enough.
Well done. The tiny pine trees are seedlings. The Christmas trees you refer to are saplings. It becomes more obvious that regular burning under low intensity conditions will reduce these monsters. It's obvious also that the thinning and fuel reduction efforts did not work. It would be interesting to revisit these areas on a monthly basis and document the vegetative recovery.
As an emergency planner thank you so much for highlighting the importance of hazard mitigation projects / planning and understanding the incident and event histories of an area.
Thanks for the videos! I have land up by Emigrant Gap/80 and I’m trying to learn more about fire/ecology so I can do what is possible to protect it. How to thin trees, brush, etc.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!! Information such as this helps us understand the “science” of fire in layman’s terms, both the pros and the cons. You are giving us that can be utilized in practical ways. Thank you again your efforts are very much appreciated.
Thanks for sharing these observations and rhetoric around fire behavior and mixed severity. So much to learn after this event. I remember seeing this event on the flir cameras as it came down to the lake overnight. The flames were enormous and unforgetable. Remember the 36 drivethrus afterwards. Learn and teach. Thanks Zeke. 😚🐈🐈🐈⬛💕💜🇺🇲
Thanks for showing what timber industry spacing looks like after a fire in areas with known high surface winds. This is so important for redefining future forestry practices!
Have driven past those managed areas atop the Hat Creek Rim and felt such joy at the fuel reductions and openness. Sobering to see some of those stands not surviving. Thanks Zeke, great stuff.
So there’s good fire and bad fire. Anyone that has been in Yosemite Valley recently has seen some of the good fire the crews have started and managed on the valley floor as you hike the valley loop. We were there a couple of times when it was still smoldering and a few small flames. Sooooooo, that said, you have shown us some amazing maps of this fire and the Caldor. Any chance they will show a map that outlines the good in these fires. The areas that helped clear the undergrowth but did not kill the forest. That would be an amazing and informative map. Personally hoping there’s a lot of good fire acreage shown as most reports make it sound like all the acres burned killed everything in its path. Thanks for your reports!
If you watch the lookouts other videos on fire severity they have a negative color filter that can show the areas heavily burned vs partially burned. The partial burns are more likely to be the good kind of fire and the heavy burns are the bad kinds.
Thanks for sharing some of your knowledge. Having lived below the Hat Creek rim made this personable for me. Hopefully we'll continue learning from these circumstances. Your efforts are appreciated ~
Great video- thanks! I'm sharing it with prescribed burner/forest thinning friends. (Perhaps those forests that had been thinned but nevertheless got cooked wouldn't have been so severely impacted had it not been for the extreme drought and heat we've been experiencing in Northern California due to climate change.)
Great Information that I've learned. Thanks so much. I wish I had asked for more info from my moms boyfriend (Doug Ferrier) who passed but had so much knowledge like you. Thanks again.💞
Thank you for this. It would be great to hear your thoughts on specific non-profits / legislation / etc that we can support to encourage good fire / healthy forests.
@2:52 you stated that the trees were "naturally resistant", barely mentioning the clearance of undergrowth and debris (?) ... That there was little or no fuel on the ground for embers to ignite, little or no underbrush ... was this a 'natural' clearing? Otherwise, excellent information, photos, video ... "What good is it to know anything, if you understand nothing." ... thanks for enhancing my understanding of fire, forest management, and how Nature shows us WTF is up ;) :D
Sorry, pretty much just me and my wife running the show here, and we are maxed out with covering the Dixie and Caldor. We are looking for volunteer lookouts who know their local landscape and can talk knowledgeably about fire. Contact us if that describes you!
Based on what you are saying, I don't know what the answer(s) is/are. If clearing smaller trees/undergrowth and spacing larger trees doesn't mitigate wildfires extensive damage then what does? It sounds like the terrain needs to be considered along with density of trees / undergrowth because of wind-driven effects and draws/arroyos/canyons creating a vortex.
so are you saying even the big/older thinned trees are dead? so does thinning help stop fires or not? looks like the thinned areas have lots of exposed soil- that may never get covered with plants due to sun exposure and global warming heating !???
@The Lookout You’ve said in the past that USFS just doesn’t have the money for proper forest management. What would it cost per million acres? Would it be less than the half billion we’ve spent fighting the Dixie Fire?
What do you do about the logs on the ground that are still burning? Do you put them out or let them burn? This is all really informative for someone from Kansas. It's like learning about someone from a different culture so that you can better understand how they operate.
I’m wondering, if so many trees are dead, can they be cut and chipped for soil enrichment? They can’t stay and become more fuel ...right? Or are they no longer fuel? Or can they be used in some way for soil amendment for gardens? Couldn’t the forest service gain income for this kind of loss? Or am I completely wrong on this thought?
I think there is a natural succession in an ecosystem that includes downed trees. Getting trucks, crews and equipment into forested areas is another whole unnatural disruption of forest life. I also understand that a massive fire that leaves behind standing black sticks for miles is a very extreme change for a landscape, though not unheard of in the near and distant past (like volcanic eruptions). Successive phases of landscape change happen over many decades and even centuries. Taking away all downed wood takes away nutrient potential for future recovery of landscape. Mt. St. Helens is a really interesting example of succession recovery.
We have spruce budworm in our forest (SW Alberta), appearing for the first time. I was wondering if burn areas are more susceptible to insect infestations, after all this devastation.
Think big problem with insect infestations is drought. When I lived in socal I used to go up to Sequoia National Park all the time. Been away for almost a decade and after going back few years ago was shocked to see some parts of forests totally dead. Miles of nothing but dead trees. Ranger I chatted up said because of drought trees were already weak which made it easy for bark beetle to decimate whole areas. Usually when trees are healthy they'll release sap which helps them fight off insects. California has been in drought for much of last 20-25 years, trees need water. Fires fertilize the land so trees should come back strong as long as we get some good winters.
yes exactly! Surface wind patterns during fire season that aren't considered in silvicultural prescriptions may lead to total stand loss... But good luck getting the maniacs who harvest timber to agree with that...I spend so much time talking about this point and the treat me like I'm crazy. They'll start screaming about how we have to cut all the tree down to save the forest.
![[UNCUT] "บอสณวัฒน์" แฉ! แหล่งซุกเงินแก๊งบอส ขยันผิดที่ไม่กี่ปีก็เข้าคุก l คนดังนั่งเคลียร์ l17ต.ค.67](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/BL56qIfXYZM/mqdefault.jpg)
![⭐ฮิตในTikTok!! ( มะมะมะหมูเด้ง MooDeng ) Ver. แดนซ์ ReMix BY [ ดีเจกิต รีมิกซ์ ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4noyAoMa7bQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Excellent information. I fought fires out of the Chester Ranger Station, Almanor Ranger District, Lassen N.F. for five years in the early 1960s. Fire severity certainly has changed since then.
Thanks for sharing. Important for people to understand what's happened here.
I hope your work and filming becomes a documentary! I have watched most these videos and not only did it help me to understand but your teaching capability is truley appreciated! 👍💜
They often do a brilliant job on this channel.
It's a long hard road to overcome over half a century of destructive practices and the devastating Smokey Bear indoctrination we were all sold.
I live in a part of Magalia that was *not* torched by the Camp Fire nearly 3 years ago, very grateful for the heroic work of firefighters who stopped the spread of fire from Paradise into Magalia less than a mile down Skyway. I take daily walks, often in areas nearby that got scorched, and drive thru the remains of Paradise to shop in the few places left intact amongst the many dead & cut-down trees & burned-out foundations. It's sad to see what I remember as a beautiful forest before the notorious Camp Fire, burnt to the ground with blackened dead sticks as a reminder, yet knowing that my own neighborhood still looks good, again grateful that the Dixie fire that originated fairly close did not spread here.
Thanks for helping me understand what I see so close-by. I'm hoping that local officials are effective at mitigating the challenging risks of rebuilding our towns on a mountain ridge whose very beauty was largely responsible for making it so vulnerable. On a positive note, we'll eventually be able to see the forest thru the thinned-out trees!
Thing is, that thinning (mid video) was probably just fine for the fires we had 20-25 years ago. The event that destroyed that thinning was driven by unreal heat momentum over entire landscapes almost too large to comprehend. I don't know any answers either, it makes sense that 30' tree spacing is enough. But apparently not. And when these sites burned in the distant past, and produced the beautiful old growth forests that are 97% gone now, not only were the fuel loadings different, the climate was different also. A side note, I am trying to reduce fuels on my tiny postage stamp amount of private land in the western juniper zone. This is a brutal amount of hand work that can't really be mechanized. The lesson is that the path to getting thousands, millions of acres of our forests back in shape via slash treatments and thinning is not an easy or inexpensive one, and will require all our technology and ingenuity, to say nothing of backbreaking labor. And it's not "one and done", it's a continuous process.
I've used goats for years to keep the brush down on my ranch in the Sierra foothills (rough terrain). My herd is pretty well trained and all I have to do is let them out in the morning and they come back on their own in the evening. If they don't come in and get corraled at night, the mountain lions will take them. There is still a heavy fuel load on my neighbor's property so I always wonder if this will be enough.
Good work!
Well done. The tiny pine trees are seedlings. The Christmas trees you refer to are saplings. It becomes more obvious that regular burning under low intensity conditions will reduce these monsters. It's obvious also that the thinning and fuel reduction efforts did not work. It would be interesting to revisit these areas on a monthly basis and document the vegetative recovery.
As an emergency planner thank you so much for highlighting the importance of hazard mitigation projects / planning and understanding the incident and event histories of an area.
Thanks for producing this and all your other episodes. These observations are really important for future land and urban management decisions.
Between you & Blancolirio channel, I've learned a lot. Many thanks. 👏😊💛🇺🇸
My two "go-to" channels.
Thanks for the videos! I have land up by Emigrant Gap/80 and I’m trying to learn more about fire/ecology so I can do what is possible to protect it. How to thin trees, brush, etc.
Well done. Best wildfire educational channel.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!! Information such as this helps us understand the “science” of fire in layman’s terms, both the pros and the cons. You are giving us that can be utilized in practical ways. Thank you again your efforts are very much appreciated.
Thanks for the follow up! Very informative.
Excellent (e.g. useful) explanation. Eye opening. Thanks for taking the time.
Thanks for sharing these observations and rhetoric around fire behavior and mixed severity. So much to learn after this event. I remember seeing this event on the flir cameras as it came down to the lake overnight. The flames were enormous and unforgetable. Remember the 36 drivethrus afterwards. Learn and teach. Thanks Zeke. 😚🐈🐈🐈⬛💕💜🇺🇲
Thanks for showing what timber industry spacing looks like after a fire in areas with known high surface winds. This is so important for redefining future forestry practices!
Love that you mentioned the new growth in the meadow. I’m sure those critters are thankful for it
"It's complicated". True dat
Learn and teach🇺🇲🔜👊
Have driven past those managed areas atop the Hat Creek Rim and felt such joy at the fuel reductions and openness. Sobering to see some of those stands not surviving. Thanks Zeke, great stuff.
So there’s good fire and bad fire. Anyone that has been in Yosemite Valley recently has seen some of the good fire the crews have started and managed on the valley floor as you hike the valley loop. We were there a couple of times when it was still smoldering and a few small flames. Sooooooo, that said, you have shown us some amazing maps of this fire and the Caldor. Any chance they will show a map that outlines the good in these fires. The areas that helped clear the undergrowth but did not kill the forest. That would be an amazing and informative map. Personally hoping there’s a lot of good fire acreage shown as most reports make it sound like all the acres burned killed everything in its path. Thanks for your reports!
If you watch the lookouts other videos on fire severity they have a negative color filter that can show the areas heavily burned vs partially burned. The partial burns are more likely to be the good kind of fire and the heavy burns are the bad kinds.
Oh man, I really love this expansion of your content. Big picture understanding is amazing.
Thanks for sharing some of your knowledge. Having lived below the Hat Creek rim made this personable for me. Hopefully we'll continue learning from these circumstances.
Your efforts are appreciated ~
Excellent information and very interesting. Keep up the good work.
Thank you. Very informative.
Great video- thanks! I'm sharing it with prescribed burner/forest thinning friends. (Perhaps those forests that had been thinned but nevertheless got cooked wouldn't have been so severely impacted had it not been for the extreme drought and heat we've been experiencing in Northern California due to climate change.)
Thank you for the great information. Fire science is very interesting.
Thanks for the tour and education.
This is the best episode in a while! I particularly liked the detailed focus on fire ecology through your narrations of the landscape.
Great content. Thx!
excellent information
Another great video. Thank you
Great Information that I've learned. Thanks so much. I wish I had asked for more info from my moms boyfriend (Doug Ferrier) who passed but had so much knowledge like you. Thanks again.💞
Thank you so much for this.
So interesting and educational for me! Thank you for this.
Learn and teach🇺🇲🔜👊
Thank you for this. It would be great to hear your thoughts on specific non-profits / legislation / etc that we can support to encourage good fire / healthy forests.
@2:52 you stated that the trees were "naturally resistant", barely mentioning the clearance of undergrowth and debris (?) ... That there was little or no fuel on the ground for embers to ignite, little or no underbrush ... was this a 'natural' clearing?
Otherwise, excellent information, photos, video ... "What good is it to know anything, if you understand nothing." ... thanks for enhancing my understanding of fire, forest management, and how Nature shows us WTF is up ;) :D
Thank you. Very interesting
Can you please do updates on the fires in Sequoia National Park please???
Love your channel. Thank you for all you do!!
Sorry, pretty much just me and my wife running the show here, and we are maxed out with covering the Dixie and Caldor. We are looking for volunteer lookouts who know their local landscape and can talk knowledgeably about fire. Contact us if that describes you!
Learn and teach🔜🇺🇲👊
Based on what you are saying, I don't know what the answer(s) is/are. If clearing smaller trees/undergrowth and spacing larger trees doesn't mitigate wildfires extensive damage then what does? It sounds like the terrain needs to be considered along with density of trees / undergrowth because of wind-driven effects and draws/arroyos/canyons creating a vortex.
Awesome video! I'm a hiker that hikes in this area, can you give any information about the PCT THX.
so are you saying even the big/older thinned trees are dead? so does thinning help stop fires or not? looks like the thinned areas have lots of exposed soil- that may never get covered with plants due to sun exposure and global warming heating !???
@The Lookout You’ve said in the past that USFS just doesn’t have the money for proper forest management. What would it cost per million acres? Would it be less than the half billion we’ve spent fighting the Dixie Fire?
What do you do about the logs on the ground that are still burning? Do you put them out or let them burn? This is all really informative for someone from Kansas. It's like learning about someone from a different culture so that you can better understand how they operate.
With them well inside the burn they pose no hazard so let them burn.
Hi, Zeke. Is the plateau across which the Camp Fire raced in 2018 the same as what you're calling a "fire plain"?
Soon come …unrelenting ice storms cascading downhill
I’m wondering, if so many trees are dead, can they be cut and chipped for soil enrichment? They can’t stay and become more fuel ...right? Or are they no longer fuel?
Or can they be used in some way for soil amendment for gardens? Couldn’t the forest service gain income for this kind of loss? Or am I completely wrong on this thought?
I think there is a natural succession in an ecosystem that includes downed trees. Getting trucks, crews and equipment into forested areas is another whole unnatural disruption of forest life. I also understand that a massive fire that leaves behind standing black sticks for miles is a very extreme change for a landscape, though not unheard of in the near and distant past (like volcanic eruptions). Successive phases of landscape change happen over many decades and even centuries. Taking away all downed wood takes away nutrient potential for future recovery of landscape. Mt. St. Helens is a really interesting example of succession recovery.
We have spruce budworm in our forest (SW Alberta), appearing for the first time. I was wondering if burn areas are more susceptible to insect infestations, after all this devastation.
Think big problem with insect infestations is drought. When I lived in socal I used to go up to Sequoia National Park all the time. Been away for almost a decade and after going back few years ago was shocked to see some parts of forests totally dead. Miles of nothing but dead trees. Ranger I chatted up said because of drought trees were already weak which made it easy for bark beetle to decimate whole areas. Usually when trees are healthy they'll release sap which helps them fight off insects. California has been in drought for much of last 20-25 years, trees need water. Fires fertilize the land so trees should come back strong as long as we get some good winters.
In the thinned area where large trees were burned, if it hadn't been thinned would the trees act as a wind break and slow down the fire?
yes exactly! Surface wind patterns during fire season that aren't considered in silvicultural prescriptions may lead to total stand loss... But good luck getting the maniacs who harvest timber to agree with that...I spend so much time talking about this point and the treat me like I'm crazy. They'll start screaming about how we have to cut all the tree down to save the forest.
Open grasslands, within a forest exist for a reason. USFS professional foresters notwithstanding.
Learn and teach🇺🇲🔜👊