Sequoias Are Being Wrapped In Foil Blankets To Protect Against Wildfires (nytimes.com) 76
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Firefighters are swaddling giant sequoias in a flame-retardant foil in an effort to protect the ancient trees from wildfires that are raging through national parks in California, officials said. Three wildfires, named Colony, Paradise and Windy, were ignited by lightning on Sept. 9. Since then, they have scorched thousands of acres of steep terrain, bringing them to the foot of some of the world's oldest and largest trees in the Giant Sequoia National Monument of the Sequoia National Forest, and in Kings Canyon National Park in Central California. Park officials have been working to contain the spread of the fires using water and aerial drops of fire retardant. This week they also started wrapping some of the most well-known of the giant sequoias along the walking trail, including one called the General Sherman, in case the fires surge uphill into groves of giant sequoias.
"It is like a big spool," said Mark Garrett, a spokesman for the fire incident team that is monitoring a set of fires known as the KNP Complex in the Sequoia groves and in Kings Canyon National Park. "They just unwrapped the roll and went around the base of the tree," he said. "If fire got into the giant forest, I would be pretty confident that grove is going to be fine." Mr. Garrett said they had to tailor the wrap to fit the General Sherman's girth. (The tree is more than 36 feet across at its base.) The wrapping went as high as six feet high or more, he estimated. So far, he could confirm only that the General Sherman, which is 275 feet tall, had been blanketed. Other well-known giants along the popular trail are also going to be wrapped with the laminate of foil and fiber, which firefighters also use to make their shelters. The firefighters are also clearing the terrain of undergrowth, essentially starving the flames by leaving them little to consume. But heavy smoke was hampering firefighting efforts, Mr. Garrett said. Last month, the U.S. Forest Service closed all of California's national forests to help "better provide public and firefighter safety due to the ongoing California wildfire crises."
"It is like a big spool," said Mark Garrett, a spokesman for the fire incident team that is monitoring a set of fires known as the KNP Complex in the Sequoia groves and in Kings Canyon National Park. "They just unwrapped the roll and went around the base of the tree," he said. "If fire got into the giant forest, I would be pretty confident that grove is going to be fine." Mr. Garrett said they had to tailor the wrap to fit the General Sherman's girth. (The tree is more than 36 feet across at its base.) The wrapping went as high as six feet high or more, he estimated. So far, he could confirm only that the General Sherman, which is 275 feet tall, had been blanketed. Other well-known giants along the popular trail are also going to be wrapped with the laminate of foil and fiber, which firefighters also use to make their shelters. The firefighters are also clearing the terrain of undergrowth, essentially starving the flames by leaving them little to consume. But heavy smoke was hampering firefighting efforts, Mr. Garrett said. Last month, the U.S. Forest Service closed all of California's national forests to help "better provide public and firefighter safety due to the ongoing California wildfire crises."
A bit weird (Score:3)
Re:A bit weird (Score:5, Informative)
I live in California. I've visited the areas totally wiped by fires, and it's the sequoias and their relatives (coastal) that are still standing just fine while all the other vegetation is gone. They evolved to do exactly that over hundreds of thousands of years. Seems rather unnecessary.
Sequoias are not immune to fire, and we've lost a lot recently. https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
That's like 10 percent of the world's sequoia trees lost just last year.
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Yes, and wrapping the bottom 3' in foil is going to help how? Politics?
Re:A bit weird (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, and wrapping the bottom 3' in foil is going to help how? Politics?
The fires spread along the forest floor. The sequoia bark is dried out from the high temperatures and low humidity, so it is less fire-resistant than normal.
The firefighters know what they are doing.
Also, the photos I have seen show them wrapping about 10 feet high around the base.
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I thought the main threat is embers landing on the leaves. If it's just a few feet of coverage at the bottom, it seems that a water truck plus a few automatic sprinklers would be enough.
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Oh man why didn't anyone else think of this! After they rake the forests, they can just install automatic sprinklers everywhere and poof, no more forest fires!
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I never said anything about stopping the forest fire. This is about protecting a handful of trees.
They can't do it on a large scale because they'd need to bring tens of thousands of water trucks into inaccessible locations. Also it would cost too much to be worth the effort. Obviously with infinite money you can make the Sierra Nevada as wet as Seattle but nobody wants to pay for that.
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That you thought it was the bottom 3' shows how little you understood about the scale of the objects in the picture.
You should stop trying to 'splain this.
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Yes, and wrapping the bottom 3' in foil is going to help how? Politics?
I dunno. Try asking the people who are there on the ground fighting fires. You know, the same people who are doing this.
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"Yes, and wrapping the bottom 3' in foil is going to help how? Politics?"
The people raking the forests can reach higher.
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Yes, and wrapping the bottom 3' in foil is going to help how? Politics?
You wrap where the fire starts, which tends to start at the bottom. Flames go up. Up is where the rest of the tree is.
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And wrapping the whole trunk in metal won't turn it into a lightning rod for creating new fires?
Re: A bit weird (Score:2)
There is a lot of stupid here.
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Part of the problem is that the large amount of bone dry undergrowth is making fires much hotter than in the past, and it may do more damage to sequoias than normal.
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Part of the problem is that the large amount of bone dry undergrowth is making fires much hotter than in the past, and it may do more damage to sequoias than normal.
Exactly. And after last years fire losses, they are pretty sensitive to trying to save them.
Especially the General Sherman - losing that big bad boy would be a real kick in the gut. The West of the USA is in a pretty unstable environmental state right now. We keep hoping the west's drought will pass, but so far, the drought is winning. So we gotta do what we can do.
I've said it before. We're half drowning here in the northeast, rainy and warm and humid. I wish we could send even half that excess water
Re: A bit weird (Score:2)
You know they are organic things and eventually die, right ?
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You know they are organic things and eventually die, right ?
Yeah - so are humans. But that doesn't men we don't try to protect ourselves.
Re: A bit weird (Score:3)
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No, forest fires don't always spread in the branches and leaves. In some cases, yes this happens, but in healthy forests, the fire is confined to the undergrowth. There are species of trees (ponderosa pines, etc) that have evolved to take advantage of exactly this phenomenon. They shed their lower branches and leaves, leaving the canopy protected from most forest fires.
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Wrapping the bottom a tree won't do anything. Forest fire spreads above in the branches and leaves. This is just a publicity stunt: Woohoo! We did something!
Maybe in a typical forest like you'd see in the Shenandoah valley or the Adirondacks. Giant sequoias, different from coastal sequoias, don't have canopies that touch each other usually. I've been to the Giant Forest grove many times and can not see how fire would spread between the tall branches -- the giant sequoia trees don't make a clean canopy like you see in other forests. They are very much separate trees.
Have you ever been to Sequoia national park or Kings Canyon?
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The Sequoias usually contain a natural fire retardant (also prevents dry rot), its part of what makes redwood so valuable and why you will see trees that are at worst hollowed out a bit after a forest fire that consumed everything else.
But when the trees get really stressed by drought and pests the retardant looses its effectiveness and then the entire tree can go up in flames when before it wouldn't notice at all.
The Sequoias evolved with the occasional ground fire being part of it's life cycle. The tree'
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On the contrary. Sequoias , like other big redwoods like the Australian eucalypts , are highly flamable and burn at extreme temperatures.
Theres a myth around these plants as being immune to fire, because they tend to do well in small groundfuel fires. That may be so for lower temperature fires, but if you get a hot enough fire , these things don't just catch on fire, they explode due to the oils in them. The flash point for a sequoia is around 500F, which will protect them for a smaller ground fire, but p
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I live in California. I've visited the areas totally wiped by fires, and it's the sequoias and their relatives (coastal) that are still standing just fine while all the other vegetation is gone.
I think California has imported a lot of Eucalyptus trees, which are native to Australia. There is a reason why Sydney has "The Blue Mountains" around it. When it gets hot the Eucalyptus oils evaporate and hang heavy in they air so much that the mountains turn from green to blue.
One spark and everything burns. Eucalypti leaves burn super hot and they build up a lot of fuel on the ground to burn out the competition. It also burns off all the deadwood from it and they usually come back stronger and big
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Yeah, it ought to be illegal to plant a euc in California, and we should be eradicating them as fast as we can. When they die they turn into tree bombs. They just have no place here. When I was a kid I whacked down some that some of my neighbors planted on land that wasn't even theirs, they tried to get me in trouble and I was praised instead :D
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So true, they're beautiful trees, but so competitive that unless you have other Australian natives around then they will take over. One good thing though is we should probably send some Koalas over to you so they have somewhere else they can survive. You probably don't want possums though.
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We already have possums. They are ugly little bastards, but they eat ticks and do not carry lyme disease (which is becoming more prevalent) so overall I am pro-possum.
By all means though, send Koalas
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I did not know they eat ticks. I'm not anti-possum, Australian possums are pretty cute, maybe a little dumband sometimes a bit annoying if they make a home in your roof as they are nocturnal and 1.5-2 times the size of a cat and clumsy. I've seen one fall out of a tree with a massive thud, which was hilarious considering it's their business to climb trees.
It's the New Zealander's experience of them breeding out of control and also taking over which makes me think that like the Eucalyptus, they belong i
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We've got another one here called a Silver bark. The speed in which they go from being a sapling to being a monster sized tree that destroys the foundations and sewer pipes in your house is amazing.
I've lived in California 48 years.... (Score:5, Informative)
I grew up in an unincorporated pocket, so whenever I rode my BMX to school I'd see the population sign. In one year I saw it jump up 100,000 people from 480,000 or so.
I kind of grew up at the end of the farming era for the family. I grew up in orchards. Our city and county pretty much ran the farming out of our city by introducing "No collecting runoff, pumping from the creek, or owning your own reservoir" laws. Most of the farmers in our area had to resort to buying city water in the last few years, water that was treated to be good for humans, and just OK for orchards.
As our open space was paved over the heat continued to rise. For the 100 or so years my family has been here, there was always droughts, but the reservoirs and aquafers always had enough water to get us through. Now we're up to a million people, and about 6 million total in the bay area? More and more water that would have gone into aquifers, or been asperated by trees now goes to houses, lawns, turned into sewage and released into the bay.
Farmers have gotten the short end of the stick here. We've been villainized by housing developers, and various mayors and city council members getting their election war chests paid for by real estate developers and construction unions.
The solution is simple. Stop crowding so many people in one place. There are places in California with weather nearly as good (looking at Eureka, Fort Bragg, Crescent City) but lacking the jobs. You've heard of "Peak Oil"? Well we're "Peak resources" at this point. At least here in the bay area. It's about to get worse too, as Newsom just passed allowing a 4 way split of zoning previously zoned as single family. The cramped 1600 sqft house I live in with my wife and 2 kids isn't considered cramped enough, they just want to pack more in here.
If we were truly forward looking, we would give carbon credits to companies that locate in these lesser used but resource rich areas of California, but we don't.
Re:I've lived in California 48 years.... (Score:5, Informative)
In an average year, of all the water that falls on California, half remains in the environment so that we may have forests, rivers, lakes, and fish. Of the half that does not remain in the environment agriculture gets 80% leaving but 20% for all the urbanized areas in the state [ppic.org]. So if agriculture took all the water that supports all the cities and towns in California leaving them nothing, it would boost its water supply by a whole 25%.
Even though California's water goes overwhelming to agriculture, at prices that the cities subsidize by the way, the urban areas do not really begrudge being given the very short end of the stick because the urban areas actually have adequate supplies. The cities have done a decent job preparing for the drier climate, with water use down over the years even with a growing population, and creating vast reservoir capacity in recent years, and increasingly setting up desalination plants. They do not really need the water that agriculture is taking, and are not asking for it.
But here we have a recipient of "socialist" largess (that subsidized water), the lion's share of California's available water, and then some, whining they are getting screwed and it is so, so unfair.
By the way agriculture provides only 2.8% of the states GDP, which includes processing, not just production, so the state is getting a meager return on that 80% of available water. But again, the cities aren't whining. Only the farmers are.
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But here we have a recipient of "socialist" largess (that subsidized water), the lion's share of California's available water, and then some, whining they are getting screwed and it is so, so unfair.
If they cry hard enough they can water the crops with their tears, though.
Re: I've lived in California 48 years.... (Score:2)
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The city of San Jose has a dozen or so reservoirs for drinking water. Los Angeles has many more across the Sierras.
Re:I've lived in California 48 years.... (Score:5, Informative)
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The biggest consumer of water in California is not almonds.
It is irrigation of alfalfa and pasture for beef production.
Per calorie or per gram of protein, almonds use less water than beef.
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That wasted water isn't being used by cities. It's sometimes going to feed rivers that the city drinks out of, but the effects are pretty minimal.
The primary effect of legislation like that is to make farming harder and more expensive: instead of collecting wate
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run off to gutters and be wasted
Somebody tell this chucklehead about rivers, and irrigation districts.
Bread and Circuses (Score:2)
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How many gallons do you use to shower every day? I'd say there's a 50/50 chance you shower, unless you're Richard Stallman, then that drops to 0.
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But (I know it's become cliche to mention this) when a single almost almost takes 1.1 gallons of water to produce [foodrevolution.org]
In your opinion, how much water should an almond take to produce?
There was a way (Score:2)
If California had built out multiple nuclear power plants that would power giant desalination plants that would continually keep state water supplies topped up, and export water to nearby desert states... they would be in a new golden era and could actually pay for all the things they want to do.
Re: There was a way (Score:2)
Re: There was a way (Score:2)
Because it's cheap, clean, and provides consistent power.
Re: There was a way (Score:2)
It is cheap (Score:1)
Nuclear power is very cheap compared to running out of water, or as it turns out having to import power from many states away.
There is a huge cost to being reliant on others for power and water.
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Re: There was a way (Score:2)
So that you can more easily plan capacity. Hydro power is the reason the West coast has been experiencing power outages. Wind power doesn't work well in front of a coastal mountain range. Wave power is a possibility, but is relatively underdeveloped.
We're trying to solve the water problem, not score points with Big Green.
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So that you can more easily plan capacity. Hydro power is the reason the West coast has been experiencing power outages. Wind power doesn't work well in front of a coastal mountain range. Wave power is a possibility, but is relatively underdeveloped.
Solar is, over reasonable periods of time, e.g., a couple of weeks, going to be pretty predictable in California. Either way (nuclear or solar) you need reservoirs to hold produced fresh water, which is how you will have to end up planning capacity. If you are bringing wind into the equation that makes wind look more attractive. Desalination looks an attractive option for effectively storing excess energy from renewables in the form of a useful product. If you are going to propose nuclear this is not the be
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fwiw there are dozens of ways California can solve its water problems. It's not a matter of technology, it's a matter of politics.
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Re: I've lived in California 48 years.... (Score:1)
âoeThe solution is simple. Stop crowding so many people in one place.â
No. The solution is dense urban development. All you are seeing here is poorly planned suburbs going up in smoke. Good riddance.
Its a Well-Known Fact[tm]... (Score:2)
That most sequoias believe that WTC 1, 2, and 7 were destroyed by controlled demolition.
;-)
I guess it's okay (Score:2)
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The same people who write the source material for the info-graphics you read are the ones who decided this is needed.
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Fires, yes, but not of the intensity expected during these burns. And with exceptionally dry bark, the big trees are more susceptible than usual.
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But there's been a long drought, and lots of pests. The drought is making the bark less fire resistant than normal, and the pests means that there are lot of dead firs nearby that will burn very hot. These wildfires we've been having in California are not typical fires.
Hmm (Score:1)
So, they're protecting trees from fire, and clearing brush to prevent fire. Even though the massive fires are much larger than normal, because humans keep preventing fires, rather than starting more controlled fires.
I get it, they think these trees are cute, so they're gonna save em. But it's just more human meddling for our own egoes and pleasures. The forests will grow back if we let them burn as normal.
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The forests will grow back if we let them burn as normal.
Sequoias evolved during the ice ages. 99% are already gone.
The germination and survival rate for seedlings is near zero in the warmer and dryer climate.
They will not "grow back" by themselves.
Whoâ(TM)s lighting these fires? (Score:1)
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21% arson.
Get the facts straight:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]
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Lightning is a common source of fires in California. Because the vegetation is so dry every summer, a brief summer thunderstorm can start a dozen fires in its path across the state.
Re:Who's lighting these fires? (Score:2)
NYT Paywall should die in a fire (Score:2)
Great story, if only an editor did their job and posted a link everyone could read.
What tree? (Score:2)
wouldn't a better title be (Score:2)
"Humans continue to attempt to resist natural processes and insist things not change because they're fond of the way they are."
?
Well then (Score:1)
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They do.
I work with a remote site in Washington State. Back in 2015, which is one of the few fully intact "Company Towns" left in the United States. We have 24 buildings on a 20 acre plot, deep in a National Forest.
Anyhow, when our wildfire came through, the Hot Shot crews spent significant time hardening our buildings using "House Wrap" which is the foil they're talking about in the article, and helped us to make it through the wildfire when it eventually came to our site.
Interestingly, they also worked ha
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Anyhow, when our wildfire came through, the Hot Shot crews spent significant time hardening our buildings using "House Wrap" which is the foil they're talking about in the article, and helped us to make it through the wildfire when it eventually came to our site.
Hey, excellent. I learn something new every day! Thanks.