“some ponderosa pine stands now have well over 2000 stems/acre, in contrast to 120 years ago when only about 50 stems/acres were present.”
Where Have All the Grasslands Gone?” (part 4 of 5)
“Fire suppression during this century has promoted conditions that today threaten New Mexico’s forests with increasingly large, intense, and uncontrollable crown fires. The past 20 years have been unusually wet in our region, but true drought conditions (like the 1950s) will certainly recur unless global climate has indeed changed recently. The Dome and Hondo Fires that took place after the dry winter of 1996 are just a small foreshadowing of the potential for enormous and unnaturally intense wildfires to burn through our overcrowded forests and woodlands when multi-year drought returns. Such large crown fires will have many undesirable ecological and social effects, from degradation of habitats for endangered species to downstream flooding of human settlements.”
Where Have All the Grasslands Gone?” (part 5 of 5)
Fires were much more common prior to the 20th century, when they burned frequently. But fire suppression has caused a huge buildup of fuel which leads to larger fires. The worst fire year was 1748.
“Fig. 9-13. A cross-scale comparison of the largest regional fire year in the Southwest during the past 400 years: 1748. The synchrony of the 1748 fire year among fire-scarred trees at the smallest spatial scale (a forest stand) is shown in the bottom panel. Patterns of synchrony, which are a measure of relative areal extent, are then illustrated at higher levels of aggregation (larger scales, coarser grain size) up through the watershed, mountain range, and finally the regional level (uppermost panel).”
During early May, 1890 there were fires “everywhere” in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
08 May 1890, 6 – Minneapolis Messenger at Newspapers.com
This week in 1890, there were large fires on both sides of the Rio Grande in Colorado and New Mexico.
21 Jun 1890, Page 6 – San Francisco Chronicle at Newspapers.com
Spokane Falls Daily Chronicle – Google News Archive Search
The burn area from the 1890 fires in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains north of Santa Fe are now some of the largest and most spectacular Aspen forests anywhere.
