Burning the prairie

With our President out in California getting confused about wildfires, we can bring up something we Do know how to do. Forest fires are somewhat difficult to control. In Finland, which Trump brought up, there is a lot of rainfall and many parts have a lake a few miles away. There are fires there, mostly a few acres, as forest is managed and there is little dead wood standing in commercial forests.

There is room for discussion in forest management. Trump badly mangled the message. We may indeed need to burn some dead stuff in order to keep old forests standing. You burn some in order to keep a bigger part growing. Dry and dead wood burns easily. Lumbering puts in logging roads, as in Finland, and these provide breaks that the fire does not cross.

I was in the Rockies last summer. There was a lot of dead wood in national forest. It seems to relate to global warming in a way. The snow needs to melt later innthe spring than it does now, to provide water for growing trees. Water falling on mountains irrigates the West side well enough, but the East sides are now getting drier.

Burning is managed in grassland, which is part of the California situation, and a crew can easily burn some areas as needed to keep native prairie species there (a small overall area of unconnected prairies, Google for a map of national grasslands) by preparing the land beforehand. Ranchland in the plains can be native prairie or managed to grow other grasses. The ranchers that were in jail in Oregon for a while mismanaged their burn on public land (they never got a permit). The edges of the planned area have to be cut or plowed so as to give an area where there is nothing to burn.

Here is a description of prairie burns.

Burning prairie

Iowa burns pdf at
http://www.iowadnr.gov/

Borrowed picture