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Hi Fernando. The reason for these massive fires is three fold.
The first reason has to do with the US Federal government's policy of
fire suppression in our back country which has allowed the vegetation to
grow in an unnatural and unhealthy thick way. This has been going on
for decades. The second reason is due to the precipitation becoming less
in the Western US throughout the 20th century which has been on going
into the 21st century. This includes both the summer and winter
precipitation. However the winter precipitation is the most important
precipitation for the forested mountains and plateaus where the majority
of these massive fires are occurring. The snow pack has become less and
less every passing decade. The third reason is due to the ever
increasing amount of irresponsible people that are using these lands.
They are not making sure their camp fires are dead out before leaving
camp or they are intentionally setting them for various reasons.
This
year Arizona has not had any major fires and here is the reason for
that. For about the past 8 months, the Federal government has been
conducting massive amounts of controlled burns throughout the state.
Basically they are just ground fires that are set in a forested area
that consumes most of the small vegetation and blackens the tree trunks.
They have also conducted some of these types of burns in our desert and
grassland areas as well to remove some of the vegetation. The idea
behind these controlled burns is to mimic nature's lightning set fires
in order to remove the vegetation that fuels these massive fires. Prior
to this year, controlled burns were practiced in only a handful of
Arizona's back country on a regular basis. Those areas had only small
fires occur there. While the areas with little to no controlled burns,
which was the majority of Arizona's back country, had some of the worst
fires occur. Hopefully, the Federal government will start conducting
controlled burns in these other states where the fires are burning this
year..
Thursday, August 27, 2015
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1 comment:
Not a bad theory but not accurate. The Pacific Northwest has a lot of dry and rugged lands. They have fires every year. Some years are worse and some not so bad. The lack of snow this year has little to do with the fires. But even there the theory doesn't hold water. Our weather is cyclical and next year or the year after we will get huge snowfall. It really depeneds on the El Nino/La Nina cycle and what the jet stream is doing. There is so much forest here and so much of it is in rugged country that controlled burns of all of it is impossible. So have controlled burns where it is easy to do and the fires will just start elsewhere.
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