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17775
From: sheila, [DNS_Address]
Subject: KNP Complex fire reaches Giant Forest inside Sequoia National Park, th
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the fire by Lake Tahoe had over 5K firefighters on it, put it out in jig time. There are less than 500 firefighters on this fire. Plus, no way so far to actually feed these brave firefighter who rely on communities nearby to feed them! This fire is totally mismanaged so far. I'll have a lot more to say about this fire in coming days but pray that they will get the help they need to save the oldest trees on the earth. KNP Complex fire reaches Giant Forest inside Sequoia National Park, threatens world's largest tree An out-of-control California wildfire has breached the Giant Forest, the world's largest giant sequoia grove and home to the Earth's largest tree, General Sherman. The Colony and Paradise fires, which comprise the KNP Complex, merged late Friday and grew to more than 17,000 acres. The blaze, which has shuttered the world-famous Sequoia National Park, remains fully uncontained. The KNP Complex reached a small area of the Giant Forest on Friday, in an area known as the Four Guardsman, where trees "had been thoroughly prepped in recent days," incident commanders reported. The flames have not reached General Sherman. Hotshot crews on the ground are working to determine whether it is safe to send more firefighters to the area. While low- and moderate-intensity fires are beneficial to giant sequoia, massive blazes such as the KNP Complex can kill them. Last year's Castle Fire burned through an area just south of the KNP Complex and killed 10% to 14% of the world's monarch sequoias – up to 10,600 trees. More than 400 firefighters from numerous local, state and federal agencies are battling the blaze that threatens one of the world's only habitats for the giant sequoia. |
17778
From: ao, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: KNP Complex fire boundaries as of 09/18 @ 11am..
URL: KNP Complex - Updated map and description – 9/18/2021, 11am
It might be worth noting there are varying conditions, ie fuel available due to recent prescribed burns, in the area... Looking east over Giant Forest Grove. Fire is edging into sequoia groves (yellow outlines), bumping into areas prescribed burned in past 5 years (bright green). Light green areas burned in past 10 years. |
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[17779]
17779
From: sheila, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: KNP Complex fire boundaries as of 09/18 @ 11am..
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Yeah, I was just looking over several maps of the 2020 Castle fire, found an interesting article about it at the link. Good to know they did do that much prescribed burns there. |
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17777
From: kay.so.or, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: KNP Complex fire reaches Giant Forest inside Sequoia National...
| also,since I lived in an area with the big sequoias, learned they have such thick bark, that many have survived fires in the past and even have had new trees grow up through the burned ones. not sure why they wrapped the bottom since fires spread through the tops of the trees (and of course if there is lots of undergrowth),in a lot of the redwood forests, the areas around their base are not overgrown, and the smaller bushes/etc don't reach very high on the massive tall redwoods. but I have not been in that area they are fighting, so not sure how it is there. |
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[17780]
17780
From: sheila, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: KNP Complex fire reaches Giant Forest inside Sequoia National...
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hi Kay, I've been reading a lot of NPS reports on the conditions now since about 2015 in the park itself and how the big trees have either survived or died since then. 2015 was the tipping point in terms of drought, climate change and beetle infestation and fire behavior since then. I found out that more than 40% of the giant Sequoias have died from fires since 2015. Last year was especially devastating to these ancient trees. In areas where the NPS has done prescribed burns, survival is higher but in US Forest service areas, they've done little to no burns thus the high mortality in those areas adjacent to the park itself. Fires these days burn so much hotter, kill trees that would have survived in the past before climate change went into high gear. Fortunately the budgets for these agencies who try to protect trees, the NPS, BLM, USFS has increased so they will be able to do more to protect these treasured trees. Also, with hotter fires, the trees burn right up to the tops and fry the cones so they've found that they don't reseed like they used to in the past. |
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17776
From: sheila, [DNS_Address]
Subject: A Single Fire Killed Thousands Of Sequoias. Scientists Are Racing To S
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A Single Fire Killed Thousands Of Sequoias. Scientists Are Racing To Save The Rest On a hot afternoon in California's Sequoia National Park, Alexis Bernal squints up at the top of a 200-foot-tall tree. "That is what we would call a real giant sequoia monarch," she says. "It's massive." At 40 feet in diameter, the tree easily meets the definition of a monarch, the name given to the largest sequoias. It's likely more than 1,500 years old. Still, that's as old as this tree will get. The trunk is pitch black, the char reaching almost all the way to the top. Not a single green branch is visible. "It's 100% dead," Bernal says. "There's no living foliage on it all." The scorched carcasses of eight other giants surround this one in the Alder Creek grove. A fire science research assistant at UC Berkeley, Bernal is here with a team cataloguing the destruction. It's not easy to kill a giant sequoia. They can live more than 3,000 years and withstand repeated wildfires and droughts over the centuries. Now, with humans changing both the climate and the landscape surrounding the trees, these giants face dangers they might not survive. Last year, the Castle Fire burned through the Sierra Nevada, fueled by hot, dry conditions and overgrown forests. Based on early estimates, as many as 10,600 large sequoias were killed — up to 14% of the entire population. "This is unprecedented to see so many of these large old-growth trees dead, and I think it's a travesty," says Scott Stephens, fire scientist at UC Berkeley, as he surveys the damage. "This is pure disaster." With extreme fires increasing on a hotter planet, scientists are urgently trying to save the sequoias that remain. Researchers from federal agencies and universities are teaming up to find the sequoia groves at highest risk. The hope is to make them more fire-resistant by reducing the dense, overgrown vegetation around them, before the next wildfire hits. But one year later, the sequoia groves are again under threat. At the time of publication, wildfires burning in Sequoia National Park are within a mile of a grove with thousands of sequoias. Firefighters are battling to contain the blazes. "It's hard to see these trees that have lived hundreds to potentially thousands of years just die," Bernal says, "because it's just not a normal thing for them." Sequoias need fire, but fires are changing Giant sequoias only grow in isolated pockets, tucked in the mountains of California. Losing even a few groves spells significant loss to the entire population. Sequoias are one of the most fire-adapted trees on the planet. With tough, foot-thick bark, they're insulated from the heat. They tower above the rest of the forest and the bottom of the tree is bare, without low branches that might be ignited by trees burning around it. Old-growth sequoias weathered the low-intensity wildfires that were once the norm in the Sierra Nevada. Fires regularly spread along the forest floor, either ignited by lightning or set by Native American tribes who used burns to shape the landscape and cultivate food and materials. With the arrival of white settlers, fire began to disappear from these forests. Tribes were forcibly removed from lands they once maintained, and federal firefighting agencies mounted a campaign of fire suppression, extinguishing blazes as quickly as possible. That meant forests grew denser over the last century. Now, the built-up vegetation has become a tinder box, fueling hotter, more extreme fires, like the Castle Fire, that kill vast swaths of trees. "These trees have been here 1500 years, so how many fires have they withstood: 80?" Stephens says. "And then one fire comes in 2020 and suddenly they're gone." The Castle Fire's fierce heat was also fueled by the changing climate. In 2012, when a drought hit California, hotter temperatures amplified the toll it took on Sierra Nevada forests. While the largest sequoias could handle it, other kinds of conifers around them succumbed. Millions of trees were killed. "The extra warmth that came with the drought pushed it into a whole new terrain," says Nate Stephenson, an emeritus scientist with the US Geological Survey. "That's what really helped kill a lot of trees, and they became fuel for fires." During his four decades of studying sequoias, Stephenson had rarely seen an old-growth sequoia die. When the first images emerged after the Castle Fire hit, he wasn't prepared. "That's when I couldn't help it," he says. "I don't cry often, but I cried when I saw the photos. Because I love these trees." story continues at the link. |
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[17781]
17781
From: kay.so.or, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: A Single Fire Killed Thousands Of Sequoias. Scientists Are Racing...
| oooooo thanks sheila, i didn't know all of this...it is a travesty, they could have lasted long after 'we' are gone from this earth with their legacy, but not now..dam! |
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