This Wikipedia page says the pre-1800 average was 4.4 million acres. So it looks like burning every 20 years was typical for a California forest.
Huh wild. I guess I have heard about redwood trees surviving forest fires, so that makes some sense, but man those’d be some big fires.
I think it’s the other way around: If your forest is burning every 20 years then the fire is relatively minor. There’s much less accumulated fuel so it won’t burn as hot or be as destructive as we see now.
That makes more sense—there would be more land on fire, but the fires would be weak fires, not the destructive fires that we’re getting now.
This Wikipedia page says the pre-1800 average was 4.4 million acres. So it looks like burning every 20 years was typical for a California forest.
Huh wild. I guess I have heard about redwood trees surviving forest fires, so that makes some sense, but man those’d be some big fires.
I think it’s the other way around: If your forest is burning every 20 years then the fire is relatively minor. There’s much less accumulated fuel so it won’t burn as hot or be as destructive as we see now.
That makes more sense—there would be more land on fire, but the fires would be weak fires, not the destructive fires that we’re getting now.