Natural Disasters

By Samantha Gleissner

I’d like to take a little step outside the fire zone and bring up something that may be relevant not only to how we perceive wildfires but global climactic events and natural disasters in general. In this growing age of human impact awareness we are beginning to understand more and more about how we humans are impacting our environment. As a student of environmental sciences, it has been a prominent point in my education to learn to see how our actions influence changes in the natural environment, and now I’d like to share with you a few things that I have come to understand about human impacts.

It is important when evaluating wildlife populations to understand how they fit into their environment and how they can impact other species in their community, but there are few if any creatures that influence their environment as much as humans do. As one of very few exponentially increasing species, humans tend to adjust the environment to fit their needs as opposed to dwelling only in environments that already fit their needs like most other species on the planet do. We tend to alter landscapes and species compositions by removing plants or animals that we find to be “out of place”. For some purposes this is a helpful practice (i.e. invasive species removal to promote native species health), but humans are also uniquely capable of removing thousands of hectares of natural habitats in a mater of a few weeks or months. We alter landscapes from forested to clear-cut, or from desert to tropical in some cases (California). Such drastic landscape alterations change the way the ecosystem functions in those areas and can bring on more frequent natural disasters and even worsen their effects.

Pollutants increase the toxicity of the air we breathe and influence the measurements the earth “takes” to reduce damage to its ecosystems and balance. I want people to think about the earth sort of like the human body, earth tends to keep a homeorhetic state, meaning that the earth maintains a stable flow similar to the human body. When something is altered in an unnatural way the earth will respond to correct the change, much like a human body. Global climate change is the earths “immune system” kicking into gear to remove the damaging or threatening alterations. Rains increase when high amounts of pollutants are released into the air, this helps trap the pollutants and remove them from the atmosphere. Similarly any climactic event or natural disaster can be better understood by evaluating the earth’s health. Often disasters occur in highly populated regions, often due to landscape alterations that change how the air, water, and other components flow thru the topography. Alterations such as the changes made to sagebrush habitat here in Idaho, for agriculture and industry, can lead to soil erosion, stronger wind effects, changes to soil nutrients, and other issues that can intensify future disaster effects.

When you begin to consider the impacts we have on the earth and the increasing human population, it is not really all that surprising to hear that natural disasters and climatic changes have increased over the years as well. Increased alteration of the land to accommodate our infinitely growing populations of humans and industry make it clear that our impacts do effect the way the earth functions. If an area is clear-cut to make way for industry or human habitation, we are changing the natural flow of the land and the way climactic patterns influence it and natural disaster affect it.

While many people understand that the earth is a functioning organism, very few people in contrast understand how our impacts on the earth no matter how minute affect the balance and even bring on “natural events” sooner or more strongly than they would normally occur.

Since I’m explaining this in a way that humanizes the earth, I would like to point out that humans as a species are far closer to being an invasive species, or even virus like in our interactions with this planet, but that doesn’t mean that we are not nor can be a natural part of the world. On occasion in the human body a functional cell such as an immune cell becomes “confused” and attacks the body, but this does not mean that it is a foreign cell to the body. I believe that humans are much like a confused immune cell; we are here to be a part of the world, to function in a capacity that facilitates the stable flow of the world’s climate and ecology. We just need to learn how to function more appropriately with the rest of the system of which we are a part so we can help restore and maintain our planet for future generations.

The Aesthetics of Firescaping

By Samantha Gleissner


In my last blog I talked a bit about firescaping and the reasons people may decide against it, I brought up a few reasons why people should reconsider the benefits of firescaping verses what some consider to be negatives. Today I want to talk about the layout of firescaping and the different aspects that should be considered when trying to make your property safe as well as beautiful.

Firescaping, or the process of dividing your property into zones to create the best possible defensible area, involves removing fuels, and carefully selecting your landscape to provide the best protection to your home. There are a total of 3 zones and they are as follows:

Zone 1 is the nearest area to your home and anything near enough to serve as a fire path to your house. This zone should be the most void of fire fuels such as overhanging plants or brush that could act as facilitators for the fire to reach your home. Within this zone it is wisest to choose non-flammable landscape materials and be sure to clean up any fire fuels and debris such as leaf litter in your gutters, which should not be as much of an issue if there are no overhanging trees near your home. Consider decorating this area with fire-safe materials such as stone and concrete paths. This is not to say that you cannot have gardens or plants near your home, the key to keeping a garden and still being Firewise is to keep your plant beds watered. If you keep your planters and gardens well watered the moisture content of the plants will be greater making them less flammable and less likely to act as fuels in the event of a fire. Some common fuels that people may not really think about are door mats, patio furniture pads and pillows, and even hanging peat moss planters, always be sure to look around and consider which average household items could be potential fuels when creating this defensible zone.

Zone 2 is the next closest area to your home stretching from the edge of zone 1 to approximately 100 feet from your home. In this zone there should be well watered and maintained groups of vegetation such as ground cover, perennials and individual trees or shrubs with plenty of space between so that if fire reaches one area it can be contained and avoid spreading throughout the entire zone. Fire-safe materials such as rock or brick walls or concrete paths skirting the islands of vegetation and between zones to prevent fire spread should help protect sections of vegetation.

Finally zone 3 is the farthest zone from your house and should be anything 100 feet beyond your home. In this zone there should be native vegetation that has been thinned and if possible any dryer vegetation or materials should be removed. Zone 3 is the highest risk zone for fire and creating the most defensible space for your home means reducing plant density and fire fuels in this area and even replacing them with fire-safe options. You can find a list of fire-safe alternative plants, firescaping ideas and examples of firescaped homes HERE.

By firescaping your property into these defensible zones you can reduce your risk of home damage during wildfire season. You can make your home beautiful using all kinds of alternative landscaping methods such as stone gardens and paths, reduced brush and overhang means less work cleaning the gutters and raking leaves so you have more time to enjoy your home without the worry of fire dangers. Perhaps the best benefit of firescaping your property is that in the event of a wildfire, a well firescaped property or community can act as a fire break that prevents the wildfire from spreading past the home/community, which allows firefighters to focus on stopping the fire rather than protecting the structures in it’s path.

I hope that this information will help those who are considering firescaping to understand how it works a little more and those who haven’t considered firescaping to understand why they should. Stay Firewise!

http://www.idahofirewise.org/homeowners/firewise-landscaping/

Fire Behavior Triangle Explained

Unlike the Fire Triangle (heat, oxygen, fuel), The Fire Behavior Triangle explains how a fire acts after it is already ignited. The Fire Behavior Triangle is similar in that it is comprised of 3 parts - Weather, Topography, and Fuels – but the complexity of how these components interact on a large scale makes this mnemonic device much more important in the education of wildland firefighters and homeowners alike.

Weather.  The aspects of weather that have the greatest influence on fire behavior are wind, humidity, temperature, and precipitation. Wind has played a vital role in every catastrophic fire in history. It empowers fire by injecting oxygen for combustion and pushing the flames onto unburned fuel. Humidity and precipitation both influence the degree to which fuels are saturated with water, which is important because dry fuels burn easily, while wet fuels are difficult, often impossible, to ignite. Temperature plays a lesser role, but along with low humidity, temperature dries out fuel for a more intense burn.

Topography. Simply put, topography can be described as “the lay of the land”. It may seem odd, but fires don’t burn the same on all landscapes - fires burn much faster uphill because the rising heat from the fire dries out the fuels above it, priming them for easy and rapid combustion. This effect of fire behavior, along with the inaccessibility of mountainous areas to firefighters, makes it significantly harder to fight flames in steep terrains. Fire behavior is also greatly affected by the aspect, or direction the slope faces. Here on the Northern Hemisphere it is the southern-facing slopes that get the most direct sunlight, and therefore are the driest side of any mountain or foothill. Rivers, deserts, and lakes that impede the path of a fire are also included in this category, and are used by firefighters to help contain wildfires.

 Fuels. Anything that can burn in a fire is considered a fuel – grass, trees, piles of leaves, even your home! Areas with a high volume of fuel per acre have the greatest potential to burn intensely in the case of a fire. Dry fuels will burn easier. Fuels that are close together allow fire to spread quickly. In Fire Ecology there are 3 main types of fuels: Ground fuels, surface fuels, and canopy fuels. Ground fuels are combustibles that lie just under the surface, like buried logs or roots, and burn slowly because of the higher moisture and lower oxygen levels. Surface fuels lie on top of or just right above the surface and can include anything from pine needles, leaves, grass, shrubs, or even your back porch. Crown fuels, which typically refer to the crowns, or tops, of trees, are far and away the most dangerous fuel type. If a fire can make its way up to the crown it is significantly harder to suppress, and crown fires can actually spread separately from the ground fire it originated from.

      The Fire Behavior Triangle is a convenient mnemonic device used by fire professionals to quickly and easily teach the fundamentals of fire behavior to just about anyone. Although it’s great for the layman, the Fire Behavior Triangle isn’t exclusively for beginners - it is still taught to wildland firefighters today who need to be constantly aware of the risky, unpredictable nature of fire behavior. Fire behavior is complicated and hard to predict even for experts, but when broken down into its 3 most basic components it is possible to understand, on a very basic level, how fires act in different ecosystems, seasons, weather, or terrains.