image: ASEC Systems |
Credit: OCCI.ORG |
Credit: UCSC |
(Irfan Khan, Los Angeles Times) |
April Sall is a biologist and manager of the Pipes Canyon Preserve, which was 90% burned in last month's Sawtooth fire. It claimed the Joshua trees shown, as well as 1,000-year-old pinon and juniper pines. "This land isn't meant to burn," she says. Even the often never given a second look deserts are not immune to fires and YES, they also are weather creation mechanisms. They are even less easy to replace.
Photo by Chris Clarke "The year we lost the deserts" |
Photo by Craig D Allen USGS |
Sanchez Dome moonscape. Jemez Mountains New Mexico. Again this is a scene of complete weather mechanism shutdown which when connected to other such events will have consequences well beyond the micro-climate level. Indeed, it will be national and GLOBAL.
Photo credit: Canyon Country Zephyr Cerro Grand Fire (2000) |
Photo by paysonroundup.com |
Eastern and Central Arizona has had more than it's share of Mega-Fires blamed on drought as the cause. Not true, there is a major difference between cause and mere symptom.
Photo by Grant Martin ASU |
In this photo and accompanying article, it's the Pine Beetle that gets the blame. The Beetle is a symptom, not a cause. Notice the dry annual grasses moving in ? This means another fire could quite possibly sterilize the ground the follow year given the chance.
Photo: Albuquerque Journal |
Bark Beetle killed these Pinyon and Ponderosa Pines in northern New Mexico during the drought years of 2002-2003, but rising temperatures played a key role in pushing the trees to the brink. New Research by a Los Alamos-led team concludes that rising temperatures will make New Mexico Forests far more vulnerable in the future.
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Here is a great link below to an article on historical mega-fires, if any. The study showed that for the most part, there were none. under story forest floor burns, but canopy fires were extremely rare. Droughts and Beetles were of no consequences.
Ancient tree-ring records from southwest U.S. suggest today’s megafires are truly unusual
Unprecedented study relies on more than 1,500 years of tree-ring data and hundreds of years of fire-scar records gathered from Ponderosa Pine forests.
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Some incredibly pertinent quotes from the article:
"The researchers found that even when ancient climates varied from each other — one hotter and drier and the other cooler and wetter — the frequencies of year-to-year weather patterns that drive fire activity were similar."
Reeeeeaalllly ?????
"Furthermore, the findings implicate as the cause not only modern climate change, but also human activity over the last century", the researchers said.
Nooo ???? - Human Activity ??????
"They discovered that the Medieval Warm Period was no different from the Little Ice Age in terms of what drives frequent low-severity surface fires: year-to-year moisture patterns."
Just for the record, what is meant here by Little Ice Age means a time period when the climate was wetter & cooler As far as the term, Medieval Warm Period, this was said to be a time period of droughts and hotter temps.
Photo by Sally King |
'Sky Island': Chronicling a Natural Disaster - by Bob Fisher
Scenes like this over the southwest's mountains and deserts will be a thing of the past if natural vegetative weather creation mechanisms are vastly destroyed. Recovery may be impossible in case cases. In the western USA, monsoonal moisture may not be utilized to it's full potential. In some cases when it does downpour, it may carry vast amounts of important biological material down stream, ensuring upstream habitats may not recover properly and thoroughly as they would have in the past.
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Credit - Timeless Environments |
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This leaves people wondering, what are the viable solutions for reversing this calamitous situation ? Unfortunately the science based solutions are anything but viable options. Habitat restoration projects at best, while many are well meaning, are simply ineffective and the methods used are extremely archaic and outdated. Mostly they are done in places where they attract eye appeal. Areas near where human habitation is prevalent. The San Jacinto Mtns in California - "Palms to Pines Scenic Highway" commerce maintenance agenda is just an example. Also in concluding, the options Science, Governments and Industrial Businesses are offering as solutions are artificial synthetic Biology, much like the failed GMO programs for which Patent acquisitions tell the true motive. If the solution somehow will not show a profit, it is not an option. One note of importance - The below climate weather modification technologies are actually modeled and patterned after exactly what forests do for the actual true weather creation around the Earth. They are not ignorant of how things actually work. But rebuilding natural systems does not make the big money like these SCI-FI futuristic mechanic devices do.
image: Meteo Systems International |
Most of the weather modification and geo-engineering innovations being pimped Industrial Big Business are as ridiculous as the last illustration in this gallery. People are going to have to start questioning who and what they are putting their trust, loyalty and confidence in. For all the big talk about skepticism, Free Thinking and Rationalism, very little of it seems to be making any type of true logical environmental sense.
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Further Reading references from above photos:
http://www.paysonroundup.com/news/2012/oct/09/millions-trees-will-die/
http://cronkitenewsonline.com/2010/12/part-two-from-pines-to-prairie-arizonas-forests-susceptible-to-fire-beetles/
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