How Fires Affect the Tanami Desert The Tanami Desert is located in the Northern Territory in Australia. It is mostly consisted of sandy plains, but also anthills, termite mounds, rocky outcrops, sand dunes and salt lakes. There are around 350 people who live in the Tanami Desert. Lots of rain ir produced, but being in the northern part of Australia means high temperatures, meaning the rain evaporates more quickly, making it dryer. With there being a lot of dry grasslands, a higher chance of any fires happening. “But it’s not life threatening,” stated Caddie Brain, who is a journalist. Fires are created in many different ways, such as lightning, humans, accidentally or on purpose (Source Not Found). In the Tanami Desert, fire is mostly joined by …show more content…
Spinifex is a grass with sharp spines that is grow on sand hills, and they are very flammable. In 2000-2002, intense fires happened, which lost economic and natural resources. In 2006, many fires started by lightning and roadside ignition, causing many problems for animals and farmers (Allan). Later in 2007, more harsh fires were created (Allan). “The fires could carry from 300 kilometers from across the Tanami Desert in less than a week,” Stated Brain (Brain). In the Tanami Desert, patch burning and wildfires are affecting the environment and animals in good or bad ways, but they can be managed in a few ways. Patch burning has a positive and negative affect on plants, medium sized animals, birds and preventing wildfires. Patch burning is helping plants by giving them more space and values the growth. The production of dryer plants can cause more fires then there already is. The dryer the area is, the more possible chance a fire could happen in that area.
Thousands upon thousands of acres are lost in forest fires every year. We always hear about the dramatic losses caused by forest fires and are often concerned by them. There are so many horrible effects from fires and most of them affect so many people. Studies have shown that out of all of the different methods to decrease fire damage, prescribed burns are the most affective. Many people would argue that they are not as affective because they cause so many health problems. Although that is a very important view and may seem valid, those health issues are not as extreme as one might think. People should look at the majority of the benefits form prescribed burns and they will see how affective and important they are. Prevention is the key to society these days and is definitely an important factor in saving lives. If more lives can be saved as well as land and wildlife, prescribed burns may be the better way to go about forest fires. Although, prescribed burns are better for the environment in order to prevent drastic forest fires, severe damage to timber and extreme death of wildlife; some people feel it affects the health of a firefighter too much and it causes too many long term effects.
Malibu and Yosemite share similar ecosystem, which encourages wildfires and periodic firestorms. In his book Ecology of Fear, Mike Davis argues that Malibu should burn because wildfires are a part of its history. To illustrate his point, he relates numerous historical events from the first settlement of the region to modern days. Despite the high frequency of wildfires in Malibu, humans have continued to settle there in droves. Those settlers have fought the fires, which has done nothing but augment their intensity. Unlike Malibu, with its populated areas that have been damaged by wildfires, Yosemite benefits greatly from wildfires. Yosemite’s ecosystem has evolved with wildfires; indeed, without wildfires, Yosemite would lose its uniqueness. Also, Yosemite is not as heavily populated as Malibu, so fires in Yosemite would not affect humans to the same degree that they do in Malibu.
With the 10:00 a.m. policy any fire that breaks out was to be under control by 10:00 a.m. the following day. This policy was based on the theories about forest management in the plantation forests of Europe. But ecologists have later discovered that burning is essential for the preservation of many natural forest communities. For example the cone of the jack pine and the lodgepile pine will not release seeds unless they are exposed to the intense heat of a forest fire. Fire also helps animals by allowing new vegetation to grow on the cleared soil.
Australia is a land of rather extreme weather conditions and widely diverse climates that force the vegetation living there to adapt in many interesting ways. Australia is the driest continent, and biomes such as grasslands and savannas are prime sources of widespread catastrophic fires. The plants that grow in the vast arid and semi-arid regions of Australia are prone to fires simply because of the desert climates that they grow in. High temperatures combined with low fuel moisture contents, little humidity and drying winds that sweep across the landscape encourage many of the plants living in these areas to burst into flames at fairly frequent intervals. Serotinous cones, protective bark, intricate underground recovery systems, unique seed distributions and even the necessity of fire for reproduction are just some of the amazing ways that the major plant families which grow in these fire-prone areas have learned to adapt to their environments.
The Blackwater fire of 1937 was a forest fire that occurred when a lightning strike ignited a tree in the Shoshone National Forest. It lasted for 6 days and killed 15 people, injuring a further 38; David P. Godwin (investigator of the fire) said,“not since 1910 have so many lives been lost on a single national forest fire”. The fire consumed a total of 1700 acres of forest woodland1 in this time. The Blackwater fire’s dire effect therefore resulted in the methods of firefighting that were used at this time being reviewed and updated to try to make firefighting safer for those involved in combating fire.
Wildfires started as an annual and seasonal occurrence in the south western region of California since the early 1930’s in part because of the hot dry summers and the hot dry turbulent Santa Ana winds that blow in from the desert during the fall months. Now it has become a yearlong event (Mckay, 2010). These conditions greatly contribute to the “fire season” throughout this area. This set of circumstances in conjunction with downed power lines and humans that ignited fires took place in October of 2007. This led to a series of fires that burned more than 500,000 acres, destroyed 1,500 homes, killed 9, injured 85, and forced the successful evacuation of around 500,000 people out of harm’s way.
Fires kill plants and trees leaving wildlife without homes and food. Large fires cause lots of smoke and air pollution.
The reason for this is we have been having more wildfires then ever before. A big contribution to the natural disasters of this world is the ecosystem. When the air is highly polluted, the risk of things like wildfires rise. We are only raising that risk by adding more pollution to the air with prescribed fires. These fires are dangerous. They are starting to get out of control too often. By trying to reduce the risk of wildfires, we are only creating
As people of the twenty-first century, we are all too familiar with the frequent occurrence of wildfires in our nation’s forests. Each year millions of acres of woodlands are destroyed in brutal scorches. It has been estimated that 190 million acres of rangelands in the United States are highly susceptible to catastrophic fires (www.doi.gov/initiatives/forest.html.). About a third of these high-risk forests are located in California (www.sfgate.com). These uncontrollable blazes not only consume our beautiful forests but also the wildlife, our homes and often the lives of those who fight the wildfires. The frequency of these devastating fires has been increasing over the years. In fact, in the years 2000 and 2002, it has been reported that the United States has faced its worst two years in fifty years for mass destruction fires (www.doi.gov/initiatives/forest.html.). The increased natural fuels buildup coupled with droughts have been a prevailing factor in contributing to our wildfires and unhealthy forests (www.blm.gov/nhp/news/releases/pages/2004/pr040303_forests.html). Due to the severity of these wildfires, several regulations and guidelines have been implemented to save our forests. In fact, the President himself has devised a plan in order to restore our forests and prevent further destruction of our woodlands.
Allergens in the air also affect pollution, as carbon dioxide levels cause plants to produce more pollen (Climate Change, 2007). Smoke pollution from wildfires worsens the air quality and is harmful to breathe in. Wildfire smoke contains ozone-forming pollutants, particulates, and air toxics (California’s drought, 2015). The drought increases dry, hot, and windy weather, which intensifies the severity of wildfires. According to the CDC, the drought also increases the risk of catching fungal infections, or valley fever (Live Science Staff, 2012).
Forest fires kill many animals and usually destroy a large amount of land. Prescribed burns seem like they would be the best idea, but are they? Their claim to fame is to clear out land in order to decrease the burning space for when an actual forest fire occurs. Yet this may seem like a brilliant idea, but one must look at the negative aspects of controlled burnings. People might have a change of heart when they realize the damages and effects of such an interesting act. Keep in mind that not only is your health involved but even such things as the inconvenience of dealing with a smoky town. It is important to understand that prescribed burns cause severe health problems especially to firefighters; these are concerning carbon monoxide poisoning, visibility issues and health risks that will affect the future.
This practice is a quick and economically inexpensive method or clearing land for grazing or raising crops. It is accomplished by cutting down all the trees and brush in an area, as fast as possible (Slash) and then setting fire to the area, to get rid of all of the mess (Burn). It has proved to be a quite efficient way to pointlessly destroy the forest, because the land shortly becomes arid and barren without the trees there to maintain it's former richness. This is compounded by the lack of crop-rotation, which only speeds up the process of dry des...
4.0 Results 4.1 Total Fires Burned There were 9323 separate forest fires that occurred from the start of 2005 till the end of 2014. which resulted in a total area of 12,356,894.538 hectares of burned forest and affected land. 4.2 Fires per-year and Area Burned per-year The year that saw the most forest fires between 2005 and 2014 in the western provinces was 2010 with 1348 fires. As well as having the most fires 2010 also saw the greatest amount of surface area burned, with 2,429,289.909 hectares of land being burned.
Fire at any level can be devastating, yet the effects that wildfires have on every worldwide country really has left its mark on the land. As written by world renowned wild fire spokesperson Smokey the Bear, “Every year, wildfires sweeps through parts of the United States setting wilderness and homes ablaze. On average these raging infernos destroy about four to five million acres of land a year. But in 2012, wildfire burned more than 9.3 million acres, an area about the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined” (U.S. Wildfires). Destroying homes, crops, towns and of course forests. Yet the effects of these fires can be seen from a negative perspective as well as some positive. Plus there are natural causes as well as manmade that makes these destructive fires erupt and become almost unstoppable in seconds.
The Forest fire is occurring very frequently nowadays, reasons for it are a heavy increase in global warming and an increase in temperature.