I remember as a child driving over to the coast with my family on Highway 299 West heading over to Trinidad California. It was in the summer time and was extremely hot that day. All the sudden the vehicle started filled up with smoke and we were choking and gasping from the fumes of many wildfires up and down the Trinity River. The smoke smell was so strong that I had to put a pillow over my face to even try to breathe. There were so many people traveling to Humboldt that day that were experiencing the same thing. The air quality was terrible for everyone to breathe. The clouds of smoke made it hard to see where you were going. Smoke causes environmental issues and health hazards. Wildfires have always been a problem driving over to the coast …show more content…
According to the Encyclopedia of Earth “Slash and burn consists of cutting and burning of forests or woodlands to create fields for agriculture, pasture for livestock, or for a variety of other purposes. It may also be part of shifting cultivation agriculture, and of trans-humance livestock herding.” People may not know what might happen due to the slash-and-burn farming if they do not take the necessary precautions. Farmers practice slash-and-burn to obtain land for planting crops, raising cattle or to build houses or shopping malls. Consequently, this practice is one of the major causes for wildfires in the nations that allow this practice. As a result, wildfires happen regularly in and around farming areas. It seems that no matter how devastating that wildfires can be the rate of wildfires does not appear to decline. Wildfires are one of the most life-threatening events on our planet, yet there are not any easy solutions to this …show more content…
The most effective way to stop forest fires from happening is to prevent them before they even begin. Firefighter deploy a number of technologies and different things that can help them prevent and plan for forest fires. Once a forest fire has started, firefighters have to move potential fuel in the path of the fire and having to create a firebreak. Unfortunately forest fires are a part of our natural ecological cycle. Controlled burns could potentially help the environment along with the required plants that actually need fire to reproduce. Wildfires in the United States have been increasing in frequency and duration since the 1980’s. This trend is projected to carry out and continue throughout the twenty first century. As the world wars wildfires will increase due to climate change and will be even more severe. The costs of wildfires in terms of major risks associated with them are health, property damage, life changing events. Also state and federal dollars are a major devastating factor. Wildfires are likely to increase unless we make changes and address the problems to each
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.
Fire plays a huge role in natural forests. The let it burn policy allows natural fires to burn unless, they threaten people, property, or endangered species. This policy allows the years and years of kindling that has fallen and piled up on the forest floor to burn up in smaller fires, instead of having huge devastating fire like the ones that burning for months in 1910 and 1988. When the west was first settled, forests were thinned by lumber companies that logged the trees and burned the logging debris, and by ranchers looking to increase pasture land. The last herder coming out of the mountains would set a fire to ensure good forage for the next year.
Humans have been changing the Western forests' fire system since the settlement by the Europeans and now we are experiencing the consequences of those changes. During the summer of 2002, 6.9 million acres of forests was burnt up in the West (Wildland Fires, 1). This figure is two times the ten year annual average, and it does not look like next summer will be any better (Wildfire Season, 1). Foresters have been trying to restore the forests back to their original conditions by thinning and prescribed fires but have encountered countless delays. Politicians are proposing sweeping changes in bills, which have caused great controversy, in efforts to correct the problems that the Forest Service has faced in restoration projects. Are these bills necessary or is there a better solution that politicians are overlooking?
The severe wildfire outbreak is to a combination of factors. California had a record breaking heat over the summer. This and the ongoing drought has put California in prime fire condition. The fires were fueled by these hurricane force winds, the highest being 79 mph. The fires are advancing at a rate of more than a football field every three seconds. This makes it extremely difficult for the firemen to keep up with. About
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).
Reinhardt, Timothy E. Smoke exposure among firefighters at prescribed burns in the Pacific Northwest. Portland: Forest Service, 2000.
The responses from the U.S. Forest Service to wildfires through the majority of the twentieth century were counterproductive. 5 Furthermore, the northern Rocky Mountains region is the only area in the United States that has had significant increase in human-caused fires from 1940 to 2000. 6 To be effective, the fire policies of the United States Forest Service need to study past forest fires and recognize forest fire as a critical ecosystem process that should be studied at local levels and have planned and controlled fires which will reduce the likelihood of continued increase in human-caused fires. Forest types that are part of the Rocky Mountain ecosystem such as ponderosa pine and mixed conifer have been negatively impacted by fire exclusion, because when these forests are left untouched they acquire higher fuel loads and hazards as well as increased numbers of shade-tolerant species of plants that serve as easy tinder in a forest fire and accelerate the rate and spread of potential
A series of wildfires detrimentally affected California this summer of 2016 having destroyed an abundance of people’s homes and leaving them subjected to evacuation orders, but particularly the Chimney fire which has been burning since August 13, and is currently only 35% contained since reported on August 23.
The evidence provided demonstrates that different bushfires do, in fact, result in varying social, economic and environmental impacts. This difference is linked to both the human and natural factors which help to determine the magnitude of the disaster.
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.
Wildfires are not only harmful to vegetation, but they are also extremely harmful to the air.
The Forest fire is occurring very frequently nowadays, reasons for it are a heavy increase in global warming and an increase in temperature.
The single biggest direct cause of tropical deforestation is conversion to cropland and pasture, mostly for subsistence, which is growing crops or raising livestock to meet daily needs. The conversion to agricultural land usually results from multiple direct factors. For example, countries build roads into remote areas to improve overland transportation of goods. The road development itself causes a limited amount of deforestation. But roads also provide entry to previously inaccessible—and often unclaimed—land. Logging, both legal and illegal, often follows road expansion (and in some cases is the reason for the road expansion). When loggers have harvested an area’s valuable timber, they move on. The roads and the logged areas become a magnet for settlers—farmers and ranchers who slash and burn the remaining forest for cropland or cattle pasture, completing the deforestation chain that began with road building. In other cases, forests that have been degraded by logging become fire-prone and are eventually deforested by repeated accidental fires from adjacent farms or pastures.
Factories and transportation depend on huge amounts of fuel--billions of tons of coal and oil are consumed around the world every year. When these fuels burn they introduce smoke and other, less visible, by-products into the atmosphere.