By Tom Harris – America Out Loud
In “Wildfires Not Caused by Climate Change; Here Are the Facts,” part 1 of this two-part series, I explained that our politicians, media, and environmental groups are wrong to blame the recent increase in wildfires on climate change. I showed the statistics that demonstrate that generally speaking, there is no increase in either area burned or the number of fires. In fact, since we now put out fires that would have burned for weeks in centuries past, there has been a significant decline in forest fires over the past 100 years. The analysis of sediment cores off the Pacific coast of Canada reveals that the incidence of wildfires has reduced since Europeans settled in North America. I also discussed the real reasons for the ignition of fires, a combination of natural (mainly lightning) and human causes (mainly carelessness).
In this part, I discuss how it is our lack of proper forest management that is contributing to the intensity and spread of wildfires. In fact, despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s predictable attempts to link the fires to climate change, it is his own government that is largely to blame.
So, why did the wildfires in Nova Scotia, for example, spread so quickly, once started? Along the east shore of the province, where many of the most dangerous forest fires occurred in the past month, there are stands of balsam fir at a density of over 10,000 stems per hectare. This is in contrast with most commercial forests, which would have a tenth of that density, which is far healthier for the forest. Today’s high forest density has created the most dangerous fuel type in Canada, with an extremely rapid rate of spread and high head fire intensity, the energy output of the fire at the front or head of the fire.
The really dangerous thing about these sorts of “overstocked stands” is that there is a lot of standing dead trees that serve to spread the fire from tree to tree, called “ladder fuels.” Also, the canopy of these stands is so dense that it is difficult for rain to get to the understory of the forest.
Also, when balsam fir catches fire, the resins volatilize like oily rags, and the stems explode, spreading the fire even more.
In the below post-fire image from Hammond Plains, Nova Scotia, we see the fire was constrained to the grossly over-stocked and damaged conifer fuel type. Based upon Google Earth 2015 aerial imagery, the surviving clump of trees are deciduous that have grown back from 10 years ago, when much of the forest was cleared …
