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Wildfire suppression in the United States has had a long and varied history. For most of the 20th century, any form of wildland fire, whether it was naturally caused or otherwise, was quickly suppressed for fear of uncontrollable and destructive conflagrations such as the Peshtigo Fire in 1871 and the Great Fire of 1910.
Fire regimes of United States plants. Savannas have regimes of a few years: blue, pink, and light green areas. When first encountered by Europeans, many ecosystems were the result of repeated fires every one to three years, resulting in the replacement of forests with grassland or savanna, or opening up the forest by removing undergrowth. [23]
At this time in history fire was viewed as a threat to timber, an economically important natural resource. As such, the decision was made to devote public funds to fire suppression and fire prevention efforts. For example, the Forest Fire Emergency Fund Act of 1908 permitted deficit spending in the case of emergency fire situations. [4]
The Federal Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) provides operational fire-control services and links to all provincial and territorial fire agencies. During a typical year there are over 9,000 forest fires in Canada, burning an average of 2.5 million hectares (ha) or 9,700 square miles (25,000 km 2). The number of fires and area ...
Controlled burns have a long history in wildland management. Fire has been used by humans to clear land since the Neolithic period. [48] Fire history studies have documented regular wildland fires ignited by indigenous peoples in North America and Australia [49] [50] prior to the establishment of colonial law and fire suppression. Native ...
Wildland fire use, particularly controlled burns, is an intentional fire to improve the health of a forest. These fire cycles help maintain the diversity of habitats for all species in an ecosystem. These fires also save on suppression costs of fires. Suppression costs are the costs caused by wildfires that are not prescribed.
Fire suppression, in combination with other human-caused environmental changes, may have resulted in unforeseen consequences for natural ecosystems. Some large wildfires in the United States have been blamed on years of fire suppression and the continuing expansion of people into fire-adapted ecosystems as well as climate change. [5]
Fire history, the ecological science of studying the history of wildfires, is a subdiscipline of fire ecology. Patterns of forest fires in historical and prehistorical times provide information relevant to the vegetation pattern in modern landscapes.