- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
![An area near Shaver Lake where the 2020 Creek Fire burned most of the living vegetation and old tree stumps. (Photo: Jeannette Warnert)](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/anrnews/blogfiles/75093small.jpg)
After another record year for California wildfire, concern is now turning to the soil impacted by firestorms, reported Sarah Klearman in the Napa Valley Register.
High-temperature flames can incinerate vegetation and destroy plant root systems, said Toby O'Geen, UC Cooperative Extension soil specialist at UC Davis. The loss of vegetation destabilizes the landscape, making it vulnerable to serious erosion or flooding.
"The most important way to battle erosion is to have surface cover - living...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
![The Helena Fire of 2017 burned down a pioneer mining town. (Photo: U.S. Forest Service)](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/anrnews/blogfiles/74945small.jpg)
In California, most ghost towns were created when a local industry collapsed. Now, climate change is more often to blame when booming communities whither and die, reported Daniel Cusick in E&E News.
In an eerie horror story released just before Halloween, Cusick wrote about five towns around the nation that have died or are dying from climate-related disasters. Historic Shasta and Helena, Calif., are featured in one of the vignettes.
"Those are two towns that are getting more ghostly," said Yana Valochovich, UC Cooperative Extension forestry advisor in Humboldt and Del Norte counties.
A...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
![UCCE forestry advisor Michael Jones.](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/anrnews/blogfiles/74462small.jpg)
The vast California acreage burned in 2020 and the protracted smoky skies should signal state residents and officials to adapt to a new reality, reported Ezra David Romero on Capital Public Radio. The 4 million acres of wildland burned this year isn't unprecedented.
Before 1800, 4.5 million or more burned every year in California, according to a UC Berkeley study.
Tragic as they are, parts of the 2020 fires will bring some areas back to natural equilibrium.
"Some areas are going to be hit really hard . . . and will have trouble recovering," said Michael Jones, UCCE forestry...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
![Lenya Quinn-Davidson.](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/anrnews/blogfiles/74278small.jpg)
Five of California's six largest fires have occurred in 2020, reported Julie Cart in CalMatters.
“There is a collective sensation that we are reaching a tipping point,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, a fire specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension. “This year was not just the fluke burning horrifically. This is 3.2 million acres of fire that burned in a month.”
Quinn-Davidson is based in Humboldt County, with typically rainy, foggy redwood forests. However, she said, the forests don't resemble their former...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
![A shaded fire break within a dense forest. (Photo: Rob York)](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/anrnews/blogfiles/73880small.png)
Three news articles over the last weekend shared comments from UC Agriculture and Natural Resource's experts about forest management practices that can help reduced the catastrophic wildfires being experiences in the West.
Prescribed burns and management change fire behavior
Shaver Lake forest historian Jared Dahl Aldern tweeted that, when the high-intensity Creek Fire arrived at the Shaver Lake forestlands, it turned into a low-intensity “surface fire,” which does not threaten the bigger and older trees. “The fire comes up to @SCE land,” tweeted Aldern, “drops to the ground, and stays out of the tree crowns.”
Whatever happens to Shaver Lake, says...