[HN Gopher] Ancient redwoods recover from fire by sprouting 1000...
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Ancient redwoods recover from fire by sprouting 1000-year-old buds
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 232 points
Date : 2023-12-02 10:42 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Does this mean trees have evolutionary countermeasures to fires?
| Does this in turn mean fires were so much more common than we
| think?
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. But the answer to the
| first question has been known in the forestry community to be
| yes for quite some time.
|
| For instance - there are certain species that require the heat
| of a fire for their seeds to explode and grow new plants.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Believe it or not: the forestry community is not that big
|
| Edit: and judging from the gratuitous downvotes, pretty petty
| as well
| abakker wrote:
| I think the reason for downvotes here is that you don't
| need to be in the forestry community to know this. It's
| been in science textbooks since I was in 4th grade, kids
| did presentations and posters on it, it's in documentaries,
| it's on informational plaques in multiple national parks.
| The fact that some tree species are evolved to survive
| fires or require fires for germination is not
| controversial.
| yodon wrote:
| It's not that the forestry community is petty, it's more
| likely that the HN community doesn't like comments that
| don't add substantively to the conversation, and
| particularly doesn't like them as an add-on to a thoughtful
| and polite answer to a question.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Doubting my integrity by suggesting I'm being sarcastic
| just because I don't know something that clearly isn't
| common knowledge is thoughtful and polite?
| gausswho wrote:
| That describes me. Don't take downvotes as a remark on
| your position. I pass them out to anything that doesn't
| raise the level of discussion.
|
| I also hand them out to every top ancestor comment that
| uses the word 'downvote', for the same reason.
| roughly wrote:
| In California over the last few years, salience has led
| forestry and fire's place in it to become a bit less of a
| niche interest, at least certainly among the geekier/hn-
| leaning community.
| 23B1 wrote:
| My understanding is that fires in forests are not only quite
| common and have been long before humans were around, but that
| naturally-occurring fires are a critical part of forest's
| natural lifecycle and evolution.
| retrac wrote:
| Fire has been a major force in the evolution of land-based
| life. Even more so in the distant past. In the Cretaceous (70 -
| 140 million years ago) both temperatures and the oxygen ratio
| in the atmosphere appear to have been higher than now. The
| whole planet was covered in a thick tropical forest -- and it
| burned easily. The dinosaurs had to contend with continent-wide
| forest fires, and their bones are often found in the middle of
| a layer of charcoal.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Yes. Some species actually _need_ fire for their seeds to
| activate at all. I 'm surprised this isn't more widely known. I
| wonder what would change about climate activism and wildfire
| management if more people understood this.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Maybe. But most fires in the California coast are human caused.
| Today, lightning is extremely rare.
|
| Furthermore, be careful extending this train of thought to
| other biomes. My understanding of California chaparral is it's
| evolved to survive fire, but if it happens too often the biome
| disappears and turns into grassland. Some of the plants take
| decades of recovery before they are capable of fruiting.
|
| Just because a species has evolved to survive fire doesn't
| necessarily mean it needs it.
| jwlake wrote:
| Massive fire suppression is uniquely human.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > But most fires in the California coast are human caused.
| Today, lightning is extremely rare.
|
| Is it actually any less common than it used to be, or are
| lightning fires simply a much smaller percentage of burning
| measured by fire count or acreage?
|
| I can't speak for CA but up in Oregon we regularly have
| lightning causing fires all summer.
| roughly wrote:
| > But most fires in the California coast are human caused.
|
| Worth a note that regular usage of fire to clear underbrush
| was a very, very long standing practice among the native
| population - long enough to have affected the landscape and
| the trees in it.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Even places like New Jersey have done prescribed burns for the
| last 100 years (source: ex-resident))
| mistrial9 wrote:
| ecosystems of trees differ greatly across the globe. Here in
| California, one widely cited reference article on this topic is
| doi:10.1093/biosci/bix146
|
| Drought, Tree Mortality, and Wildfire in Forests Adapted to
| Frequent Fire Stephens, et al. 2018
| ryaneager wrote:
| Yes, they do the bark of a redwood trees is fire resistance,
| and even certain seeds in the forest need fire in order to
| start their germination.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| In areas prone to fire some plants do have evolutionary
| adaptation.
|
| In the Mediterranean, cork oaks have thick bark (which we use
| to make cork for wine bottles...) that scorches while the tree
| survives.
|
| The seeds of Australian acacias need the heat from wildfires in
| order to germinate.
|
| In some cycads the heat of fire triggers blooming, and
| gardeners stick hay in the crown and set it on fire in order to
| get a bloom and seeds.
|
| Etc.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Trees native to many areas have developed evolutionary
| countermeasures to fires. Trees native to many other areas
| haven't. Some trees have measures to recover from being eaten
| or destroyed by large animals, and often those measures work
| equally well if the tree was damaged by fire or even burned
| down completely.
|
| Trees are such a diverse group of plants that it's hard to say
| anything about them in aggregate
| SonOfLilit wrote:
| If a tree lives on average for 200 years, and has a mortality
| rate of 100% in a forest fire, you don't need fires to be very
| common for adaptations to fire to be worth it. Just one fire in
| each forest every 2,000 years or so would be enough. 20,000
| years should do too, but I'm less confident of this.
|
| Was lighting more common? Probably not. Were forests bigger and
| less gardened to prevent spread of fire? Definitely. So for
| each tree, there was a much larger area of vulnerability to
| lightning strikes.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| This is certainly true for the American West. Unfortunately
| in places like Patagonia the lenga trees never had to adapt
| to natural fire, so man-made fires are catastrophic.
| dboreham wrote:
| Some species of tree have cones that need to be burned before
| they will open. So, probably yes.
| bcbrown wrote:
| Absolutely, many trees have evolutionary countermeasures to
| fires. Some trees are very well-suited to colonized disturbed
| ground - they will opportunistically surge into an area after a
| wildfire, as either more of their seeds will germinate, or more
| seedlings will sprout into favorable conditions. Other trees
| have adaptations that make it more likely to survive wildfire;
| both sequoia and douglas-fir have layers of insulating bark up
| to a foot thick.
|
| Some trees have adaptations to ensure that their seeds only
| spread after a wildfire; sequoia cones are sealed shut by a
| resin that only melts in the intense heat of a wildfire. Some
| species can even be thought of as having adaptations that
| encourage wildfires in order to out-compete species that are
| less wildfire-resistant; grasslands require wildfire on the
| shoulders of foothills, where otherwise trees would gradually
| creep down the slopes. The dry foliage at the end of summer
| provides ideal conditions for wildfires.
|
| If you want to learn more about fire adaptation, an excellent
| entry point is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotiny.
| danrl wrote:
| Here in the U.S. west coast mountains some land owners started
| controlled fires on their property to get rid of the stacking
| fuel naturally while preserving the bound minerals and helping
| the large redwoods and sequoias to fend of contenders. I have no
| idea how they managed to get a permit in this area where
| officials and population ate crazily scared of these natural
| processes given that uncontrolled fires make the news every year.
|
| Also, a second generation redwood forest looks very different
| from an undisturbed one I recently learned from a forest guy who
| walked with me. He was reading the forest like a book. Very
| impressive. Turns out, my forest is a second generation and I
| should maybe take down a few redwoods, something I considered
| morally wrong before the walkthrough.
| retrac wrote:
| Prescribed burns (intentional, hopefully controlled, fires) are
| increasingly common in modern forestry and wildfire prevention.
| They're done in Canada and Australia, and from a quick search,
| it was brought back into practice in the 1990s in the USA.
|
| Parks Canada has an interesting FAQ about their practices:
| https://parks.canada.ca/nature/science/conservation/feu-fire...
| sakopov wrote:
| Controlled burns is a very old practice. So old, in fact, that
| Native American tribes have used it for centuries to prevent
| catastrophic wild fires in North America.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Supposedly. In my readings the evidence is thin on this oft-
| repeated claim.
| lukas099 wrote:
| Very interesting, could you point us to some further
| reading?
| not2b wrote:
| The (US) National Park Service disagrees with you, so much
| so that in some places they hire native elders to help them
| with controlled burns. They call the practices "cultural
| burning". They were done for many purposes, over millenia.
|
| See https://www.nps.gov/subjects/fire/indigenous-fire-
| practices-...
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| The small tribes of the northwest might have used fire
| for clearing land in their immediate area but there is no
| evidence that they were managing hundreds of thousands of
| acres of forests in order to reduce large wildfires.
| graphe wrote:
| Most old growth trees are gone. He gave proof they used
| controlled burns. Where is the evidence for the claim
| it's only ""small"" tribes?
| mock-possum wrote:
| Yeah it's one of those things that kind of sits
| uncomfortably in the "native Americans were wise nature
| wizards and we have to unlearn our toxic western industrial
| capitalist beliefs in order to rediscover their hidden
| mystical wisdom to save the planet" territory
|
| Like it's a good story, and it's true to some degree, but
| the pageantry around the language people use when treating
| it is... I dunno it just still sounds like gross Cowboys-
| and-Indians prose.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Native Americans were wise natural wizards.... but it was
| the Native American Beavers[1,2] doing the work, not the
| people.
|
| [1] https://kingcounty.gov/en/legacy/services/environment
| /animal...
|
| [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-
| beavers-shape...
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Though they did it for deer and preferred plant habitat I
| think.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Well, "had used it for centuries..."
| suzzer99 wrote:
| I'm not sure about redwoods, but tropical rainforests take
| something like 5,000-10,000 years to return to pristine old-
| growth state.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| This makes me want to see designated areas for old-growth
| forests to re-establish, and yet there's almost no chance
| that the people living in those areas 2000 years from now
| will have continuously held the same values and kept the
| project going.
| tomcam wrote:
| Cynic. I plan to prove you wrong.
|
| Day 1: Trees in backyard are fine. Sent a triumphant note
| to Odyssey7.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| Amazing. Keep me posted!
| tomcam wrote:
| I'LL SHOW YOU BUDDY
| graphe wrote:
| Where did you read that?
| bcbrown wrote:
| I'd question that definition of "pristine". The old-growth
| temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington,
| have only existed for about 10-12,000 years; that's about how
| long it's been since the entire area was covered by an ice
| sheet.
| fsckboy wrote:
| but as the ice sheet retreated, was that area colonized by
| species already adapted to temperate rainforest? or did
| unique speciation occur in situ?
| dtgriscom wrote:
| At least part of that is the climate. A forest in a tropical
| zone is so efficient at processing nutrients that the soil
| beneath a forest is almost nutrient-free; the nutrients are
| always moving from plant to plant. If you take off the
| forest, what is left is not very hospitable and erodes
| easily.
|
| Temperate forests accumulate humus; remove the trees and
| there are nutrients sitting there waiting to foster new
| growth.
|
| (IANA forestry expert...)
| jmspring wrote:
| Sometimes those landowners doing prescribed burns don't always
| do them in the best conditions. The Estrada Fire was near the
| Santa Cruz Mountains east of Watsonville. I've been to the
| property several times over the years and it has some beuatiful
| redwood groves including an albino redwood or two.
|
| Story - https://pajaronian.com/as-cal-fire-makes-progress-on-
| estrada...
| dmoy wrote:
| The US West Coast lags way behind almost the entire rest of the
| US w.r.t using controlled burns to limit wildfire danger.
|
| California intentionally burns like only half of the area as
| Minnesota, despite being like twice as big.
|
| Arkansas, GA, SC, etc all burn like 5-10x what CA does, for
| prevention purposes.
|
| Growing up outside of the West and moving to the West later, I
| was shocked how little controlled burns there are here.
| Projectiboga wrote:
| There is very little original "old growth" forest anywhere in
| the Continental US. It is usually in small parts of hard to log
| areas like around small streams, soft ground blocking how to
| remove the logs and certain slopes and hills.
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| The ents are going to war!
| vinnymac wrote:
| Whenever I read these stories I wonder what I can do to maintain
| the forest on my own property better.
|
| Curious if anyone here has any books they would recommend on tree
| identification and maintenance?
| agilob wrote:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/marijuanaenthusiasts/
| pvaldes wrote:
| a lot of people can identify trees on internet. Just describe
| your trees
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| As far as my understanding, nothing much different from what
| other plants do.
|
| Anybody with any experience with home plants will know that for
| most plants if you cut off the tip of the plant/branch (places
| where new growth happens) it will promote sprouting more branches
| in lower parts of the plant. Most plants will have special places
| where new growth can happen and experienced florist/gardener can
| exploit this to shape the plant to their desire.
|
| As far as I understand, there is a chemical gradient that causes
| nutrients produced in roots to flow to the tips of the plant for
| growth. If you cut off the tips, there is no more a place where
| the chemicals are used and that abundance -- mismatch between the
| large root system and much less ability to consume -- is what
| triggers new growth.
|
| Here, you have an enormous tree with developed root system but
| you essentially killed/cut off the upper part. The abundance of
| nutrients causes new growth.
| blindriver wrote:
| I remember when Big Basin south of the Bay Area was on fire in
| 2020. The alarmists were talking about how the fires were so
| especially intense that the region would never recover. I said at
| the time they were all full of hogwash, and there's nothing
| particularly special about the fire and it would recover. Heaps
| upon heaps of insults were laid upon me.
|
| Guess what, I was right. Every time humans think they know better
| than nature, they are wrong. Humans interpret things like forest
| fires as "bad" just like they think rain is "bad" but there's no
| good or bad in nature, just cycles, and every time we have the
| hubris to think we know better, like trying to stop forest fires,
| we are wrong. We need to just step out of the way of Mother
| Nature and let her do what she does best, which is continue the
| cycle of life for herself.
| nly wrote:
| You're right but you can probably caveat that with natural
| cycles and not man made disasters
| spacephysics wrote:
| What's more man-made is artificially preventing wildfires so
| dead brush builds up then you have a far worse fire.
|
| Climate change isn't causing wild fires. Wild fires are a
| natural part of nature's cycle. What's unnatural is us
| artificially delaying these cycles, then they come back 10x
| more intense.
|
| For cases where wild fires are directly caused by people
| (arson, bad camping practices), these fires are also more
| intense.
|
| This stuff happens all through the religion of science. I'm
| not a religious person, but time and time again the
| scientific community cries out "XYZ is bad/stupid/a relic of
| religion" then years later there's some scientific evidence
| for it and we spend another 5 years pushing back against the
| scientific community to change from their old ways.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > Climate change isn't causing wild fires.
|
| I get what you are trying to say, but that statement alone
| is too blunt to be accurate. Desertification, extended
| drought and record high temperatures do directly relate to
| causing fires.
| Zetobal wrote:
| Scientist don't think they are right or wrong they work with
| the data they have and add new data when it comes available
| otherwise they are not scientists. Honestly, insane that I have
| to say it on HN.
| gwervc wrote:
| What is your scientific background? Your comment seems naive
| and disconnected to what is happening in research labs.
| Zetobal wrote:
| Not every country fucked up their scientific community like
| the US did with their main focus on grants and star power
| but even with their educational system kneecapped by
| capital the US is still a scientific power house because of
| the thousands of people that do honest work and get ignored
| by biased and self-righteous comments like yours.
|
| If you have any insights lay it down on me...
| 2devnull wrote:
| I'll take the other side here. First, ok you were right in that
| the redwoods of big basin seem very healthy right now. I was
| swayed personally, as a layperson, by the following argument:
| it's possible that current wildfires differ from past wildfires
| in heat and intensity because of human factors like climate
| change and too much fire suppression. I hope I was NOT one of
| the people you felt ridiculed by, my only hope was that the
| notion be considered with some seriousness and rigor. It still
| seems possible to me that future wildfires operate differently
| than those of the past, and I still would favor cautious
| conservation policies in that regard.
| qup wrote:
| What you call "cautious conservatism" is actually playing
| fast and loose with the rules, and doing the wrong thing, if
| the prescribed burns are actually important.
| not2b wrote:
| Big Basin is recovering, but it is a long way from recovery. If
| there aren't any fires as severe as the CZU fire for many years
| it will recover. But if intense fires become more frequent,
| that's far less clear. The regrowth you see in Big Basin, as
| described in the article, appears to have been fueled by sugar
| reserves in the old growth trees. Can they sustain that if they
| get hit again and again?
|
| We have "just cycles" if the climate, on average, is fairly
| steady. But if there's a hotter/dryer trend, the areas that can
| sustain redwoods will drift north, and this might be difficult
| for very long-lived trees to keep up with.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| 300m years ago we had Pangea. I wait for that to recover.
| blindriver wrote:
| > Big Basin is recovering, but it is a long way from
| recovery.
|
| Define recovery. Do you mean recovery to the point that your
| Instagram pictures are as beautiful as before? Or do you mean
| that life is thriving and the forest is in its rebuilding
| phase?
|
| > If there aren't any fires as severe as the CZU fire
|
| How on earth can you get severe fires when the forests don't
| have as much fuel as they did before? The entire cycle is
| self-limiting.
|
| > Can they sustain that if they get hit again and again?
|
| Yes.
| shawndrost wrote:
| I don't have a stake in the broader fight, but note that
| severe fires often leave extra fuel in their wake. (It is a
| surprising fact, to me at least.) This is because 1) live
| tree trunks don't burn in severe fires, they leave behind
| dead trunks (which do burn next time) and 2) the ground
| cover that comes up will be more massive than the ground
| cover that used to be there.
| pvaldes wrote:
| >> Can they sustain that if they get hit again and again?
|
| > Yes
|
| Let me fix that for you. The correct answer is not.
|
| A "severe" fire is any wildfire causing severe
| consequences. A small bonfire that would kill the last 20
| specimens extant of a flower would be severe, for sure
| tomcam wrote:
| > Guess what, I was right.
|
| Not sure if you are physically capable of assessing the
| evidence. Everything hinges on how one divides the two words in
| your user name ;)
| seansh wrote:
| I highly recommend the book "The hidden life of trees". It shows
| trees in a different light by explaining their behaviors as a
| collective, how connected they are, and how they help each other
| survive and thrive over thousands of years. Did you know that
| trees can recognize their own offsprings?
| zakki wrote:
| Does tree feel the pain when we cut then?
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| If so, it would be more humane to cut them down as quickly as
| possible so as to minimize their suffering. I recommend C4.
| roter wrote:
| I assume you mean the explosive [0] not the plants [1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-4_(explosive)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_C4_plants
| jksk61 wrote:
| yes it is an interesting read, however you should know that
| some of their "facts" are highly speculative and some were
| proven wrong in the last decade.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Anyone interested in trees and/or great writing should read "The
| Overstory: A Novel", which earned author Richard Powers a well-
| deserved Pulitzer. Highly recommended.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Lets play to "who can say the most flippant feel-good thing in
| biology?".
|
| The fact that there is not such thing as an 1000-year old bark or
| a 1000 year old buds does not matter. The growing part of the
| tree is only a few years old, and the buds lie in that part. Old
| cork is dead. Old wood is dead; just a bunch of tubes. Cambium is
| the alive part.
|
| I predict that there will be a severe wildfire season in US in
| 2024. If you read this articles, you will feel much better about
| the loss in any case.
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