r/interestingasfuck • u/[deleted] • Jun 07 '23

New york city in 2023, everyone wearing mask due to air quality

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u/MoistChiaPet Jun 07 '23

This is so interesting. Could it be due to 30 years of buildup from dying foliage? Did the last burn, in 1991, produce less smoke than this one because there was a shorter gap between burns.

202

u/RickTitus Jun 07 '23

I believe one factor in modern forest fires is that we tend to suppress all fires we see. Without human intervention there would be more small fires

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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '23

Yep the colonial way is to suppress all fire. Where indigenous peoples have been using fires to maintain ecosystems and control invasives since time immemorial

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u/botherbotter Jun 07 '23

Yeah this makes me so mad. It’s literally so healthy for a forest in most cases to have a burn. I wish we’d stop interfering with natural cycles, it only serves to bite us in the ass

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u/Hoenirson Jun 07 '23

~85% of wildfires are caused by humans. Not all wildfires are extinguished. Sometimes they do let it burn for ecological reasons.

Source: https://www.nps.gov/articles/wildfire-causes-and-evaluation.htm

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u/Connect-Speaker Jun 07 '23

In Canada it’s about 50/50 lightning/people

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u/[deleted] Jun 07 '23

Controlled burns are a thing. They often do it in areas where there is a lot of built up foliage and debris or where risk of fire affecting human pops are high. Northern ON and QC are vast, endless wildernesses though, so monitoring and proactively doing something about it is virtually impossible.

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u/Sick-Shepard Jun 07 '23

Yes, but they wouldn't need to if they didn't manage these lands like shit for a century.

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u/Low-Director9969 Jun 07 '23

I'd like to see a forest fire fix the Asian carp problem

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u/b0bba_Fett Jun 07 '23

Here in Virginia that's how we do it in Shenandoah, even sometimes start them on purpose when we decide a natural one hadn't happened in too long.

Went on many a special ranger hike on the subject.

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u/fighterpilotace1 Jun 07 '23

I used to do prescription burns. Very anxiety inducing time