Re:2,000-year-old redwoods survive wildfire at California's ...
by brudgers on Tuesday August 25, 2020 @03:00PM
(#24274750)
Part of this is because the yearly burns the Native American Indians did to maintain the habitat
On the evolutionary scale of the coastal redwood ecosystem, those burns are insignificant. Intellectually, the argument is romantic. Some nobler previous state of human existence. It's rooted in an anthropocentric view, not a scientific one.
The physics of fire today are no different than the physics of a million years ago and the Santa Cruz mountains have been around for millions of years longer than humans.
The redwoods survived because they weren't logged. Simple but unsatisfying.
On the evolutionary scale of the coastal redwood ecosystem, those burns are insignificant. Intellectually, the argument is romantic. Some nobler previous state of human existence. It's rooted in an anthropocentric view, not a scientific one. The physics of fire today are no different than the physics of a million years ago and the Santa Cruz mountains have been around for millions of years longer than humans.
The redwoods survived because they weren't logged. Simple but unsatisfying.