How Can Forest Fires Be Beneficial?

Although wildfires can be scary, serious disasters, forests and the animals that inhabit them can actually benefit from fires. Learn how controlled burns work and why they help wildlife in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/how-forest-fire-benefit-living-things-.htm/printable

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brainstufflaurin boglabam
here of forest fires started by humans or nature, whipped
by wind and fueled by dry brush a curb one
hundred thousand times a year in the US, consuming an
average of five point eight million acres or two point

(00:22):
three million hectors of land. These fires destroy everything that
can't escape their path. But although, of course the loss
of life and property from out of control fires is terrible,
controlled burns are actually two hour and our ecosystem's advantage.
Since two thousand and one, the US Forest Service has

(00:44):
had a national Fire Plan to address the tinderbox conditions
caused by decades of fire suppression, drought, and scores of
residential developments neighboring forests. It is a multi pronged approach
that includes fighting fires by land and air, as well
as controlled burns. These deliberately set and controlled fires are

(01:04):
designed to take place under specific conditions and confine the
flames to a predetermined area. The idea behind controlled burns
is to reduce the fuel that could feed a wild
forest fire should one start under uncontrolled circumstances. This dangerous
scenario has become all too common in the American West,
where peat and drought have turned entire sections of forest

(01:27):
into kindling, ready to be sparked by blightening or lit
cigarettes and fanned by strong winds. Of the seven hundred
and fifty million acres or three hundred million hectors of
forest in North America, fifty seven percent is privately owned
and becoming increasingly developed for residential use. This means wild
fires are increasingly likely to harm people in property, hence

(01:50):
the need to prevent them. So today let's talk about
how controlled burns work and how they can actually help
a forest. In general. The boundaries of a controlled burn
include natural fire guards such as streams, and human made
fire guards such as tilled soil or gravel roadways. Before
burn takes place, weather must be taken into account. A

(02:14):
too windy and sparks could spread to unintended areas. Too
wet and fuel won't burn a Most controlled burns take
place when the wind is five to fifteen miles per
hour that's eight to twenty four kilometers per hour and
coming from a consistent direction. In addition to notifying neighbors
in local enforcement agencies of the burn, in many cases,

(02:34):
those agencies require a permit. A local fire department should
be on the scene in case the fire burns out
of control. Controlled burns begin by lighting a backfire using
a flammable liquid such as gasoline, along the down wind
perimeter of the prescribed area. The fire will then burn slowly,
usually with low flames because it's moving against the wind.

(02:57):
Additional flanking fires may be lit a long boundary parallel
to the wind. Finally, a fire is set along the
boundary opposite the downwind perimeter. The fires burn toward each other,
consuming all the fuel in their path, and dying out
upon meeting. By carefully controlling the burn, we can reap

(03:17):
the benefits of forest fires while mitigating the risk. Forest
fires are a natural and necessary part of ecosystems. Even
healthy forests contain dead trees and decaying plant matter. When
a fire turns them to ashes, nutrients return to the
soil instead of remaining captive in that old vegetation. And
when fire rages through dry underbrush, it clears thick growth

(03:40):
so sunlight can reach the forest floor and encourage new
native plants to spring up. Fire freese these plants from
the competition delivered by invasive weeds and eliminates diseases or
droves of insects that may have been causing damage to
old growth. Wildflowers begin to bloom abundantly. Most young, healthy
trees are resilient enough to survive a forest fire and

(04:03):
will soon have a growth spurt thanks to flames that
thin light banning canopies above, and scientists report that young
growth forests recovering from a fire are home to more
diverse species in both plants and animals. Although some animals
are injured or die from forest fires, most survive. The
majority of animals can smell a fire even when it's

(04:24):
quite small from miles away. Some animals, such as deer
and bear will flee the area, while others like insects
and small mammals will burrow into the ground until the
flames pass. And even though some animals may be displaced
during a forest fire, the scorched earth will eventually provide
an ideal new home for others, one that's full of

(04:45):
thicker vegetation fed by that nutrient rich soil. Forest fires
can create and all you can eat buffet and more
than forty different kinds of insects, for example, will eat
their way through fire ravaged territory as they burrow into
the wood that remain. There's even a species of beetles
that waits for forest fires, using heat sensors to come

(05:05):
in from miles away to eat injured trees. These fattened
insects then become food themselves as birds hunt for a
feast all their own. The shrubs and grasses fertilized by
fire created nutrients will grow lushly as soon deer and
other grazing wildlife like mice will make a meal of them.
Then predators, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, wolves, and bears will

(05:28):
get there full of prey too. Years later, when the
forest's growth has created a dark and damp interior framed
by a leafy overhead canopy, the forest's remaining residents will
move back in deep forest plants like mosses and lichens,
and animals like spotted owls and woodland caribou will once
again call it home. There are other options to get

(05:51):
similar results, like hand and mechanical thinning, which is the
logging of small diameter trees to reduce tree density and underbrush.
Thinning is more expensive and doesn't always return nutrients to
the environment. Take, for example, an experiment at Tall Timbers
Research Station in Tallahassee, Florida that lasted nearly four decades

(06:14):
and provided telling results. The twenty three acre swath of
land that's about nine hectores wasn't allowed to burn during
that time, plant diversity fell by ninety percent, and one
species of bird, a type of woodpecker, disappeared entirely. In
order to thrive, this ecosystem, like many others, needed fire.

(06:39):
Today's episode is based on the article how does forest
fire benefit Living Things? On housetiff works dot com, written
by Lareel Dove. Brainstuff is production of Ihart Radio in
partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by
Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
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