Tag Archives: fire ecology

written with clouds

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On Sun­day we were work­ing out­side on a project and hap­pened to look up at the sky. A plane had been sky­writ­ing, spread­ing some adver­tis­ing copy in the sky to the north–some sort of ad for Geico insur­ance, I think. After that text was done, up popped this message:

be-fire-safe-skywiriting-as-seen-from-the-ground

Here’s the same pic­ture turned upside down if you’re not one of those peo­ple who read books inverted:

be-fire-safe-skywiriting-inverted

“Be fire safe?”

Here in San Diego we often don’t obsess about fire until after the end of sum­mer, when the land around us has gone with­out water for six months and the hot desert winds blow from the east. The end of Octo­ber is clas­sic fire sea­son for us, the time of year when the firestorms of 2003 and 2007 rav­aged this part of the state. But last month’s Santa Bar­bara fire and this lit­tle bit of public-service sky­writ­ing got me think­ing about the place of fire in the local ecosystem.

Cover of Richard Halsey's book

Three meet­ings ago, the local chap­ter of the Cal­i­for­nia Native Plant Soci­ety hosted wild­fire ecol­o­gist Richard Halsey. Direc­tor of the Cal­i­for­nia Chap­ar­ral Insti­tute, Halsey has been work­ing to try edu­cate the pub­lic about new under­stand­ings about fire. In addi­tion to the insti­tute, he’s been a strong voice in the media, and has authored the book, Fire, Chap­ar­ral and Sur­vival in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. (Town Mouse & Coun­try Mouse did a nice post on Fire this month, which included some good quotes from Halsey.)

Any­one who thinks that plant soci­ety meet­ings are slow, drawn out affairs wasn’t at the meet­ing I attended. Halsey and one of the other biol­o­gists invited to speak went mano a mano over some of the ideas that rep­re­sented a break from what is still being taught in schools.

I’m no biol­o­gist, but at least some of Halsey’s points made sense to me. Here’s a short list of some of what he had to say:

  • The notion that “chap­ar­ral needs to burn” is a crock of bat guano. Although the ecosys­tem is adapted to com­ing back after a blaze, it doesn’t need fire to thrive.
  • When areas burn more fre­quently than the plants liv­ing there are adapted to, how­ever, many orig­i­nal plant species die out and inva­sives begin to move in. Type con­ver­sion of chap­ar­ral into a weedy grass­land of exotic species can begin.
  • Exten­sive fire breaks gouged into a nat­ural area are a mag­net for weed species that can take over the ecosys­tem. (See the pre­vi­ous bul­let point.) Of all of these points, the other biol­o­gist made the strongest argu­ment against this posi­tion of Halsey’s, cit­ing a study where areas with aban­doned fire breaks revert almost com­pletely to their pre­vi­ous species after a cer­tain num­ber of years.
  • A new study look­ing at ocean sed­i­ments in the Chan­nel Islands shows that large fires have occurred in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, but were sep­a­rated by far greater num­bers of years than we’re see­ing today. Vir­tu­ally all the fires we’re see­ing today have been caused by humans.
  • A leg­end of the local Kumeyaay peo­ple men­tions a par­tic­u­larly dev­as­tat­ing fire sev­eral hun­dred years before the arrival of the Span­ish in Cal­i­for­nia and Mex­ico. After the fire, the Kumeyaay had to live in the desert for an entire gen­er­a­tion before the land west of the moun­tains was hab­it­able again.

As recently as 2003–2004, when I was work­ing a pho­tog­ra­phy series on the 2003 Cedar Fire, I put together an artist’s state­ment for that body of work that included the sen­tence, “The land needed to burn, to regen­er­ate.” Halsey has con­vinced me that it’s time for me to rethink that position.

James SOE NYUN: Hill with wildflowersJames SOE NYUN. Hill with Wild­flow­ers, Cuya­maca Ran­cho State Park, 6 Months Later, 2004. Chro­mogenic print, 15 x 18 3/4 in.

gbbd: the garden and beyond

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mission-trails-lotus-scoparius-with-dichelostemma-capitatum

mission-trails-fortuna-peak-boulders

It’s spring, all right. The gar­den con­tin­ues to bloom away man­i­cally, but the out­door places around town have been no slouch, either, when it comes to flowers.

This Gar­den Blogger’s Bloom Day, hosted by May Dreams Gar­dens, fea­tures a gallery of some blooms from the gar­den mixed in with blooms from Mis­sion Trails Regional Park in San Diego.

In the top photo from Mis­sion Trails you can see that the yellow-flowered deer­weed, Lotus sco­par­ius, has col­o­nized many of the sunny areas that burned four and a half years ago. As the land­scape recov­ers, other plants will come in and stake their claims. The sec­ond image from near the top of For­tuna Peak shows that other areas are also recov­er­ing from the fires, though slower than far­ther downslope.

You can hover over each image below for its name, or click it to see a larger photo. While you can prob­a­bly tell what’s a wild plant and what’s in the gar­den, there’s an answer key at the end if you’re into quizzing your­self. (A few of thee are tricky in that they’re local native plants that have been incor­po­rated into the gar­den.)

Answers:
Wild, gar­den, gar­den;
gar­den, wild, wild;
wild, gar­den wild;
gar­den, gar­den, gar­den;
gar­den, wild, gar­den;
wild, gar­den, wild;
wild, wild, wild.

after the fires

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After San Diego County’s fires of 2003 moved into new areas, I was one of those tacky dis­as­ter tourists who went into some of the recently reopened areas. It’s inter­est­ing what moti­vates peo­ple to do things of the sort. An acquain­tance with doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­pher aspi­ra­tions scours the world for dis­as­ter, and has gone to wit­ness famine in Africa and Asia, and was in Banda Ache in 2005 not long after the pre­vi­ous December’s tsunami. What can you wit­ness in times like that?

I wasn’t look­ing for human suf­fer­ing. Also, I had no inter­est in the mawk­ish Hallmark-card exploita­tion of some weird sort of notion of human dig­nity that emerges in des­per­ate times. I was pri­mar­ily inter­ested in the fires as one whop­ping dose of real­ity of the power of nature, just as I have this fas­ci­na­tion of vol­ca­noes and earth­quakes, not for the ter­rors they can unleash on us humans, but more for a much-needed dose of human humil­ity. I think that we humans are blis­ter­ingly arro­gant as a species and need to be rat­tled into con­scious­ness about our place in the universe.

You can make some of these dis­cov­er­ies while gar­den­ing, observ­ing the world and uncov­er­ing your place in it. But I guess I’m dense enough that it takes some­thing cat­a­clysmic to give me the rest of the story. Dunno…maybe it’s the same kind of need that dri­ves peo­ple to moun­tain climb­ing or NASCAR…

So there I went, out into the burn areas, mostly to the back­coun­try, but also around my neigh­bor­hood. Look­ing back at the pho­tos I took I think that I was look­ing to find some sort of order or beauty out of the mess. Was it look­ing for some sort of reas­sur­ance? Or maybe some­thing approach­ing accep­tance? Mak­ing peace with the real­i­ties of the world?

La Jolla Panorama with Smoke I, Day 3, 2003.

Here’s the left half of a dip­tych taken on the third day of the fires from the top of Mount Soledad, a view­point that on other days gives you a view of the ocean, down­town San Diego and the moun­tains to the east. This was day three of the fires, with the flames now prob­a­bly no closer than ten miles away. But that day most of what you saw was the air, thick with smoke and the color of burnt caramel.

“Tim Loves Julia” Rock, near El Cap­i­tan Reser­voir, Day 3, 2003.

Taken the same day as the pre­vi­ous image, this was out just a cou­ple miles from where the Cedar Fire began. With the winds blow­ing east-to-west, the air was sur­pris­ingly clear imme­di­ately over­head but the smell of ash was every­where. This boul­der with the graf­fiti was prob­a­bly about as close as I got to look­ing at that human dig­nity thing. I won­der if Tim and Julia are still together. Or was this just some drunken mid­night out­ing with a six­pack and a can of spraypaint?

My first tourist pic­tures turned into a small pho­to­graphic series, The Fire Works. Over the course of sev­eral months I vis­ited many areas that had burned and looked for the signs of change, restora­tion or recovery.

Mis­sion Trails Park II, 3 Months Later, 2004.

After three months and a few rains things were still black­ened, but the green was start­ing to come back.

Mis­sion Trails Park VI, 3 Months Later, 2004.

Taken the same after­noon as the pre­vi­ous image, the signs of recov­ery are a lit­tle more sub­tle in this pic­ture. Imme­di­ately after the fire the rocks were black. Now they’re washed white. In a large print of this image you can see lit­tle seedlings return­ing to the park.

Rock and Branches, Cuya­maca Ran­cho State Park, 6 Months Later, 2004.

The Cuya­maca Moun­tains expe­ri­enced some of the most intense burn­ing. But add some time, sun­light and water and you end up with one of the more spec­tac­u­lar spring wild­flower blooms I’d seen in a few years.

Hill with Wild­flow­ers, Cuya­maca Ran­cho State Park, 6 Months Later, 2004.

…And this is one of the last images I took in the series, the fol­low­ing May. With the major­ity of the pines in the Cuya­maca Ran­cho State Park wiped out, restora­tion was far from com­plete. It may take longer than my life­time, and things will never be exactly as they were. But nature is doing what it does and doing it beautifully.

This project was a real eye-opener for me. You can read about the trans­for­ma­tions that occur after a fire and appre­ci­ate the facts. Still, there’s noth­ing like get­ting out into the areas that were affected to give me a much deeper appre­ci­a­tion of the changes.

After 2007’s fires, how­ever, after watch­ing too many days of dis­as­ter cov­er­age on tele­vi­sion, I had no incli­na­tion what­so­ever to repeat my post-fire sur­veys of 2003 and 2004. I stayed in the house, turned on the HEPA air fil­ter I’d bought after the ear­lier fires, and tried my best not to let the hor­rific news cov­er­age get to me. Some­times you feel that a human being has seen enough.

Speak­ing of things that humans prob­a­bly shouldn’t have to ever live through, let me plug a book by one of my recent cowork­ers, Paul Har­ris, who’s recently pub­lished Diary From The Dome: Reflec­tions on Fear and Priv­i­lege Dur­ing Kat­rina.

Paul went as tourist to New Orleans, look­ing to spend a laid-back week tak­ing in what the South­ern city had to offer. Instead he ended up in the mid­dle of Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina, evac­u­ated to the Super­dome along with thou­sands of the city’s res­i­dents who couldn’t find a way out of town. You’ve heard or read of some of what hap­pened there, but Paul gives an espe­cially har­row­ing account of the the expe­ri­ence. He saw and lived through things none of the press reported, includ­ing how being a white tourist gave you priv­i­leges that none of the major­ity black res­i­dents were offered. This book will open your eyes.

the experiment begins

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The pointleaf man­zanita seeds I ordered ended up being from one of the many plant species (not only man­zan­i­tas) that depend on fire to per­pet­u­ate their species. In nature, a brisk fire might wipe out many of the exist­ing plants, but the fire also cre­ates an oppor­tu­nity for the seed­bank to come to life. With­out the nec­es­sary fire, the seeds just lie on the ground–that’s if they don’t get eaten by critters.

The sub­jects in this exper­i­ment exhibit really really hard shells that pro­tect the embryo inside. Get­ting word from a hos­pitable out­side world to the swad­dled seed germ is the chal­lenge. The seed packet I received rec­om­mended soak­ing them in sul­fu­ric acid for six to fif­teen hours. That’s one way to break through the seed coat to get mois­ture and nutri­ents inside.

Doing research on sim­i­lar man­zan­i­tas, some sites rec­om­mended scratch­ing the seed coat, mak­ing sure not to dam­age the germ inside. Some papers rec­om­mended build­ing a four-inch pile of com­bustibles above the seeds and set­ting the pile on fire. And yet another rec­om­men­da­tion was to boil the seeds for fif­teen to thirty sec­onds (one source) or one to two min­utes (another source).

No mat­ter which of the above meth­ods was tried, the seeds also required cold-stratification to con­vince them that they had endured a near-freezing win­ter and could begin growth. Which seed-torture method to try was the question.

Sul­fu­ric acid: Where can a non-chemist get it eas­ily? And it sounded a tad dangerous.

Scratch­ing the seed coat (some­times called scar­i­fi­ca­tion): Tedious for more than a cou­ple seeds, and how could I be sure I didn’t scratch off too much? Or not enough?

Build­ing a fire over the seeds? This method also sounded dan­ger­ous, but poten­tially fun.

Boil­ing the seeds (a vari­ant on scar­i­fy­ing seeds): Sounded safer than acid or fire, but do you go for fif­teen sec­onds or two min­utes? Wouldn’t too long kill off the lit­tle embryos?

I think that tem­pera­men­tally I’m part mad sci­en­tist. I thought an exper­i­ment to test out all the rec­om­mended meth­ods might be instructive–and at least a lit­tle entertaining.

Acid bottle

Acid bot­tle

Sulfuric acid soak

Sul­fu­ric acid soak


I found some weak sul­fu­ric acid in a lit­tle squeeze bot­tle at a pool sup­ply store. At a con­cen­tra­tion of less than 1%, it was meant for test­ing water, not for play­ing with the acid bal­ance. Pretty weak excuse for acid, but worth a try. I soaked some seeds for 18 hours overnight, adding a lit­tle time to the end because the stuff was so dilute. (A day after doing this I encoun­tered an old bot­tle of drain cleaner in the garage, some­thing labeled sul­fu­ric acid. I’ll try another soak with the real stuff later on.)

Scratching the seed coat

Scratch­ing the seed coat

The next method was to scratch the seed coat. I used a steel file to break the seed coat and a pair of pli­ers to hold the seed. I scraped vary­ing amounts off the seed coat, from a mod­er­ate amount to a fairly aggres­sive amount. This was hard, slow, del­i­cate work–way more dif­fi­cult than I thought it would be.

After the burn

After the burn

I said ear­lier that build­ing a lit­tle fire might be fun. It was, though I smelled like smoke for hours after­ward. The flames burned brightly with the aid of a fire­place lighter, then the embers hung around for a good ten more min­utes or more.

Some­how this approach seemed to make the most sense to me. If the plants rely on heat, this solu­tion would pro­vide it. If they rely instead on some secret ingre­di­ent that emanates from burnt wood, this method would give them that. And if the burn­ing helps break through the hard seed coat, this method could do that, too.

It goes with­out say­ing: You need to use a non-flammable pot to do this!

Boiling the seeds

Boil­ing the seeds

And my last method was boil­ing the seeds. I brought water to a boil, threw in a few seeds, and picked a forty-five sec­ond time period to leave them on the heat. The boil­ing seemed to soften the seed coat­ing, and I tried to pull off what I could.

No proper sci­en­tific exper­i­ment is com­plete with­out a con­trol group, so there were some addi­tional seeds that I tor­tured in no way. I was run­ning out of seeds pretty quickly.

Drawer with pots of seeds

Drawer with pots of seeds

Each of the groups of seed were then pot­ted up, labeled, watered, cov­ered with a bag, and then put in the low veg­gie drawer next to where I store the film for my cam­eras. Now I keep them moist–not wet–and wait for two months. At the end of Novem­ber I’ll take the pots out and move them to my unheated green­house or maybe a warm win­dowsill, for tem­per­a­tures higher than in the fridge. After their var­i­ous tor­tures and a proper period of strat­i­fy­ing, maybe I’ll be crowded with so many man­zan­i­tas that I can give them away to every­one I know in the spring. Or not.

I’ll post the progress as I go along…