Burnt Forrest Yellowstone

I had planned a trip to Yellowstone and had made all my reservations

and airline plans and then the fires broke. It was to late to cancel

so I went anyway.I believe it was 1998 and almost the whole park was

ablaze. I was lucky to be able to get into some areas as most of them

were closed except to firefighters.To be there and see anything of

this magnitude just takes your breath away. The acrid smell of smoke

filled the air and smothering fires were everywhere. The lush green

forests were all but gone and replaced with charred and ashen remains.

This is one of the few photographs that I took that trip and it pretty

much tells it's own story.There was very little post processing to do

to this image; just increase the contrast and a little dodging and

burning for emphasis. I toned it in Ecktalure Cream and selenium. PS

Just as a note, these fires are mother nature's way of cleaning house.

Over the years downed trees, bushes, decay and undergrowth litter the

forest floor and after these type of fires it's like started anew with

a clean slate.

This is a nice photo and the textures, especially are captured and presented very well; worthy of note just in and of itself (themselves).

 

As to the statement about 'cleaning house' or some such.

 

That may have been the way before the advent of man, but Indians periodically started fires to clear away underbrush, I am told by experts familiar with foresty.

 

So the way you describe it may have related well to pre-hominid times, but since hominids with fire entered forests, they have burned away the underbrush, but with fires set often in rainy seasons so they would not 'crown' - which is to engulf the whole tree and jump tree to tree (crowning).

 

Redwoods almsot all bear the scars of man-made or lightning-started fires which never engulfed whole forests.

 

While fire is a way that mother nature cleans house, when a whole forest is inundated, it can be a century or several before the forest restores to its original state if subject to a catastrophic fire with crowning.

 

What the Indians did not do, in forests like Yellowstone, lightning did, but when modern man came he (she) suppressed those fires, allowing the accumulation of underbrush and other tinder that caused fires to turn catastrophic, killing everything in the forest.

 

While some long-lasting seeds require immense heat probably from fire, to begin growing, that is not the root-destroying heat associated with such fires.

 

While it's nice to refer to 'fire' as a way of 'cleaning house' -- one should differerntiate between the kind and type of fire that one is describing.

 

It one looks to pre-hominid times, then lighting scoured the forests periodically, sometimes but often not, causing catastrophic fires which killed everything, including all those cute little furry creatures.

 

If one looks to the advent of man with fire, then he/she set fires that were meant to clear underbrush, and they targeted wetter times, I hear experts say, and did not destroy the life-giving forests.

 

When modern man came, he made a decision to stop fires, believing they were destructive and must be stopped. In reality only catastrophic fires were the cause of so much death and destruction and indeed if you restrict your analysis to the low-burning, non-crowning fires that occurred from man and/lighting (sometimes but not always from lightning as they coujld and did cause catastrophic, root-destroying fires), then you are right -- fires are mother nature's way of 'cleaning'.

 

But since man has arrived and stopped cleaning forest floors, every fire has the potential for being catastrophic. Ironically, since I am no fan of clear-cutting or timber industry practices which I find odious, nevertheless in lands which timber companies manage, when they do have fires they seldom are very destructive, while those under U.S. Forest Service of other public agency 'protecion' are often extremely catastrophic (and destroy all living things around for centuries.)

 

I do believe that many burned parts of Yellowstone (which I visited last year) were reforested, but maybe not. There are vast scars there, and if it's a place where nature can do its work (and no Indians to clear the forest floor with periodic fires), then it can be our gigantic proving ground for the worth or lack thereof of catastrophic fires, since by its nature the forest floor in a natnal park is supposed to be in its 'natural state' - but if nature included Indians, then they are lacking and what they did is also lacking.

 

I just thought that the statement was a little too simplistic, and it ought to be clarified, and don't mean to pick a fight.

 

It's too easy to say 'fire is our friend', without making certain differentiations about what kind of fire. Then if fire is always a friend of the forest, that suggests something something against the presence of man on the planet since man co-exists with those forests, and they are one great and vast reneweable resource on which man (in our country at least) depends heavily.

 

And of course there are many variatons on the above, too, as I am not a simplistic thinker and do not even think my own summary is absolutely correct -0- time only will tell.

 

Yellowstone is big enough to be scarred for centuries and become a giant proving ground for forestry theories and supposed 'histories', and I think the fire and hoped-for rebirth of the land there there have the ultimate effect of proving or disproving theories.

 

Thanks for posting an image that suggested much discussion.

 

John (Crosley)

Thanks for all for information and yes my simplistic explanation needed some further clarification which you have kindly added. Thanks for taking the time!

Another masterpiece -- and one helluva an interesting comment by John Crosley, another masterful shooter. Any image and introduction that provokes such a conversation is a grand success. Regards, Joe