Fire assessment

In my short ecologically-oriented career, I have worked a fair amount in burnt areas. I spent one summer doing vegetation sampling in north-central WA in the Tripod Fire, a huge, intense burn in an overstocked, fire-suppressed forest. The level of destruction was incredible. Some areas were absolutely scorched! What really surprised me was how beautiful the burns could be sometimes, and I have been reminded of that to some extent lately as I have been out CLMing. Lately, we have been assessing the intensity of very recent fires. This is the first time I have been in such recent burns (a month or so after the fire), and I was surprised to see things (e.g. desert peach and a buckwheat (I think it was elatum)) already resprouting! But again, I was struck by how beautiful the burns could be. It brings out a different kind of starkness and makes the landscape seem even vaster than it already does. It’s also fascinating to see how the fire skipped some areas despite burning everything else around them, and it makes me wish I had taken more fire ecology classes in school. It all adds another level of appreciation to the desert in particular and the natural world in general, and I hope I get to do more work with fires in the future.

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