There is considerable misunderstanding about what constitutes a “debris flow.” The media frequently gets it wrong, referring to these events as mudslides. But, the term mudslide does not really do a debris flow justice. They are much more than mud. A debris flow occurs when a steep hillside or mountain slope becomes saturated with water and then releases and begins sliding down a watershed.
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The La Jolla Indian reservation sits on about 10,000 acres an hour north of
San Diego. The 700 member tribe was hit hard by the late October Poomacha fire, one of the dozens of fires that hit southern
California in the fall of 2007. 92% of reservation land was burned, 55 homes were burned, and 180 tribal members were left homeless. But, once the threat from flames subsided and the smoke cleared a new danger emerged – mud and rock slides.
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There are many ready to proclaim that cheatgrass has won the battle for the west. The 2007 fire season would certainly attest to that claim with cheatgrass fueling range fires in
Utah,
Idaho, and
Wyoming that covered hundreds of thousand of acres. Not everyone is ready to surrender to cheatgrass though.
Zion National Park is tackling the cheatgrass problem head-on.
Fire Risk and the Southeastern Drought
By Josh McDaniel
In 2007, a complex of fires in and around the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge—eventually named the Georgia Bay Complex—consumed over 500,000 acres across southern
Georgia and northern
Florida. While state and federal officials are busy preparing for another active fire season they have implemented a number of programs to help recover from last year’s round of fires, and also to better prepare
Georgia’s forests for the challenges it will face with a continuing drought.
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The Fire and Fire Surrogate Study
Looking for Solutions to the Biggest Challenge in Fire Science
Recent fire seasons in the US have brought the extent of the hazardous fuels problem into stark relief.
The Forest Service estimates that there are
190 million acres of federal forest and range land at risk of catastrophic wildfire. When State and private lands in need of hazardous fuel reduction are included, the number of acres likely climbs to
over 350 million. Given that we only treat about
4 to 5 million acres per year, it is obvious that we are getting deeper and deeper in the hole.
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The connection between climate change and the increasing length and severity of fire season has become an important issue in fire science. At the Association of Fire Ecology Conference in Tucson, AZ this past January, almost every talk mentioned climate change to some degree. We sat down and talked with Peter Fulé of Northern Arizona University about his research on the Rodeo-Chedeski Fire, and what lessons he draws from the fire that can help fire managers in facing the challenges of climate change.
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Stay or Go? Would it Work in the US?
Can we learn to live with fire? As Americans start to wake up to the challenges of living with fire it is essential to look at other parts of the world that have already faced the challenge and learned how to adapt. Sarah McCaffrey spent some time in Australia examining the Aussie 'Stay or Go' approach that focuses on educating landowners on their options for preparing and defending their homes from wildfire and in preparing them to evacuate early if staying is not an option. McCaffrey has brought back some interesting thoughts and observations on the potential applicability of that program in the US. She spoke on the subject this past October at the Human Dimensions in Wildland Fire Conference in Ft. Collins, Colorado along with Australian experts - Alan Rhodes and Tony Jarrett, who described how the program works and also presented research focused on assessing its effectiveness.