The Happening

Trunkage

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So, I feel like I have heard most of these facts before. Separately. But never all put together. And its quite staggering


I think her quote about eucalyptus trees was: ’Scientist are still trying to figure if the eucalyptus tree doesn't care about wildfires or absolutely fucking loves them.’

Which made me think - is this the Happening?
 

Mister Mumbler

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I bet you won't be saying that once eucalypts invade your area
I was going to make a joke about how they couldn't survive out here, and then I remembered that Australia has a lot of desert too and started to get a little worried.
 
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lil devils x

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Does Trump not know he is the one who is responsible for the maintenance of Federal lands where the fires are located? That he has to budget in the maintenance needed for the forests and stop focusing on the timber industry quotas instead if he wants this to get better?
For the most part, the forests burning across the West—the fires the president blames on state officials—are on federal lands."
political leadership in the Department of Agriculture has reinstituted timber targets as a performance measure for Forest Service leaders in addition to improving forest health. In other words, as anxiety rises about fire risk across federal lands, national forest managers are being rewarded for shifting attention and dollars away from the goal of smart maintenance. Meeting timber production goals has little to do with improving the health and resilience of national forest lands.
Meeting Timber Goals isn't helping with the Fires, Trump. :S

"President Donald Trump has repeatedly blamed state officials in California, Oregon and Washington for the conflagrations, suggesting they have done a poor job of managing their forests—even suggesting that they somehow rake the forests to prevent fire."

“All of the green," Porter told him, "is federal lands.”

"As residents of the region know well, huge swaths of the American West are federally owned. Nearly 60 percent of the forests in California, 25 percent of the forests in Oregon, and 44 percent in Washington are national forests. For the most part, the forests burning across the West—the fires the president blames on state officials—are on federal lands."

"After years of debate, Congress finally reached a compromise in 2018 to ease this zero-sum approach by allowing the Forest Service to tap into disaster assistance funding when firefighting costs exceeded the Forest Service’s annual fire suppression budget. They called it the “fire fix.” "

"Fixing the funding problem for firefighting was very important. But the long delay in reaching this compromise meant fire prevention efforts lagged for years, allowing the buildup of fire-prone vegetation that will fuel future fires, likely contributing to the fires sweeping through California and the Pacific Northwest today. Why the delays? Because some Republican members of the House and the Senate refused to fix the funding problems unless measures were included to limit environmental reviews and legal challenges to future timber sales and insisted that funding for future national forest timber sales be increased."

"But the fire fix addresses only one part of the problem—there’s also a serious capacity problem to address. According to the California office of the U.S. Forest Service, returning California’s national forests to a condition that reduces future extreme fire risk would require treating 6 million to 9 million acres a year. Currently, the agency treats a small fraction of that—approximately 200,000 acres per year. The agency would need to increase the number of acres restored to approximately 500,000 acres per year at a cost of at least $300 million a year to make significant progress in reducing future wildfire risk. And that is only in California."

"At the same time, the Trump administration has sent mixed signals to Forest Service leadership regarding what the agency’s management priorities should be. It would seem that reducing fuel loads that contribute to fire risk and improving forest health should be the top priority. But, political leadership in the Department of Agriculture has reinstituted timber targets as a performance measure for Forest Service leaders in addition to improving forest health. In other words, as anxiety rises about fire risk across federal lands, national forest managers are being rewarded for shifting attention and dollars away from the goal of smart maintenance. Meeting timber production goals has little to do with improving the health and resilience of national forest lands. However, it is an easy metric to assess the performance of forest managers as well as a way to satisfy the timber industry."


 
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Dirty Hipsters

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California fire update:

Almost 3.5 million acres burned.

The previous worst fire season was under 2 million acres.

On a positive note, since the winds are blowing the smoke into the north east the AQI in my area is down to 39 since I'm near the coast. My air quality is great. On a negative note, everyone else's air quality.
 

lil devils x

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California fire update:

Almost 3.5 million acres burned.

The previous worst fire season was under 2 million acres.

On a positive note, since the winds are blowing the smoke into the north east the AQI in my area is down to 39 since I'm near the coast. My air quality is great. On a negative note, everyone else's air quality.
What part of California are you in? My sis in San Diego is near the coast too, but she has been complaining about her air quality for days. The Valley fire there was pretty bad too though. It says 87% contained still on the map I am looking at , but I thought it was more by now.
 
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Agema

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It seems reasonable trees could explode. Especially if you stick dynamite in them.

Without bothering to read any science, I would suggest that in the right circumstances of heat, the interior will expand (and if hot enough, the water content may even start to boil). If the exterior maintains sufficient integrity so the pressure cannot be released, eventually the pressure may build up to the point the exterior gives way catastrophically, thus explosion. (I suppose something similar could happen with extreme cold: if it able to freeze the sap, the expansion involved when water turns to ice may crack the tree.)

However, I do not think this likely with wildfires, because the fire will almost certainly damage the external integrity of the tree and let any internal pressure escape. If a tree were heated up very quickly (say, from a lightning strike), it might explode.
 
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Silvanus

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I once saw a plant in Kew Gardens that had evolved a particularly novel approach to combating the threat of wildfire in its natural biome: the seed-pods would burst and spread in contact with smoke. The result was that if the plant was under threat from fire, it would have a last chance to spread as many seeds as possible.

Frustratingly I can't remember the plant's name.
 

lil devils x

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I once saw a plant in Kew Gardens that had evolved a particularly novel approach to combating the threat of wildfire in its natural biome: the seed-pods would burst and spread in contact with smoke. The result was that if the plant was under threat from fire, it would have a last chance to spread as many seeds as possible.

Frustratingly I can't remember the plant's name.
Was it this?

These burst in contact with heat though, not smoke.
 

Thaluikhain

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Antifa? More like An-TREE-fa!
Oh, that's appallingly bad, well done.

Let me stop you right there, save us all some time. No, Trump does not know. He knows nothing, and remembers even less.
He doesn't know, and in fact he doesn't know more than anyone else has ever not known, doctors are amazed at how much he doesn't know.

Somewhat less flippantly, he might have just decided it isn't true, and that almost halfway makes it so.
 

Tireseas

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It seems reasonable trees could explode. Especially if you stick dynamite in them.

Without bothering to read any science, I would suggest that in the right circumstances of heat, the interior will expand (and if hot enough, the water content may even start to boil). If the exterior maintains sufficient integrity so the pressure cannot be released, eventually the pressure may build up to the point the exterior gives way catastrophically, thus explosion. (I suppose something similar could happen with extreme cold: if it able to freeze the sap, the expansion involved when water turns to ice may crack the tree.)

However, I do not think this likely with wildfires, because the fire will almost certainly damage the external integrity of the tree and let any internal pressure escape. If a tree were heated up very quickly (say, from a lightning strike), it might explode.
It's not even that far fetched. Anyone who's burned wetter than expected wood has likely seen such a thing happen in their own firepit on a smaller scale.
 

happyninja42

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It's not even that far fetched. Anyone who's burned wetter than expected wood has likely seen such a thing happen in their own firepit on a smaller scale.
Well I mean the chemical reaction to cause heated expansion, thus in a confined space (like a trunk) would look like an explosion, is made from some pretty basic ingredients. I think sugar is one of the easier components in "kitchen sink" explosives, and tress make a LOT of sugar and starch through photosynthesis. Combine that with heat, and possibly some other components of their plant biology, as well as whatever chemicals might be in the smoke that might react violently....yeah it doesn't surprise me that a plant might explode when the conditions are right.

We have animals that can change their reproductive organs due to environmental pressures, animals that can generate electricity, animals that can generate chemical light, animals that can generate chemical combos that create a scalding hot liquid in seconds, the list goes on and on, about the weird and amazing stuff that life can do. Exploding trees when exposed to heat seems positively mundane when you think about it really.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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It's not even that far fetched. Anyone who's burned wetter than expected wood has likely seen such a thing happen in their own firepit on a smaller scale.
Yes, but scaling it up for a very substantial part of a tree to pop is something that won't necessarily occur without very specific and extreme conditions.
 

Tireseas

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Well I mean the chemical reaction to cause heated expansion, thus in a confined space (like a trunk) would look like an explosion, is made from some pretty basic ingredients. I think sugar is one of the easier components in "kitchen sink" explosives, and tress make a LOT of sugar and starch through photosynthesis. Combine that with heat, and possibly some other components of their plant biology, as well as whatever chemicals might be in the smoke that might react violently....yeah it doesn't surprise me that a plant might explode when the conditions are right.

We have animals that can change their reproductive organs due to environmental pressures, animals that can generate electricity, animals that can generate chemical light, animals that can generate chemical combos that create a scalding hot liquid in seconds, the list goes on and on, about the weird and amazing stuff that life can do. Exploding trees when exposed to heat seems positively mundane when you think about it really.
I personally think that defines "explosion" down to requiring a chemical reaction, when simply a "sudden violent release of pressure" is a more apt description (think steam pipe exploding). But yeah, nature be weird and wonderful!
 

Tireseas

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Yes, but scaling it up for a very substantial part of a tree to pop is something that won't necessarily occur without very specific and extreme conditions.
Of course, but a wildfire would probably do the trick...