Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[richard green <greenrw71@hotmail.com>]

Interesting,  would have thought fires would have been more frequent durring periods of drought, but apparently they were not in the great plains, hum, I remember reading previously about certain pine tree seeds that needed to pass thru fire before they could grow.

Rick

 

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Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:41:02 -0800
From: firekeeper38@yahoo.com
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [Livingontheland] Fire cycles and deforestation Re: Bio-Char test garden

I think I will have to dispute you on this point, John, tho from your angle the point is pretty valid.  Unfired regions become choked with pests and disease, but burns on already assaulted land is merely a recipe for erosion.  I think that in the last 1200 years of Brit invasion and, in particular the economic take over of sheep agriculture in the 17th and 18th centuries and the loss of traditional Irish ag and the export for Brit ships of the Irish timber and the associated laws governing how much timber people could even use had an effect on whether they wanted to bother re-planting for the future (meaning, of course, planting for the owners and not themselves)  This article does not recount the Irish laws and taxes on that but I'm sure there were plenty;

http://d685488.u47.hosting.digiweb.ie/gpage5.html 

 

I expect Ireland could go a good one or two hundred years without another fire and be the better for it.  We had a few years of the same sorts of laws in the colonial days here, in the US.  Dead stupid laws like having extra taxes assessed against homeowners who had wood in their homes over a certain length. 

 

The fire cycle of chaparral desert;

http://www.coastal.ca.gov/fire/ucsbfire.html

 

Forest region fire cycle;

http://www.springerlink.com/content/r2xqh215671k847q/

 

In grassland

http://www.pnas.org/content/102/25/8865.long

 

Yours, Pego

<<And most fires in nature are a disaster and not a good thing. Irish farmers have been burning shrubs since the stone age and that is the main reason so much of the land is absolutely infertile. True, some plants have become adapted to fire as a aid in killing all competition and because there are some ashes containing some of the original minerals left. These plants are not the most beneficial in a rich ecosystem. In Ireland I can mention two, Molinia grass and gorse (Ulex), the "prickeline" bush. (very painful to the touch.) But you see more and more bare rock poking through the green after every burn.
>john>

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