Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Pete Vukovich <pvukovic1@yahoo.com>]

Some notes on chaparral. I don't think it will convert to anything in our lifetimes or the lifespan of the human race for that matter (sandstone in these places probably erodes much faster than an organic profile gets built - which is why some of the clay silicate alluvials still have depths of a couple inches). I also don't think fire necessarily 'helps' it. It just tolerates it, and uses it to its advantage. 

It does help spread arctostaphylos and some bacharrus, just like it helps spread sequoia giganticus in the maritime belt which is both above and below it. But these plants stay around a long time anyway. Chaparral seems to 'expect' in my personal opinion occasional superficial fires, and just as redwood forests seem to expect infrequent intense fires. Most fires doesn't seem to impact the soil for more than a year, even when the ash is still there. After that fungi come up like crazy due to the chemical and physiological disturbances, and well as a few other succession starters. We see it all the time in chaparral and subalpine zones depending on what it was like to begin with....

Here's a link to add to the mix:
http://www.californiachaparral.org/chaparralmyths.html

--- On Sun, 2/20/11, John D'hondt <dhondt@eircom.net> wrote:

From: John D'hondt <dhondt@eircom.net>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Fire cycles and deforestation Re: Bio-Char testgarden
To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Sunday, February 20, 2011, 11:15 AM

I do not think it can easily be disproved that all the great deserts in the world came about by fire. The Sahara and the Gobi at least have remnants that indicate they were forested once and inhabited by people.

Here in Ireland we have Gorse as a fire plant and the plant is disliked by most farmers since most animals can only eat the youngest and most tender shoots and these are few. So the people burn the gorse because it is so easy to burn to get rid of it making it spring back more than ever. Burning large ares has something atavistic and primitive and some people derive great satisfaction from it. Some even like the idea of killing birds that way for most fires here are lit in the nesting season when it is the driest period of the year. There are more and more different birds in towns here than in these regularly burned places.

I had slopes covered with it 20-25 years ago and I did not burn and my gorse is dying these last five years to be replaced by succulent grass and blackberries with a seedling tree here and there. If I did not have my animals graze these places it would turn eventually in an oak wood which is the natural climax vegetation here.

Wild land with very low fertility is very interesting for wild herbs and such but there is something to be said for a life goal of making a little bit of land fertile again imo.

I'm sure the same would happen with your chaparral desert. Avoid fire and you could have a start of a tropical rain forest with forest gardens in a hundred years time. But if you prefer desert, even if this is probably not the best place to produce healthy food in quantity, then let the burning go on.

john

----- Original Message -----

From: Pego Rice

To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2011 1:41 AM

Subject: [Livingontheland] Fire cycles and deforestation Re: Bio-Char testgarden

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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