Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Re: Imitating fire + tree shredding equipment

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Mark <mpludwig@facstaff.wisc.edu>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Re: Imitating fire + tree shredding equipment
  • Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 12:35:01 -0500

At 10:36 AM 4/29/02 -0700, you wrote:
on 4/29/02 5:37 AM, permed@nor.com.au at permed@nor.com.au wrote:

> He also attributes this practice of using fire for cultivation
> and managing the environment

I've been thinking a lot (inspired by a conversation with Ben Haggard) about
developing naturally fire-suppressant floras. Humans, particularly in North
America, Australia, and other temperate zones, moved in with their fire
sticks and converted the native vegetation to fire-adapted ones. This
altered climate patterns, drying out large continental areas. There's much
that is not "natural" about the large continental deserts: Humans helped
create them.

Are you sure about you're analysis here? Western NA is set ablaze naturally by lightning plenty, and mountain terrain really moves fires around, both with slope effects and gravity winds. I think you would find the chaparral without human meddling. As for the central prairie states, the constant fire kept the land in highly drought resistant c-4 grasses, deep rooted forbes and fire adapted trees (oak, hickory, hazelnut). Hardly a desert IMO. Tillage agriculture in the short grass region (later the Dust Bowl) had far more to do with the desertification of some of this region.


Since the experiment has been done once by humans, altering vegetation and
climate on a large scale using fire, I wonder if we couldn't design and
implement floras that would reverse the process, returning fire-resistant
plants and soil moisture to large parts of now-dry continental areas. It
would be nice if we could find a simple tool to do this, rather than brute
force, the way a simple tool like fire transformed thousands of acres at a
time to fire-requiring species in chaparral and desert.

Management intensive rotational grazing is doing just that on thousands of farms in the midwest. Water infiltration rates increase dramatically over cropped land and are significantly better than forested areas once the canopy is full. This system is mostly cool season grasses, and grazed pasture is practically un burnable. Add contours of tree crops, a pond or two; presto it's a permaculture farm.

It may seem
heretical (if you're wedded to the idea of "native" vegetation), but when I
travel through the dry (human-made) chaparral of California, I dream of
moist forests in its place.

Is that goat I smell? ;<)

> I've a lot of thoughts about fire and cool-burning practice but no time
> to elaborate just now.

I'd love to hear them someday.

Toby

Ditto.


Mark P. Ludwig
Poultry Research Lab
University of Wisconsin -Madison
608-262-1730 WK
608-846-7125 HM





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page