permaculture

[Mark <mpludwig@facstaff.wisc.edu>]

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