fire ecology and the effect of fire on our environment?

Answer 1

Last year I went on a week-long canoe trip through the Boundary Waters in Minnesota up into the Quetico Provincial Park in Canada. A large portion of the park had been burned about 10 years ago. The visual effect was very striking, as there were dead, burned trees sticking up everywhere. There was a lot of undergrowth, though.

We spoke with a ranger on the US/Canada border, and she explained that every 70-or-so years, a fire naturally sweeps through and burns up the undergrowth. This returns a lot of nutrients into the soil, and thins out the forest. There are even some species of tree (in this case, I think the Jack Pine) with very dense, tough cones that only open up after being burned. As a result, the burned areas had a lot of new growth, with a large number of Jack Pines outgrowing the rest.

So in addition to the destructive aspects of fire, it serves as a renewing agent. The standing remains of burned trees themselves are probably beneficial to animals, as well, since over the course of the week, we saw 14 bald eagles, many of which were perched on a burned-out tree.

Answer 2

i'm from australia, fire's get really bad here, but its a natural part of the ecology, there is a certain tree (cant remember its name) but its seeds need to be burnt by a fire before they can germinate. some other plants, florish after a fire has swept through. I remember driving through a burnt out forest, everywhere black, coming back a month later, and green shoots began to coem from the ground, and out of the trunks of the black tree's. magical.

Fire destroys alot, and is a humans nightmare because we have our homes in its path, but its crucial to the environment.