[FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

Tue May 25 13:39:07 EDT 2021

Yes, humans are often selfish and corrupt.   Humans often amplify their mistakes because it serves their purposes.   Nature, however, is purposeless in its violence.   Pick your poison.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 9:05 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

Marcus -

Very good point and I understand/agree ... The "chaining" of juniper to make (yet more) rangeland was just such an experiment and on my father's own district he was very spare with fire suppression, he did believe in as much "natural burn" as possible (until it threatened a timber-sale!).  I spent no end of weekends driving up and hiking in to where a snag had been hit by lightning and was alight to check to make sure it wasn't likely to trigger any kind of major burn in the area, and usually it didn't warrant any intervention if/when there were natural fuel breaks uphill/downwind that kept it contained.   He also gave ranchers more leeway with grazing if they themselves would "experiment" with different ideas about avoiding intense over-grazing with careful management of water, salt, augmented feed, etc.   He was definitely always "experimenting" and I think even learning from it *even* though by the time he was "done" he was DONE because the integrated up "lessons learned" and cultural shifts that he wasn't part of but had to respond to.  He retired around 1980 just as the first female regional forester became his boss's boss, a coincidence but nevertheless difficult and auspicious for him.

My neoLuddite basis is driven somewhat by the extreme leverage our techno-industrial reality represents.  Up until the late 1990s I might have sounded more like Pieter regarding "evidence for climate change" and "technophilic optimism" in spite of working closely *with* LANL climate scientists at the time.   Between being on the (very) wrong side of that one, and being a vegetarian peacenik *supporting* Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD 1980-1990), I have my own shame/grief to process, which like a former smoker often leads to an acute judgemental view of those who haven't yet "seen the light".

Following that theme, I believe the more toxic versions of Politically Correct and Woke are roughly the same thing.   My father (again) quit smoking in his 40s (up to 3 packs a day) and became a rabid anti-smoker (albeit polite in public about it).   I suspect those most vocal about hating the haters may well have their own "hate problems".   We now have 3 levels of indirection with those who want to bully "the Woke" who are noted for "bullying the Bullies" who of course will bully anything they want to (including the Woke).  Scissors, Paper Stone!   Put that in your iterated Prisoner's Dilemma and smoke it?

My recent focus on Global Endogenous Existential Threats (nod to Merle) has made me aware of many factoids which support (confirmation bias, many of them I'm sure) my chagrin over the things I've thought were "good ideas" which in fact seem to be part of our "race to the bottom" or "race off the end of everything".   It started with Climate/Biosphere challenges but overlaps strongly into sociopoliticaleconomic systems.   Our global (and national) response to COVID, to the BLM protests (black lives, not Cliven Bundy & Sons).  There is *strong* hysteresis in our global systems, and our activities have (long since) become significant drivers and in general we (as individuals, as national/global policy makers, as techno-industrialists) tend to want to ignore (or more likely game) that.   See the Fossil Fuel Industry in the 60s looking forward gleefully to an ice-free Arctic, generated by the product of their profiteering...

(gra)mumble,

 - Steve
We won’t realize anything unless the experiments happen.   We may not learn from experiments, but that is a different issue than the need for the experiments.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com><mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 7:46 AM
To: friam at redfish.com<mailto:friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired "early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower (yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was *range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no "harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly in the name of "progress".

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve
On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast, California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses, shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/california> avoided fires growing to destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done? Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently, the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get killed.

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net<mailto:jofr at cas-group.net>> wrote:
Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California, Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect wildfires early.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection

-J.

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