Is there a way we can prevent them from occurring in the first place, or is it inevitable during the summer months?
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The vast majority of forest fires are caused by lightning. Sometimes by human stupidity, but lightning is by far from the most common.
The big reason they’re difficult to stop is that fire feeds itself. The hotter it gets, the more things dry out, and the more readily things want to burn. On top of that, once they get significantly large, the amount of water needed to put those flames out would ruin the terrain more than any fire could.
There’s no real way of preventing them. Often times, the best option to put them out is to just try to limit where they can spread. We often do this by felling trees surrounding the fire; effectively creating a barrier the fire can’t get across. (fire can’t spread with nothing to burn)
And even if we could prevent all fires, we actually would be harming nature in doing so. As said above, most forest fires are natural (ignoring global warming). Many trees like Jack and Lodgepole pines actually need the heat of forest fires for their seeds to spread.
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