Hi. Maybe this is a dumb question with an obvious answer, but I don’t know/remember enough to know for myself.
Lightning causes forest fires. It’s happening more and more as there are more droughts. If they can put lightning rods on buildings to protect them, could they not build a bunch of lightning rods in forests in susceptible areas? Would the lightning go into the ground and be harmless, or would it somehow still start a fire?
Cost aside, would it help prevent forest fires or no?
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TIA.
In: 6
It’s a scale problem, for one thing. You’d need more lightning rods than we really have the capcity to build, because you have to build a tower and grounding equipment for each one. A lightning rod really only provides protection in a radius of about 30m (about 2800 m^2).
There are over 3million square km of forest in the US alone. That’s 3,300,000,000,000 square meters. You’d need over a billion lightning rods.
And even then, you wouldn’t prevent forest fires. The western half of North America is pretty dry, and it’s FULL of biomes that rely on regular small fires to maintain the ecology. We’ve spent 100+ years preventing fires and allowing fuel buildup through crappy management practices, so now, by July or August every year, half the continent is basically a powder keg. The lightning just happens to be the match, but once it gets to a certain point, practically anything can start a fire. If it wasn’t lightning strikes, it’d be something else.
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