Well the title is the question.
With ‘split’ I mean create some space between blocks where fire has nothing to travel to the next block to spread.
I imagine that actions like dropping water with helicopters would also be unnecessary since we could ‘give up’ a burning block and then the fire would be over.
Or am I too naive about it?
In: Earth Science
Burning embers float on the wind. The Oakland Hills Fire of 1991 jumped a huge freeway intersection.
I’m not sure you’re understanding just how big these forests are. Imagine the upkeep it would take to manage that many 1000 ft wide fire breaks.
Have you ever tried to keep up with weeding a flower bed? It takes a lot of time and effort on just a small part of land. Now scale that up to the size of a forest.
We do it sometimes, but it’s more expensive than you would expect and it doesn’t always work.
We used to do a lot of stuff similar to that, controlled burns, proper cutting and spacing of the forest, allowing cattle to graze the vegetation down but we stopped doing it and now the fires are getting worse and worse every year. Short answer is the the people in charge thinks it looks bad to do all of that stuff. We also have issues over here with the clean air authority that like to prohibit controlled burns during the safest time of year to do it thus allowing the fire to get out of control in the summer.
Other comments are covering how fire spreads, so I’ll add this.
Forests have specific and nuanced wildlife ecosystems. The species that thrive in a forest, need the forest to exist as it has.
For example, you may remember one of the first and most important legal challenges against logging of old-growth forests: *Northern Spotted Owl v. Hoden* (later *Northern Spotted Owl v. Lujan*).
Not to get into all of it, but, one thing that came about. Lumber argued that to protect the owl, they would only ‘clear-cut’ specific squares and as such the forest would look like a checkerboard. Wide swaths of empty nothing next to wide swaths of forests. But that didn’t work. The owls and other birds of prey need cover. They can’t hunt in open fields. Meanwhile the animals (who are prey) that live in cover are exposed in open fields. There are few species that live in old growth forests that can exist in a checkerboard of open fields. That’s just not how it works.
Point being, there are many factors at work here that have an influence on forest management. It’s not just preventing forest fires – which, I’ll add, is a natural part of forest health – but of course NOT fires due to habitat loss/climate change/assholes burning forests because they launched fireworks during a ‘gender-reveal’ party.
So you want to help stop the destruction of forests by destroying sections of forest to create space between them ?
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We already do this, and is very useful, but it sometimes is not enough. Maybe is enough distance for the wind to not be able to extend the flames themselves, but spare and small burning material can spread.
Fires spread across firebreaks due to wind. Plus, if you’re in the hills, when it rains, bare ground contributes to mudslides because the soil collapses since there is no vegetation holding it in place. The mudslides will take out huge numbers of trees.
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