I know, it’s not all bad.
Yup, sounds like trivializing Global Warming Pleading guilty.
Anyhow, one of my more radical plans to save the carbon cycle involves managed forest fires. Of eucalypt no less. Coppiced eucalypt, however, not the huge firebombs that ravaged Australia and Portugal.
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I've been telling for almost a decade now that what is happening in California looks like a highway to desertification: Burn and flush, burn and flush, ... until all soil is gone and forests can no longer regrow.
But I'm not so sure about this theory. Any observations?
California has a very rich diversity of habitats. In the Thomas fire area, much of that is chaparral that has burned on a pretty regular basis. The soils are not usually very high in organic matter, except in the lower parts of the canyon where a more mesic micro-habitat can develop. Big/hot catastrophic fires can change the landscape in this area, but over time, the chaparral has a pretty good chance of re-establishing. The more mesic canyons, with some riparian vegetation, usually don't lose as much vegetation in the fires, nor lose all their organic content in the soils. The fires don't usually burn down hill as hot as the do up-hill, but this is a great simplification. in any case, those canyons can also recover, even if there are some pretty good debris flow floods. The debris flows are messy, and leave quite a bit of organic material along the channel, so the ability to recover is still there, albeit from the bottom up.
I spend a lot of time in the Sierras, and in the chaparral belt I expect over time, some of this to turn into blue oak-woodland due to climate change... But the big worry is that the yellow pine forest and black oak woodland (above the chaparral), with a decent organic content soils, will have much of its lower areas turn into chaparral, and lose its organic soils. The community above is red fir, and those soils are low in organic material, so the ability of black oaks to move up maybe limited - low water retention and low nutrients. If this is the scenario that climate change causes, then a loss of soil carbon in the Sierras would be positive feedback.
Fire looks to be the tipping point, with a plant community hanging on until a fire comes through. If we have a hot fire, the soils lose much of their organic matter, seed base, and seed donors. At that point, a new community type, if it is more in attuned to climate conditions, will be generated. Established communities can hang on in adverse climate conditions, at least for a while.
My two cents - from a systems ecologist that is making a SWAG!