A Little Note About the Forrest Fires

There are fires burning all across the Western United States!  Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming and all those other western states.  Yellowstone is no different.  In the park, there are currently 5 fires raging: the Range fire (185 acres), Dewdrop Fire (210 acres), Cygnet Fire (1490 acres) and Camera Fire (0.1 acres).  There are also a bunch that have gone out, the biggest of which was the Blacktail fire (29 acres)1

Cygnet Fire, the biggest fire, was a lightening caused fire discovered on August 10th.  There has been heavy smoke along the roadways especially on the road between Norris and Canyon Village. 1


In Yellowstone, fires are allowed to burn as long as they don't threaten structures, roads and, obviously, people.  There is a Wildland Fire Program that Yellowstone employs which as two goals:

1. To suppress wildfires that are human-caused or that threaten people, property or resource values.

2. To ensure that naturally ignited wildland fires may burn freely as an ecosystem process.

Smoke Over the Lake

 Fire Ecology

 Wildfires have played an important park in Yellowstone's ecosystems for thousands of years, and the goal of the National Park Service is to keep it that way.  Thunderstorms are common in the Rocky Mountains, often have little rain and thus produce "dry lightening."  Some of these strikes are powerful enough to rip strips of bark off of a tree in a shower of sparks, and blow the pieces up to 100 feet away.2  These stikes don't always cause fires because the trees and shrubs have to be dry, and most of the year they aren't, but in summertime they can get very dry and that is when most fires in the park seem to occur.  This year has been a very, very dry summer so we have quite a few fires.

The 87-acre Sygnet Fire burns near Norris on August 19, 2012 3

Nearly all of Yellowstone’s plant communities have burned at one time or another.  Some trees, however, such as Douglas-fir have very thick bark that insulates the tree against heat. The bark protects the cambium (the water and nutrient areas) which will die if exposed to fire.  Thick bark ensures that wildfires seldom kill mature Douglas-fir trees.  Other species like lodgepole pines have cones are glued shut by resin. The heat of a wildfire is needed to melt the resin and allow the cone to open and disperse the seeds within. This adaptation ensures that the seeds of lodgepole pine will not disperse until wildfire creates conditions that favor the establishment of seedlings-- diminished litter on the forest floor and plenty of sunlight.

Although whitebark pine, Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir are also thin-barked, they are adapted to fire by escaping: they grow in places less susceptible to wildfire. Aspen clones are connected by a network of roots which survive even very hot fires because they are insulated underground.

Forrest recovery after a fire in Yellowstone 4

1 Information from http://www.nps.gov/yell/parknews/12-61f.htm

2 Information from http://www.nps.gov/yell/parkmgmt/fireecology.htm
3 Photo from http://www.nps.gov/yell/parknews/12061c.htm 
4 Photo from http://live.psu.edu/story/54245

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