How wildfires affect the environment

I have heard many stories of wildfires raging and destroying thousands of trees and killing people. Then I started to wonder how fires affected the environment. Sure, I have seen the surface level stuff, like how trees are destroyed and how animals have to run away, but I want to get into the nitty gritty details and analytics, finding what really happens when a fire starts.

But before we can discuss what happens after a wildfire, we have to learn how wildfires start.

How Wildfires start

Fire requires three things to start. Those three things are; heat, oxygen, and fuel. Fuel can be many different things. Anything flammable can be a fuel source, such as bushes, grass, and houses. The reason wildfires are so common in forests is because forests are full of one specific flammable thing. Trees! Trees are flammable and forests contain so many that fires can get out of hand very quickly because of them.

Oxygen is nearly everywhere, making fires easier to occur. However, if fires receive more oxygen than usual, they will spread a lot faster, so just because oxygen is readily available doesn't mean that fire can't get more.

Heat, like other fires, or rubbing two stones together really fast can produce enough heat to make fire. This is why when sparks come off of stones, onto a fuel, that has oxygen, a fire is created.

Sometimes you might see people blow on a fire they just created if they are a campfire. This is because the fire has some oxygen, but will die off soon if it doesn't get an influx of it soon. Blowing on fire pushes oxygen molecules into the fire, letting it live. Once the fire is big enough, it can get all of the oxygen it needs without any help, then it will keep on spreading unless there is something stopping it, like no nearby fuel or if it gets too cold.

Fire also hates water. This means that the drier something is, the easier it is to catch flame due to fire having to destroy less water from that thing. Water is so effective for this reason, as water is 100% water, so fire has a really hard time dealing with it. Small things like grass and bushes provide less fuel for the fire, making it easier to deal with if the fire started in a grassy plain. But, if the fire is near any trees, then it has plenty of fuel to spread. Because trees are so big, fires can get out of control way easier if you are near any trees, which is why people have to be incredibly careful when camping in the forest if they want a campfire, as one wrong move and it can get quickly out of control.

Weather also plays a factor in fires. If it is very windy, then the fires get more oxygen and spread faster. But if it is raining, then fires will be quickly smothered and annihilated. The humidity can also affect wildfires. Humidity is how much water is in the air, so obviously less water equals more fire. Fires also spread faster uphill rather than downhill. Climate change has been a factor that affects wildfires as well, because the hotter Earth is, the more likely fires are to show up.

Wildfires have been on the rise in California, as half of the 20 largest fires in this state have occurred within the last 7 years.

All of these factors combined make California one of the most states susceptible to fire in the entire USA. Below are maps of wildfires in California.

How do wildfires affect the environment?

When a wildfire starts animals are forced to flee. Usually animals can sense danger and will get away easily. Usually only the young and old animals can't escape. However, most of the moralities come after the fire has finished eating up all of the area. The land will have much less area for animals to live in because of the wasted trees. Some predators use the fire to their advantage, by hunting animals attempting to flee the fire.

How do wildfires affect bears?

Grizzly bears are an example of a predator hunting fleeing animals, as they will wait near the fire line and kill any prey trying to escape the fire. A fire line is a place where the fire can't spread to, which can stop a fire from spreading any further. The bears have appeared to be calm during fires, and surprisingly wildfires can be beneficial to bears.

Areas that have burned up will have a negative impact in some way for these busy bears. Bears love places that can cover them, and fires remove this cover. This will mean that bears will avoid areas where the majority of cover is gone, as sneaking up on prey is harder. Bears that do decide to move through the areas will have a higher chance to encounter people, will increases the chance of the bear being killed.

How Birds are Affected by Wildfires

But it isn't just animals on the ground that are affected, as birds can be too. Birds respiratory system is very efficient because taking flight requires a lot of oxygen. But if oxygen isn't the only thing floating in the air, it could harm the bird's respiratory system and kill the birds. If enough of the smoke particles build up in the lungs of anything, it will be harmed and has a small chance of dying. Smoke from wildfires does just this. Birds breathe the smoke in, their respiratory system gets damaged, and rarely, they die.

Smoke doesn't just injure the birds. It can disorient and stop them from migrating. Birds that encountered a lot of smoke had to land and wait for it to dissipate, which can take multiple days. If a bird decided to fly through the smoke, it would get lost inside the smoke and could fly off course of where they were meaning to go, causing them to take multiple days to get to their intended destination. In a study, people tracked four geese through wildfire smoke, and all four birds took double the time to reach their destination. From four days to nine! The geese also flew 470 extra miles, which meant that they burnt more calories, which can take days to recover from.

On the bright side, it isn't all bad for our little flying friends, as after a wildfire has stopped raging, some snags (dead standing trees) that birds forage and nest in, and since most other animals have fled, the birds get most of the what remains of the forest to themselves.

How Fish are Affected by Wildfires

Aquatic life isn't safe from the raging flames either. If a wildfire starts, the water temperature will rise, and if the water temperature rises, salmon can die off quick. Fire will also burn nearby plants, the same plants that provided shade for the temperature sensitive fish! However, even though the salmon see drastic negative changes in the short term, they can quickly return to normal and stable levels, only taking a couple of years. The soil that is adjacent to the river loses its plants and nutrients needed to grow plants, such as potassium, magnesium, and calcium. The soil is susceptible to being tormented by the wind and rain, which causes erosion, increased runoff, and rarely landslides!

Fires are also a lot more dangerous during migration and where fish habitats have been lost. Wildfires can also change the water's chemistry, and it increases phosphorous and nitrogen, which is what algae requires to bloom. Algae blooms block sunlight and take oxygen from the water when they die and decompose as well, which isn't good for the fish. The gas from burned plant material is one of the highest dangers for fish during a wildfire, because the gas makes a waxy coating on the soil. This might not sound that bad, but it is. Water that lands on the coating will slide off rather than being absorbed, and increased runoff makes streams flow faster, deeper, and stronger than usual. This causes erosion in the stream banks and can cause mud or rocks to block the path for our sacred salmon. Silt caused by the erosion can fill the pools that fish need to reproduce. Although, the erosion can make new pools for our swimming salmon.

Fire retardant, which is used to stop the spread of fires, is toxic to fish so if this anti salmon substance gets into the water stream, it can kill off the majority of them. Since we have learned how dangerous this fire repellent is for fish, we have made sure to keep at least a 300 foot buffer on either side of the rivers, so that it has no chance of reaching our swarming swimmers.

Heavy winds caused by the fire can relocate the nearby ash, wood, sediment, and rocks into the river, which makes it tough for fish to breathe, find their way around, and locate food. The sediment is the real killer, drowning spawning sites, annihilating redds, and provide and influx of nitrogen and acidity to the water, which is not good. The sediment isn't the big bad villain of this scenario, however, as sediment contains nutrients for the water, so after a while much more prey will be in the river for the salmon to dine on. Salmon size has seen an increase over a couple of years in some rivers.

Dead trees located above the river can fall into the river and provide a heavy quantity of wood, which can separate salmon and lower the water flow that redds require to live, the wood can also supply the fishy folk with pools perfect for spawning, provide hiding spots for juveniles, and make the habitat more complex.

This doesn't mean you should go around burning forests to help the salmon, as wildfires do provide a net negative for the fish, as fire professionals and fish biologists have tried their hardest to prevent these catastrophic events happening near riverbanks, let alone at all.

Click the magnifying glass button under the "Find address or place" box, then click "0 selected" and select which fish you would like to see the endangered or threatened locations of. Click "apply" when done and it will appear in pink where the fish are endangered or threatened.

The orange is where the salmon habitats are.

How can we help prevent wildfires?

Because wildfires are so big and dangerous, especially in California, you might be wanting to consider precautions that you can take to help make you and the people around you not a fire hazard. Since fires can happen and get out of hand so abruptly, we need to take extra safety measures to eliminate all chances of fires occurring. Smokey the bear has been teaching us how to be safe around fire for tens of years, and we should follow his advice.

Starting a fire can be done by accident relatively easily, so learning how to use equipment that can start a fire is important. Here are some tips. Learn how to use outdoor equipment, so they don't break and start fires. Burn your wood or debris safely, away from flammable resources. If you start a fire, make sure you maintain and extinguish the fire. Make sure your vehicle is not on fire.  

Conclusion

In conclusion, wildfires are dangerous for both people and animals, short and long term. However, not everything is negative for all animals. We have learned that bears use the fire to hunt better and that the sediment that the fires produce can actually help the salmon long term. We also learned how fires start so that we can better learn how to prevent them.

Wildfires are dangerous and unpredictable, for everyone involved.