"Bob Weinberger" wrote in message ...
"Le Messurier" wrote in message
om...
To Mike Hagen: I'm not aware that "much of the present day Ponderosa
forest occupies what used to be grassland in the late 1800's. Stopping
fire and grazing changed that."
snip

You are right if you are talking about large treeless expanses of grassland. However, fire produced
many moderately good sized openings (but generally smaller than would be used to classify the area as
a grassland) within the Ponderosa forest. The fires were not universally low intensity. When they
would hit an area of heavy fuels, they could become intense. Such areas didn't always reseed back to
PP immediately - often spending a significant period of time in grass, brush or Aspen before PP
recolonized. During the period that PP was recolonizing (especially during the period when the
reprod was pole sized) the fuels would often be heavy enough to repeat the cycle if a fire passed
thru.

I know of an interesting area on one of the old Ranger Districts I've
worked on in the past. The area had burned, perhaps in the 40's or
50's, leaving very few very large P. pines. It was probably a good
cone year for white fir because the stand today is nearly pure white
fir and in terrible shape. We salvage logged bug trees back in the
early 90's and saw an incredible amount of fuels on the ground. I went
back there in 2000 and helped prepare a timber sale. It pretty dang
difficult to selective log in a stand where good leave trees are very
scarce. If ever there was a good reason to clearcut the stagnant white
fir, here it is. Plant it back into pine and I'm sure it would do
fine. Unfortunately, that can't happen and the stand will be logged,
(or has already been), leaving crappy thinned out white fir with
skinup damage. Will it reduce future fire intensity? Yes. Will it
eliminate catastrophic fire? Most certainly not. Someday, I'll go back
to that stand and take an "after" picture, already having the "before"
ones.

Larry