WHOSE WOODS THESE ARE

Rex Burress

 

Around Oroville, CA, there are a few accessible wooded plots, mostly in parks and places along the river where trees have protection. Without constant scrutiny, it's remarkable how quickly and quietly trees disappear and most often they are not replaced, or replaced with the right species, especially around cities. I always think of the premature loss of Oroville's Graveyard Sycamores.

 

Out in the wild, trees more commonly are taken by insect invasion, disease, windstorm, logging, and the biggest demons of all, forest fires. Some of that decay and downfall is part of the cycle of life, but wildfires as we've known in August 2018, is far above normal expectations.

 

In conjunction with the fires and surges of wind-blown ashy contaminants and smoke, I was speaking of the 'blackening of the woods,' but in reality, complete combustion of wood produces ash, like the stuff in your fireplace, or cremated human remains, and it is more gray than black. Partially burnt wood makes charcoal and soot, and that's black! Trees are composed of water, organic matter, and minerals, much like the human body--indeed, dust of sorts--and as dust or ash it returns to the soil!

 

Curious about ash, I dipped into Google, where I found plenty of information. You don't have to take my word about all these nature things I touch on--scientists have researched into reality to greater lengths than I, and I have borrowed from them. I found “Wild Land Ash [“Variations in Wildfire Ash Properties and Implications for Post Fire Hydrology”], by Victoria Balfour, a 213-page University of Montana theses written May 2013, and it covered what I wanted to know...and much more!

 

The first thing is that complete combustion in a hot fire, like a tree burning to ash, usually produces whitish ash. It's the burned minerals of various kinds that had been part of the plants anatomy. I noticed the contrast in a burn-area on Table Mountain a few years ago, and the white patterns made by wood ash left curled abstract patterns in a black motif. Very photogenic.

 

Fire ash is defined as a mineral-rich, powdery residue remaining on site after a fire, composed of whitish minerals and black organic carbon, energy stored in plants by photosynthesis, and released by heat...as we know from burning wood in a fireplace. We also distastefully know that burning wood produces smoke, and that is another complex chemical story of particles from fire into the air. Some Fire Cloud smoke [pyrocumulus] reaches five miles height.

 

The smoke and ash at the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington, 1980, produced volcanic ash falling six inches deep in communities 200 miles distance and the cloud reached 15 miles high. We know minerals were involved in that ash, because if the gray, sandy ash was melted at high temperatures, various smooth gemstones remained from 34 minerals. There is a sample of Helen's ash in the Feather River Nature Center, and it is quite grainy compared to tree ash.

 

The intense heat of a forest fire can melt iron objects, and this degree of damage decreases soil quality, sterilizing top soil and also burning leaves that insulate soil from the sun. Clearly, other organisms that live in the duff and soil will also perish, including the earth worms and other arthropods, and any lingering rodents and small animals in the surface layers will be fried. Devastating!