Some would say that fire is a living thing, and you would not be wrong.
So how do wildfires start and the consequences of their spread?
These amazing facts might just shock you.
So How do Wildfires Start Then
There was a time before our ancestors smashed flint and steel together when they felt the cold lack of fire in their lives.
But anthropologists theorize that early hominids relied on lightning to cause forest fires from which they could collect coals and burning sticks.
Fire gave them the ability to cook food and clear land and became central to many rituals and traditions.
So instead of seeing forest fires as an exclusively bad thing, ancient humans may have learned to appreciate them yet it wasn’t just humans who benefited from these natural phenomena.
The Forrest Fire
Even as they destroyed trees fires also helped the forest themselves however counter-intuitive that seems in fact several forest species such as select conifers need fire to survive.
But how can fire possibly create life in addition to destroying it?
The answer lies in the way that certain forests grow in the conifer-rich forests of western North America lodge pole pines constantly seek the sun their scenes prefer to grow on the open sunny ground.
Which pits saplings against each other as each tries to get more light by a growing straighter and faster than its neighbours over time.
Generations of slender lofty lodge poles form an umbrella-like canopy that shades the forest floor below.
But as the tree’s pine cones mature to release their twirling seeds this signals a problem for the lodgepole’s future.
Very few of these seeds will germinate in the cool sunless shade created by their towering parents these trees have adapted to this problem by growing two types of cones.
There are the regular annual cones that release seeds spontaneously and another type called serotonin cones which need an environmental trigger to free their seeds.
Serotonin cones are produced in thousands and are like waterproof time capsules sealed with resinous pitch.
Many are able to stay undamaged on the tree for decades cones that fall to the ground can be viable for several years as well.
But when temperatures get high enough the cones pop open let’s see that in action once it’s gotten started a coniferous forest fire typically spreads something like this.
Flames ravage the thick understory provided by species like Douglas fir a shade-tolerant tree that’s able to thrive under the canopy of lodgepole pines.
The fire uses these smaller trees as a stepladder to reach the higher canopy of old lodgepole pines that ignites a tremendous crown fire reaching temperatures of up to 2400 degrees Fahrenheit that’s well more than the 115 to 140 degrees that signal the moment when serotonin seeds can be freed.
At those temperatures, the cones burst open releasing millions of seas which are carried by the hot air to form new forests after the fire carbon-rich soils.
And an open sunlit landscape help lodge polled seeds germinate quickly and sprout in abundance from the death of the old forest comes the birth of the new.
Fires are also important for the wider ecosystem as a whole without wildfires to rejuvenate trees and key forests.
Species would disappear and so would the many creatures that depend on them and if a fire-dependent forest goes too long without burning that raises the risk of a catastrophic blaze which could destroy a forest completely.
Not to mention people’s homes and lives that’s why forest rangers sometimes intentionally start controlled burns to reduce fuels in order to keep the more dangerous wildfires at bay.
Now, they may be frightening and destructive forces of nature but wildfires are also vital to the existence of healthy boreal forest ecosystems.
By coming to terms with that we can protect ourselves from their more damaging effects while enabling the forests like the legendary phoenix to rise reborn from their own ashes.
So how do wildfires start, there are many ways really but we are going to stick with the natural kind and not human intervention in the modern age where we can just conjure up fire from a match for instance.
How do Wildfires Start in the Natural World?
Wildfires can either be ignited by the sun’s heat or a lightning strike.
You might think just because we have a thunderstorm that this can not happen as the rains would douse out the fire or the vegetation is already too wet.
But you cannot forget that we can also have dry thunderstorms, being thunder and lightning without rain, yes…
These can occur when the undergrowth is dry from a dry Summer, for instance, a lightning strike and indeed start a fire.
Also if vegetation is allowed to degrade naturally in a heap and the conditions of this heap start to get too hot from the surrounding weather.
It can create its own environment where fermenting and dry undergrowth is more like a Molotov cocktail.
Chemical reactions can cause a spark and you have a fire.
One other factor that I would also like to answer…
Now man does have a part here but not directly, and that is if a broken piece of glass that is left in the forest, for instance, the suns raise when shining through it acts like a magnifying glass.
And this can create heat that is hot enough to start a spark that turns into a flame if there is any dry undergrowth below the broken piece of glass.
How do wildfires start… With these number of factors.
So do keep this in mind if you are out in the wilderness and happen to see any such glass like this on the ground, do pick it up. It should also make you weary about leaving and throwing any such bottle on the ground and leaving it as well.