Coronado fire / 1st major fire of 2009

[azdesertfather]

We have a major fire in Coronado, has burned 16,000 acres. Here's the scoop off of AZcentral...

Southeastern Ariz. wildfire burns 16,000 acres

Mar. 5, 2009 05:06 PM
Associated Press

DOUGLAS - Arizona's first major wildfire of the season has charred 16,800 acres of grass, oak and juniper in the southeastern corner of the state but was 50 percent contained by Thursday afternoon.

Coronado National Forest spokeswoman Heidi Schewel says full containment is expected March 13.

The fire broke out Sunday afternoon and is believed to have been human-caused.

It's burning in Hog Canyon in the Peloncillo Mountains, 35 miles northeast of Douglas.

No structures are threatened and Schewel said the fire is being managed for "resource benefits."

Schewel says this type of fire is beneficial as a recycler of nutrients; that ash acts as a natural fertilizer, "and plants green up nicely following rains, providing favorable wildlife habitat."

Nearly 230 personnel are assigned to the fire.

[azdesertfather]

Also hear there was a 250-acre fire near St. Johns this week (Navajo Nation land), probably contained by now.

Yikes, I thought the state was wet enough all over to ward off this kind of thing right now. Guess not!

[chumley]

I saw this yesterday. Seems like one of those fires that they are letting nature take care of. Its very early in the season and not threatening anything so they set up a perimeter of where they don't want it to get past, and let it burn everything in between at a low intensity. No studies, permits, public notices, etc. required. Nobody cuts through bureaucratic red tape like a natural fire!

[azdesertfather]

So you saw something that said that officials are wanting/letting this many thousands of acres burn in Coronado?

[chumley]

So you saw something that said that officials are wanting/letting this many thousands of acres burn in Coronado?

No structures are threatened and Schewel said the fire is being managed for "resource benefits."

Schewel says this type of fire is beneficial as a recycler of nutrients; that ash acts as a natural fertilizer, "and plants green up nicely following rains, providing favorable wildlife habitat."

Yup. It's rare to hear land management officals say "we want thousands of acres to burn." But this is as close as it gets. It's PC, PR, or some similar "make the public feel-good" acronym.

[azdesertfather]

ahhh...good eye ;)

[Jeffshadows]

That area needed a good burn.

[Jim]

16,000 acres is a small Wildland Use Fire relatively speaking. There were some in the northern Rockies last summer that were over 100,000, and there was a WFU in the Gila NF in 2003 that was around 60,000 acres. Did anyone see anything on the Kaibab site last fall about the WFU out by Sitgreaves? That was a smaller one that reached 10,000. The previous year there was one south of Williams that was ~7,000 acres. Depending on stand type and conditions, the best thing they can do is let a fire run its natural coarse and steer it around areas they don't want to burn. Especially early on in dry years like this when a lighting fire in June could have completely different results.
The nutrient and forest mineral recycling thing is largely over emphasized by the agencies to the public. According to what I was shown in my fire class in FL in 2004 the temperatures that are reached by even the coolest of prescribe burns will volatilize (or send to the atmosphere) the most import nutrients like Nitrogen and Phosphorus, but some nutrients which are a little less important and get sequestered temporarily in the down biomass, like Calcium and Magnesium, are not volatilized. Their release can affect the pH of the soil, and that is usually important in our conifer based systems which tend to have soil surface pH's lower then 6, and sometimes lower than 5. Our aridity usually means our soil pH isn't very low (less than 4), as it can be in the SE.
Next week, class, we will be discussing the relative vigor of stems following a crown scorch event with a scorch ratio of great than 50.

[azbackpackr]

As for any wildland fire near St. Johns, it would be in the grasslands. The grasslands do tend to catch fire up here and they will run to 10,000 acres very, very fast. A month later the grass is growing again, and a year later you can't tell where the fire was. Happens every spring up here when it's windy.

I had a good time watching one of these grass fires in Eagar/Springerville in 2007, late March. There were a few houses in the way, but they were saved. I stood at the top of a hill where the view was good. It was a cold, very windy day. The wind up here in March is so fierce that Springerville got on "Jeopardy" one year as the windiest town in the US. That year it blew over 100 mph.

[big_load]

As for any wildland fire near St. Johns, it would be in the grasslands. The grasslands do tend to catch fire up here and they will run to 10,000 acres very, very fast.

One of the scariest things I ever saw was a car dragging a trailer chain along I-10 near Tucson. The sparks were setting grass fires all along the way.

[azbackpackr]

Oh, well, it all needs to burn sometime! ;) Just hope you're not in the way!

[azbackpackr]

Aargh, hope I don't have to eat my words! I'm thinking about my own backyard! I have a big burn pile out there, and there is tall dry grass all around it. I need to mow that grass, soak it down, and burn the pile very soon, while the weather is still kind of damp! (After that is done I usually hire a tractor guy to come in and plow it up and then I plant corn, tomatoes, and other stuff.)

[Jim]

Most grasslands are grasslands because of fire. Our native grasses love the fire and are invigorated by it, while woody vegetation is held in check by fire. Longterm absence of fire converts grasslands to shrub lands.

[azbackpackr]

Unlike most people, including most residents, I LOVE the grasslands here in the White Mtns. That is where you will find most of the following interesting things: Old Indian relics, ruins and petroglyphs. Lg herds of antelope. Wintering elk herds. Surprise canyons and gorges and cliffs you can't see until you are right up on them. Interesting volcanic geology, including craters. Old log house ranches that are abandoned and very scenic. Hidden waterfalls and pools in those hidden canyons. Funky two-track roads that function just like single-track for mtn. biking, have NO people on them, and go for miles and miles and miles. Hundred-mile views from the tops of any of the cinder hills.

No trees to speak of, so therefore everyone says the grasslands are "ugly."

(Take that, Matt from Saddle Shoes, Ohio! ;) )

[big_load]

Hundred-mile views from the tops of any of the cinder hills.

No trees to speak of, so therefore everyone says the grasslands are "ugly."

That's what I like. Big views are pretty rare around here. There aren't many places I can get out of the trees. I don't mind going through trees to get up, but a tree-covered peak is anticlimactic.

[azdesertfather]

Wow, Springerville is the windiest town in the US? Even windier than those towns along the interstate in California where all the windmills are, generating electricity? Sounds like we need some of those out in Springerville!

[azbackpackr]

We DO have windmills out here, at Tucson Electric Power's coal-fired Springerville Generating plant. I think they plan to put more of them in, too. They have solar panels out there, too.

And yeah, I really would have to dispute that "Jeopardy" thing. What about North Dakota, for example? VERY windy part of the world! But that one spring the wind did blow roofs off, maybe about 12 years ago, before I moved here. And EVERY spring it does get pretty darn windy around here. Usual windy day here in spring is 30 mph with 45 mph gusts. Hard to ride a bike in that, but we find it's easy to find good places to hike--we just go up in the forested canyons, and we do stay pretty much out of the grasslands when it gets that windy.

[Hoffmaster]

No trees to speak of, so therefore everyone says the grasslands are "ugly."

(Take that, Matt from Saddle Shoes, Ohio! )

I'm guessing that I must have said something in the past, bashing grasslands?

Where I live in Ohio, I have the best of both worlds; grassland (farmland really) and forest. I even found a sandstone gorge or three to explore. This place doesn't suck as much as I thought it would. Don't get me wrong; it's no AZ, but it's not flat and boring either. That's western Ohio.
I'm about to leave on a climbing trip, so maybe when I get back I'll post a couple of pics so you can see what I'm talking about. Or you can visit my website (I highly encourage that) which has a lot of pics and a link to my Flickr stream, which has even more pics.

[azbackpackr]

No trees to speak of, so therefore everyone says the grasslands are "ugly."

(Take that, Matt from Saddle Shoes, Ohio! )

I'm guessing that I must have said something in the past, bashing grasslands?

Yeah, remember we were giving someone advice about where to hike near Show Low?

Have fun on your climbing trip! I spent a couple summers exploring areas around Harpers Ferry WV and Blacksburg VA. Love those areas!

[Jim]

Grasslands are great. In fact, when most foresters, ecologists, botanists, and wildlife people really start talking about biodiversity that has been lost, it has been mostly lost in grasslands or grasslands like ecosystems. If you start to think about it, the absence of fire in this countries ecosystems for the last 100 years or so hasn't had any real lasting impacts on systems that didn't have a significant grass or forb component. Why? Because they probably didn't burn all that often in the first place and keeping fire out didn't change their ecosystem dynamics. Ponderosa pine forests are in the state they are because the grass component was removed by grazing, and in many ways they were originally scattered trees over a grassland. The same goes for longleaf pine, shortleaf pine, and pitch pine communities back east (like in the pine barrens in S. NJ), and also a lot of the mixed conifer and pinyon-juniper communities in our area.
Most people probably know that the tall and mid-grass prairies were wiped out for agriculture, but a lot of short grass prairies like you have around the White mountains still remain. From looking at some photographs of hikes like "Four knolls" they look pretty good. How about this fun fact: according the folks at the NRCS in California, the grasslands we see in central California today are almost all European cool season exotics that colonized the region after the natives were wiped out following a severe drought in the mid 19th century. It might not seem like much, but fire hazard was lower with the native warm season grasses because they remained green during the better part of the growing season, and still do where they can be found.