Fire Journaling

Fire journaling is an emerging form of nature journaling. It uses art, writing and scientific inquiry to look closely at how a landscape is affected by a fire. Over time these journals can help us to assess how a burned area is recovering and the habitat it is providing. We know that many of our members are artists, photographers, writers, scientists or observers of the natural world. To help us tell the narrative of fire  and all its impacts—positive and negative—we’d like to invite you to share your fire observations with us. These observations can be of the post-fire recovery of a particular place, the fire behavior during a fire (prescribed or wildland), or characteristics of a landscape before fire (is it well-adapted and prepared for fire or not? Is there sign of historic fires?). In time we hope this fire journal on our website can serve as a repository of local knowledge about how fire interacts with our backyard forests.

Visit this Pyrolife Blog for more information and inspiration for your fire journal.
Mirriam Morrill  has a beautiful fire journaling website as well.

Submit pictures from your fire journal, photos, observations, questions or hypotheses that come up to our Communications Manager, Nick Littman at nick@mvcitizens.org. Nick will be doing his own long-term fire journaling.

David Lukas

Cedar Creek Fire Observations
November 2021
Something you frequently see in nature are large scars or patches of bare wood on the uphill side of trees and this photo from the Cedar Creek Fire area shows how this happens.
Trees are usually well protected from low-intensity or fast-moving fires because they have a protective layer of bark on their trunks. Fires might superficially scorch the outermost layer of bark but after the grasses and small herbs burn up the fire keeps moving.
However, wherever an old log has rolled downhill and been caught by a standing tree there’s potential for the fire to linger. The old log might smolder for long periods of time or burn quickly, but either way it can hold fire against the standing tree long enough that its protective barrier of bark is breached.
The result is a fire scar on the uphill side of the tree. In my experience these fires, and the scars they create, rarely kill the standing tree, instead the fire might break through the bark, might burn some of the tree’s interior, or might even burn up the trunk for some distance but then fizzles out. Ultimately, these old scars might rot out and leave a large hollow at the base of the tree which becomes an important shelter for animals such as hibernating bears so this image below is part of a larger, interesting ecological story.
Hopefully the next time you see a fire scar on the uphill side of a tree you’ll know how it might have happened.

 

Candace Buzzard

Oil Paintings of Cedar Creek Fire from Mazama
July 2021