[pct-l] distressing info about section d

[Tom Bache]

Thanks for this marvelous post summarizing the fascinating story unfolding
near
the PCT.   Your title says ³distressing info,² but I see it as a useful
reminder that the cycle
of life brings sadness and joy ‹ always has, always will (or maybe I spend
too much
time hiking alone).

Tom Bache
San Diego

> Date: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:56:18 -0800
> From: canoeman at qnet.com
> Subject: [pct-l] distressing info about section d
> To: Pct-l at backcountry.net
> 
> here is some info straight from the forest service fire zone inspection team
>  the U.S. Forest Service scientists who have spent the last two weeks in
> the San Gabriel Mountains examining the effects of the Station fire are
> like forensic pathologists combing a crime scene. Except in this case,
> the patient is still alive. "We're more like doctors, and our patient is
> ill. We're trying to figure out how to make it better," said Roath,
> regional director of post-burn analysis and a 33-year Forest Service
> veteran.
> Although the 45-member team's report will remain under wraps for some
> time, the preliminary findings are in: Don't pray for rain. Using
> sophisticated burn maps generated by satellite imagery and factoring in
> the breathtaking steepness of the now-denuded hillsides, the scientists
> warn that even moderate winter rain could trigger landslides and
> catastrophic debris flows capable of inundating many of the San
> Gabriels' 37 foothill communities. Beyond that, the scientists concluded
> that although 250 square miles of the Angeles National Forest burned,
> the trees and chaparral in the fire-adapted ecosystem will bounce back.
> However, much of the wildlife that makes its home in the 655,000-acre
> forest was killed or dislocated. Biologists say they found an unusually
> high number of large animals caught by the fast-moving fire. Teams have
> come across carcasses of bears, mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes and
> gray foxes, apparently unable to find escape routes. "Deer took a big
> hit," said Kevin Cooper, a wildlife biologist. The BAER team (for Burned
> Area Emergency Response) worked 14-hour days to complete its work,
> retreating each night to laptops at the "BAER Den," a Residence Inn
> conference room in Burbank. Specialists were on the ground in every part
> of the 160,000-acre burn area, measuring, photographing and testing. The
> team included soil scientists, hydrologists, archaeologists, botanists,
> wildlife experts and a hazardous materials crew. The fire peeled back a
> layer of cover to reveal unknown Native American oven sites, scores of
> illegal dumps and a stash of 50-gallon drums filled with an as-yet
> unidentified liquid. One day last week, Roath steered a white Forest
> Service SUV up the Angeles Crest Highway, which was closed to the public
> but nonetheless busy. Crews used graders to clear boulders,
> semi-tractor-trailers hauled debris and workers with chain saws cut
> trees that threatened to fall across traffic lanes. Overhead,
> helicopters carried water-dropping buckets or ferried dangling loads of
> replacement utility poles.
> For the most part, the landscape was devoid of color. Gray-white ash has
> banked in places, like dandruff on the shoulders of the mountains.
> Roath, a soil scientist who began his Forest Service career on the
> Angeles, is still awed by the immense natural forces once marshaled to
> lift this mountain range that is still rising and settling. He noted
> that debris cones -- accumulated rock and sand at the bottom of sharply
> defined ridges -- are sprouting up everywhere, as though the mountains
> are shedding dead skin. The San Gabriel Mountains have the potential to
> unleash calamity under normal circumstances, without the overlay of fire
> to complicate things. They are mountains on the move; the rock is
> fractured and disintegrating. Roath said that as BAER team members
> collected their data, they could hear the rattling sound of mountains
> falling. "In some cases boulders are coming down from gravity alone.
> They don't need rain," Roath said. Vegetation plays a critical role in
> shoring up hillsides. When rains come, the drops hit the plant canopy
> first, which slows the water and distributes it more evenly into the
> soil. Absent vegetation, rain pounds down and washes away topsoil, sand,
> small rocks and burned plant material.
> Thus begins a process that scientists call "entraining" -- the terrible
> freight of broken mountainside that gathers energy as it roars
> inexorably downhill. Storms cause sediment to back up in ravines already
> loaded with fire debris. The flow bulges and spreads, picking up larger
> stones, then boulders. It gains speed as it descends, blowing obstacles
> out of its way. That debris, too, joins the train. As highway culverts
> become full, the entire river of rock flows over the roadway, collapsing
> it. The broken asphalt then becomes a passenger on the cascading
> wreckage. Trees, automobiles and houses scarcely slow the torrent.
> "Debris flows are a little hard to control," said Sue Cannon, a debris
> flow expert with the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, adding that the
> San Gabriels present a "classic setting for major debris flow." Along
> the upper Big Tujunga Road, fire appeared to have followed the drainage,
> burning trees that straddled the creek, leaving "a pretty well-toasted
> riparian area," said Jan Beyers, a Forest Service plant ecologist.
> Cooper, the wildlife biologist, noted that the Station fire took out
> trees along the streams, such as white alder. Large trees are like
> straws, sucking water from rivers and streams, and in their absence, he
> said, there has been a measurable increase in stream levels in the
> Angeles National Forest. Elsewhere along the road, a row of roasted pine
> trees offered clues to the fire's behavior. Their brown needles point
> sideways, petrified at an acute angle, like a heavily gelled hairdo.
> This, the scientists explained, is an example of "fire freeze," the
> result of a hot wind blasting through, wringing the last drop of
> moisture out of the tree. Where some see withered plants and scoured
> hillsides, Beyers sees decades of patient aspiration come to fruition --
> the "shooters and seeders." Trees that have lost limbs to fire will grow
> new, sturdier arms. Plants that have been annually depositing seeds in
> subterranean "seed banks" will be rewarded with young growth rising out
> of soil rejuvenated with nitrogen-bearing nutrients. "There are seeds in
> the soil here that have been waiting decades for this chance," she said
> wistfully. Indeed, for some growing things, fire is a bonanza. Certain
> species of conifers require heat to release seeds from their tightly
> closed cones. Some plants need the fire's heat to crack hard seed
> coatings in order to sprout. Some plants thrive on the chemicals
> produced from ash leaching into soil. Smaller bushes, crowded out by
> larger neighbors before the fire, flourish afterward in their newfound
> elbow room. The seed caches of ground-dwelling rodents will be
> disinterred, and the still-viable seeds dispersed by ants and birds,
> everyone pitching in to repair their habitat.
> In the San Gabriels' chaparral system, more plants survive fire than
> most people think, Beyers said. That's explained, in part, because of
> "fire residence," or the length of time that flames and heat linger in a
> particular spot. Chaparral plant communities don't produce a lot of leaf
> litter or vegetation that accumulates on the ground, which would become
> fuel for fires. Then there is the profusion of wildflowers that will
> debut in the spring. The fire followers: purple lupines, morning
> glories, California poppies, larkspurs, wild sweet peas and snapdragons.
> "Ten years from now," Beyers said, taking in the charred hillside and
> smiling, "you can come back here and never know there was a fire at all."