As fires have decimated many of California’s forests in recent years, American Forests, a nonprofit organization dedicated to replanting forests to best prevent future fires has recently gained the support of the Bureau of Land Management. Together, they will be working to re-engineer California’s forests.
Past strategies have consisted of planting pine trees in neat rows as if you were farming. The idea was that the dense overhead covering would limit sunlight under the trees, thus preventing the growth of weeds and plants on the forest floor. However, this strategy of packing trees closely together only increased the devastating effect and ability of the fires. With so many trees in a condensed area, fires quickly spread from tree to tree, decimating thousands of acres at a time.
American Forests suggests a new strategy, replanting the forest to replicate its conditions before European’s arrived on the continent. This includes planting a variety of trees far enough away to prevent the spread of wildfires. This also helps remedy another issue threatening forests, drought. As trees will be planted farther apart, the competition for water will lessen as plants have a larger area to themselves. The nonprofit also uses specific seeds to create new forests, particularly those coming from trees that have previously survived fires, droughts, and disease. In doing so, they hope to increase the genetic resilience of future forests.
Although Covid-19 has made their efforts more difficult, the organization plans to provide over 120,000 trees to restore the areas destroyed by the 2018 Camp Fire and 75,000 trees to restore the mountains surrounding Los Angeles.
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