Fires causing irreversible forest losses in Australia

Forest is never irreplaceble. If the conditions are there (soil, water, light, and CO2), plants will always grow.

Modern times means nothing in space time and how long the earth has been going through transitions. That is why Greta and her parents agenda means nothing as well.

Wiillii: Correct. Forests always grow back?

Heat waves and drought have fueled bigger and more frequent fires in parts of Australia,

Just as they have done for millennia. The Australian continent has been drying out and getting hotter since it split from Antarctica some 85 million years ago. Accurate climate records for Australia have only been kept for a little over 100 years. Yes, the recent events are unprecedented in the last 100 years or so, but that is not say it hasn't happened time and time again in the last 85 million years. The forests of Australia have evolved to thrive in the wake of large forest fires. Many species of tress need fires to germinate and drop their seeds. The ash from the fires gives a major nutrient boost to the soil to kick the trees off again. The government wasting money on reseeding areas of forest will only result in an imbalance of the natural order of recovery. Leave the forests alone and they will regenerate quickly, as has been proven many times in the past. Yes, climate change and global warming have contributed to the fires, but the forests are equipped to handle it.

Sounds like a great opportunity to regrow the forests - and in patterns we like, with species we want!

Bugle Boy of Company B - Sounds like a great opportunity to regrow the forests - and in patterns we like, with species we want!

Yeah, great! Let's replant the forest with Japanese red cedar and make everybody sick.

So we are told that

Australia’s forests are burning at a rate unmatched in modern times and scientists say the landscape is being permanently altered as a warming climate

And further down in the article:

Most forested areas can be expected to eventually regenerate, said Owen Price, a senior research fellow at the University of Wollongong

So Owen Prince is not a scientist? Or (gasp, shudder), a denier?

The article writers can´t even stay on message within one piece...

Tom;

Wiillii: Correct. Forests always grow back?

If you let them, yes of course.

Disillusioned:

Yeah, great! Let's replant the forest with Japanese red cedar and make everybody sick.

Better than with plantations of deep-root, water hogging, poisenous Eucalyptus trees, which are a massive environmental problem in SE Asia.

Outside of forests in humid areas, forests create their own climate, through shading the ground and releasing groundwater through their leaves. This allows them to extend their growing range into places where the climate would not otherwise support trees.

These firestorm wildfires (ones that burn basically all the trees, as opposed to the more common ones that end up leaving islands of unburnt trees) could indeed prove fatal (at least for several generations) to the widespread forests they've burned. Even without further stresses, and the already inevitable increases in temperature from climate change, and even with a lot of human intervention (reseeding, irrigation, and steps to disrupt the grasslands to allow trees a foothold) a significant portion of the forests are going to turn into scrublands (isolated stands of stunted trees surrounded by grasslands) and grasslands.

With most JT readers not American to begin with, why employ the US state of Ohio for size comparison? If we were talking about a large forest fire in California, I doubt we’d be told that it had burned an area as large as Tasmania. Why not say, instead, that the fires have burnt an area equivalent to 1.5x times the state of Tasmania, or nearly 50% the size of the state of Victoria.

The America-centrism of the writing is also on display with the information that some of Australia’s eucalypts grow to ‘almost’ 90 meters “comparable to the redwoods of Northern California.” In actual fact, these trees can grow to well in excess of 100 meters, and there’s reliable evidence of some individual giants topping out at heights of up to 130-140 meters.

Yeah, great! Let's replant the forest with Japanese red cedar and make everybody sick

That’s a terrible idea. Obviously use native (local) trees.