• sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    18 hours ago

    While the current Bear Gultch fire is on the other side of the Olympics…

    It would be a tragedy to lose the Hoh Rainforest, and the article mentions that it did burn some decades ago.

    The Hoh Rainforest is one of … only maybe three temperate rainforests on the planet, the vast majority of rainforests are tropical.

    If you’ve seen the movie Prospect… you’ve seen it, much of it was filmed there.

    Yeah, that’s 3 trees growing out of a larger fallen tree, which itself is still alive, all covered in moss… where the moss isn’t, and the trees appear black, that isn’t a burn mark, its a layer of a kind of slimy mold or fungus… and of course, ferns, ferns everywhere.

    I guess you would maybe describe it as the closest you can get in the real world to the twilight biome/dimension from minecraft…

    • Contentedness@lemmy.nz
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      17 hours ago

      I was confused because what your describing sounds like large parts of New Zealand and Tasmania, so I checked Wikipedia which says:

      Temperate rainforests occur in oceanic moist regions around the world: the Pacific temperate rainforests of North American Pacific Northwest as well as the Appalachian temperate rainforest in the Appalachian region of the United States; the Valdivian temperate rainforests of southwestern South America; the rainforests of New Zealand and southeastern Australia; northwest Europe (small pockets in Great Britain and larger areas in Ireland, southern Norway, northern Iberia and Brittany); southern Japan; the Black Sea–Caspian Sea region from the southeasternmost coastal zone of the Bulgarian coast, through Turkey, to Georgia, and northern Iran.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 hours ago

        Well shoot, my info/number there is wrong then, you are correct.

        If you can’t tell, I grew up in the area, and I was just regurgitating that figure I was taught almost 30 years ago… appears I’ve got a bit of hometown bias, out of date info, whoops.

        I appreciate the correction!

        • Contentedness@lemmy.nz
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          9 hours ago

          No problem, I appreciate your passion for temperate rain forests! Who doesn’t love a good tree fern!

          It’s important to do what we can to protect them regardless, I say.

        • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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          5 hours ago

          Pretty similar to coastal Maine too. Reading the headline immediately made me wonder if New England is preparing at all. They’ve been having brush fires the last few summers, along with air alerts from the Canadian smoke.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 hours ago

        Contentedness pointed out that my ‘one of three’ figure is evidently an outdated figure, there are a good deal more than 3 of these ‘temperate rainforest’ climactic zones, but yes, I think the Appalachian temperate rainforest would be another one.

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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    20 hours ago

    Denialists: “What does this have to do with climate change? There are forest fires all the time.”

    Anyone who has been paying attention: “…”

    • TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca
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      19 hours ago

      Climate change mixed with awful mismanagement of forests. Overzealous fire suppression and thoughtless tree planting has lead to forests that are artificially over-dense so when they dry out they practically explode when ignited.

      • FundMECFS@lemmy.cafe
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        19 hours ago

        The indigenous people were doinf controlled burns and had this all under control.

        But then the colonisers took over and were more woried about protecting short term property value than long term sustainability so we got overzealous fire protection as a ticking time bomb.

        • PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social
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          18 hours ago

          They actually observed the natives setting those controlled burns, and decided to themselves, “Yeah they’re wild savages, they clearly don’t give a fuck about anything or know what they’re doing, here’s me with syphilis and muskets and I think it’s time to share civilization with them, they’ll thank me later.” All that magic prairie ecosystem (which is basically gone now) was a carefully constructed environment maintained over generations to make hunting big game cheap and easy. But no, let’s have railroads and lead paint instead.

        • LousyCornMuffins@lemmy.world
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          42 minutes ago

          we been burning the hills around my town for decades. except for some reason when the federal funding for the fire department dried up in 2016 they stopped.

    • sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      Forest fire in the rainforest is/should be pretty alarming - especially since they have not historically happened there.

  • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de
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    18 hours ago

    In 2019, 6 percent of NSW burned. 3 billion terrestrial vertebrates are estimated to have been killed. There were fires in Canada’s west didn’t go out last winter. They pretty much always do. Huge sections of central Canada are on fire; the smoke is reaching flans Finland.

    It’s only going to get worse.

    • diptchip@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      If you look into the CSZ “big one” you might find that we’re likely to face uncontrolled fires throughout the PNW shortly following the earthquake. Expecting “complete economic collapse” for everything west of I5. Think the official estimate was a 37 percent chance within 50 years, about 30 years ago…