Lordoftheflame



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Intoduction
Do you know that Humans are burning away their own [|oxygen] supply? The cause? Forest fires. Forest fires burn away [|acres] of trees, destroying wildlife, plantlife, and sometimes human [|farmland]. Why do we cause these? I am interested to see how ignorant people do not bother to listen to [|heavily funded advertisments]. learn how forest fires act, who is responsible, how they effect the air, and much, much more!

The Terror


This is a forest fire. Personally, I think it's resemblent of a [|volcano]. Thousands of trees burn to the ground, animals die, it's not pretty. Forest fires traditionally occur as a result of strong wind, severe [|drought], natural heat and of course, human error. They also tend to occur in the summer and fall, when leaves and branches fall on the ground and become [|flammable]. There are three ways in which fires behave. Jumping, crawling, and crowning. "Jumping" is when fire is spread over winds, and can jump over roads, rivers, and even spare trees of a firey fate. "Crawling" is when fire is spread on the ground, through brush, leaves, and branches among other things. "Crowning" is when fire is spread over the [|canopy]. these spread at an incredible pace, and are excessively dangerous to those underneath.

Every material has a "flash point"; a point where an object bursts into flame. Wood's flash point is about 525 Degrees Farenheit. (300 Degrees Celcius). When the flash point is applied, wood releases hydrogen gas, and that combusts with the oxygen to combust into flame. For a Flame to burn, it needs to follow the fire triangle. Heat is applied, it burns fuel, in this case wood, the oxygen heats it, then more heat burns fuel, oxygen is consumed, and so on. Three factors determine a fire's destruction: fuel, topography, and weather. If there are no trees, the fire won't go anywhere. If it's pouring rain, it may slow the fire down. If it is a dry landscape, the fire will be devastating.

Destruction
In Southern California, There are special winds called the [|Santa Ana winds]. Fires that burn here under those wind's influence can travel extremely fast, about 40 [|miles] in a single day! That consumes 1000 acres per hour.

Another type of fire is the smoldering fire. This fire emits pollution, consumes fuel, and lasts for days, all without an actual flame. This heavily pollutes the air, and is very hard to prevent. On average, wildfires burn 4.3 million acres a year in the United States alone. that's a little more than M[|assachusetts] anually. that is quite a bit. A terrifying truth is that forest fires kill more americans than every natural disaster combined. Even at the end of fires, houses can experience [|ember] attacks, where flaming pieces of twig and branches bombard the house, which can ignite a fire.

Flora and Fauna aren't the only ill effects of a fire. Burned land is particularly vulnurable to alien, invasive species. It also impacts the fertility of soil and the water cycle, and results in loss of crops and company assets.

The amount of fuel that the Fire has to burn is called the fuel load. Fuel can range from trees, and brush, to homes. Small fuels, like grass, are sometimes called flashy fuels, and burn faster than logs or trees. Chemically, certain fuels are harder to burn then others, but most fires burn the same fuels, since fuels are generally the same in forests or plains. Fire also reduces the amount of forest litter, or compost on the forest floor, and reduces the amount of nutrients in the soil, making it infertile or dry. Even if the soil survives, it can drive away the microbes that actually decompose the material, which can also harm the forests.

In Canada, forests often get covered in snow. if a fire burned an area, snow will chemically melt snow faster- due to the fertility of the soil being burned away, allowing more water for soil in a short period of time, which is good for plants, however, if the weather gets really dry, this area will dry up a lot more quickly, so snow covered forest burns can go either way.

Human Error
Humans are the main cause of forest fires. Abandoned campfires, cigarettes, and discarded matches are large perpitrators, and the [|friction]from braking cars can also ignite a fire. 1995, there were 9,974 wildfires caused by [|lightning] and 120,045 wildfires caused by human error. If 4.3 million acres are burned a year, then 3.87 million are burned by human error every year.

Pollution
Forest fire pollution often immediatly causes storms. These storms can boost smoke, [|soot], and pollutants produced such as carbon monoxide. Forest fires produce 30 times more pollution in the [|stratosphere] than [|commercial airlines]. This can lead to a higher absorption of [|solar radiation] by 15%. One storm a fire can spark is a [|pyrocumulonimbus], a storm that causes huge winds, and sometimes even [|tornadoes]. Sometimes these storms put out the fire that created them. You can see one here (it's called a [|firewhirl] by the user) media type="youtube" key="YFwzNNEuOSY" width="425" height="350" A huge forest fire in Indonesia released 2.7 [|gigatonnes] of carbon dioxide into the air. Just one would be 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) [|metric tons], 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) [|kilograms], or 1 quadrillion [|grams]. Mathematically, that is about the same as all the [|carbon dioxide] ever released by 50 men, each of them 80 years old. This hospitalized more then 40,000 people! The total financial loss of the fire was a huge $9.3 billion USD. That is one sixteenth of all the money microsoft has.

Thank you're local firefighter today!
Have you ever drowned a campfire, and sputtered when the smoke licked your face? Fighting a forest fire is that, but unimaginably worse. There are two kinds of wildfire fighters, and the air tanker. The air tanker is a plane that covers forests in flame-retardant, and then douses flame in water. Hotshots and smokejumpers are the two other kinds of fighters. Hotshots cut trees down so that the fire can not spread, and smokejumpers jump out of planes to douse fires. Fighting a fire can be brutal, and firefighters are often the actual casualties of the fires.

Only you...
Many people try to prevent forest fires caused by ignorance. [|Smokey the Bear] was a well known example, and the main parts of [|Bambi] also was a cry for prevention. However, forest fires aren't necessarily bad. They are bad only if they are destructive. The [|Sierra Redwood], for example, requires fire in its life cycle, so people do what's called "[|controlled burning]", or a [|perscribed burn] non-destructive, constructive burning. People also thin out forests so there is less fuel for the fire to burn. Cutting down trees is //not// bad, but it becomes bad if //too much// is cut down. However, despite this, forest fires are caused by human error in 9 out of 10 times. =Kid's section= = = =Works Cited= =Lordoftheflame's "I-search"=