Has anyone heard anything about the status of the old growth redwood groves in Big Basin SP? I know most structures were a total loss but there is speculation regarding the fate of the park’s iconic trees. Given the incredibly intense smoke plume on weather radar when the fire was first moving through the park (the most intense I’ve ever seen on a California fire), I’m not sure what else could have produced that kind of radar signature short of at least pockets of crowning in the redwoods. But since there is much speculation, thought I’d ask.
The guy I talked to was in there for structure protection. He said the Redwoods were crowning! How many, he didn’t know. Pretty intense that night!
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Yikes. Well, that’s the most direct confirmation I’ve heard so far. Interestingly, there are lingering heat signatures in Big Basin showing up right now–exactly what you would expect with an initial aggressive crown run and lower intensity burning following. Sad if true, especially if the damage to the redwoods is more than just a few pockets.
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The good news is that the redwoods can tolerate a lot of heat including direct flame impingement. Crowning will be a different story but hopefully some of them survive this. Mother Nature is very unforgiving when she is mad.
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That’s my hope! It would be informative to know the scope–patchwork crowning probably does not mean a fundamentally different landscape, but the heat from a continuous, long-duration crown run might be another story.
You wont know the mortality of the redwoods and douglas fir trees for months. Although a number may have been killed off by the fire already it will be hard to tell how many will regenerate their crown and how many will not be able to survive. Check back in a few years and we may have an idea as to what the trees will look like.
Google search for this paper from calpoly:
POST-FIRE MORTALITY AND RESPONSE IN A REDWOOD/ DOUGLAS-FIR FOREST,
SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS, CALIFORNIA
by Garren McKendree Andrews
December 2012
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I have a feeling that this is one of the most intense fires in the Redwoods post the Conquistadors and the end of natural fires. If a wildland person visited the area you could not miss the enormous fuel build up.
One year I was an FAE assigned to Sandy Point which was in the old Big Basin food concession stand for a few years after the Sandy Point Station burned down. We had three fires in our IA that year all “spot of grass.”
I thought I would never see that country burn at anything close to this scale. It is amazing. We had reliable fog drip every morning back in those days. Up on the ridge in Butano and the intersection of Highways 236 and 9 where the points where the fog was usually most dense and thus the wettest. This fire blew through those points like there was no tomorrow.
You don’t suppose that the climate is changing do you?
Meso you would know a thing or two about that. 
I sure hope those Redwoods are as tough as the lore suggests.
It is a perfect time to deploy the graduate students.
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For years we used the term Asbestos forest, The fuel loading beyond the redwoods was extreme, the politics of a healthy forest run deep. The Basin was a known potential nightmare, this fire seemed to move far faster than CZU folks could keep up with, the next few days to make for far more records. The Hwy 9/valley is just as over grown and filled with residences, Bonny Doon same. Plus the ridge area.
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Too bad CalFire Ben Lomond Nursery is gone. We could use it!!!
i grew up in the asbestos forest. I believe what happens is the understory burns, then cooks, puts a lot of flammable fumes up and then the whole basin it is working explodes with the overstory getting involved and the fire consumes almost everything. It can take hours for it to set up an area to just the right mixture. One does NOT want to be in the area when it reaches this flashpoint. I can’t think of a good strategy for stopping it. Mother Nature may have to play a role.
No doubt there will be tree mortality on a large scale, but there will be survivors and re-growth as well, the Swanton Basin burned and regrew, and apparently burned again. Redwoods will still be there, but the basin will no doubt never be the same, and maybe its time to re-open those fire roads that were over grown for 2 decades.
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I did a preliminary wildfire hazard assessment for the Upper Campus area of UC Santa Cruz about 8 years ago. They have some real problems with their fuel loading, and a lot of wooden outbuildings. I hope the fire doesn’t make it that far down the hill.
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Agreed on all fronts. Some of these coast redwoods are ~1000 years old, and most of them have undoubtedly encountered low-medium intensity fires before. But California’s recent climate is now starting to depart from not just 20th century history, but also the natural history spanning the lifetime of these trees. This thread probably isn’t the place for a longer discussion on that front, but suffice it to say that I definitely agree it’s time to deploy the grad students!
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I lived and worked most of my life in the redwoods of Humboldt and Del Norte counties.
- I never saw a redwood killed by fire (unless the base burned out and it went from “Portrait” to “Landscape” orientation). I saw old growth incinerated ground to crown (Hunter Creek fire in Simpson Timber property near the town of Klamath, 1988), a week after the the trees were literally black sticks, not a branch left on them. One year later, they were covered ground to crown in green shoots about foot long. Hunter Creek fire went from ignition to 10,000 acres in a couple hours, mostly torching off second growth but burned up into pockets of residual old growth. The second growth also seemed to survive mostly but some of it got cut between the fire and the next time I got out there a year after the fire.
2: I’ve never seen an old growth tree without some degree of fire scarring, at least a little bit of charcoal in the bark somewhere. In the past 500-700 years or so, conditions supported a fire. This includes coastal trees right at the edge of their proximity to the salt spray zone, very wet environment.
Unless there’s a big morphology difference from SCZ to HUU, or the past thirty years of climate regimen have altered substantially (either are possible I suppose) I would expect extremely limited mortality from this fire. I hope I’m right!
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I have been a Ranger for the City of Arcata’s Community Forest for a while. This type of fire is something we have been worrying about for a while. Climate change is real and fuels are becoming more hazardous. The older parts of our third growth forest would do ok, but our big concerns are for interface problems. The SC Old growth will mostly survive and the area will actually see forest growth in some areas. Next comes dealing with the watershed and community infrastructure damage. Now, back to watching the awful tussle for resources. The IC’s will really need down time.
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