Spring, wildfire season, winter. Will this be our new norm or can we stabilize our forest ecosystems so that we can hang on to our traditional summer and fall? I love our temperate climate and each of our four seasons and I'm pretty sure our plants and wildlife do too. Let's try our best to conserve good air quality, and sensitive ecosystems by raising public awareness of new measures and making them a top priority in policy! Wether it's prescribed fires, fire resistant plants or other interventions - it is possible to save our forests and ultimately ourselves!
More information about fire resistant plants: https://www.grantspassoregon.gov/289/Fire-Resistant-vs-Highly-Flammable-Plant
Hi Christopher, I believe the four seasons aren't going away yet, but we actually may see more intense changing seasonal patterns. This idea actually frightens me a lot more than the idea of a missing season. Mild seasonality is something we will be missing for a long time as we experience strange seasonal-weather transformations in the future here in Vancouver
What an amazing post title! This is such a sad but true reality of how the seasons have changed in BC and I really hope that as a collective we can strive towards a much less smokey future. Spreading awareness and information about wild fire prevention and management is definitely a good place to start!
Hello Christopher! When you were listing out the possible interventions I was very interested in the fire-resistant plants so thank you for posting a link about it :) Hopefully our future will go back to normal soon without the wildfire season overtaking fall and summer.
There is no more fall in my world......
I really like your information about refractory plants, which is new to me, although I don't know much about it, but I have the following questions, can this plant be grown widely in the wild? Will widespread planting of this plant lead to changes in biodiversity? Will this plant compete with other plants for resources?
This fall has been especially weird with the drought we had until like a couple days ago, the only thing that felt like fall was the colourful leaves. In an ecosystem that is heavily reliant on our rain, this year has been very worrying.
Hi Christopher, I love the way you worded your post! I'm very sad about the new weather pattern in Vancouver as well...most of fall seemed to just be skipped over this year, and we got a lot of smoke in its place.
Hey Christopher, I like how short, simple and effective this post was. Your comments on having wildfire season completely abolish summer and fall are incredibly true. I’m really interested in your intervention suggestion, in regards to fire resistant plants. How do you envision the introduction of fire resistant plants to an urban landscape setting contributing to better air quality, when most of this bad air quality stems from forest fires?
Hey Christopher!
Thank you for sharing the link about fire-resistant plants! A very creative idea and something I would have never thought about. Do you know if there has been any research on the effectiveness of fire-resistant plants? From the article you linked, it looks like such plants would still be a source of fuel, just not as significant as other plants.
You mentioned that we should raise public awareness about measures to improve air quality. What measures would these be and how would we raise public awareness about them? Launch rallies or marches? Engage with school students?
Hi Christopher thank you for sharing your hopeful post! I loved that you so passionately sustain your position that we can fix this, that we have control, power and ability to change things before its too late. Thank you for the link as well! I think knowing more about fire/heat resistant plants and especially their relationship with fire/heat-sensitive plants will help us to build more self-sustaining forests in the mist of 'wildfire season' and all year round.
Thanks for linking that resource about fire resistant plants. It would be great for corridors of this less flammable vegetation to be planted around towns and homes to protect ourselves from fire. As we've seen with examples like Lytton, whole towns can burn down with little warning; having preventative measures in place to reduce the likelihood of devastating fires would provide people with a greater sense of security. The thought of not having four seasons is indeed a bleak one.