Introduction to Fire in California

California Natural History Guides #95

by David Carle

What is fire? How are wildfires ignited? How do California's weather and topography influence fire? How did the California Indians use fire? In the spirit of his highly acclaimed Introduction to Air in California and Introduction to Water in California, David Carle now turns to another fundamental element of the natural world, giving a fascinating and concise view of this complex topic. His clearly written, dramatically illustrated book will help Californians, including the millions who live near naturally flammable wildlands, better understand their own place in the state's landscape. Carle covers the basics of fire ecology; looks at the effects of fire on wildlife, soil, water, and air; discusses firefighting organizations and land management agencies; explains current policies; and explores many other topics.



* 91 color illustrations and 15 maps

* Tips on what to do before, during, and after fires

* An overview of major wildfires in California's history

* A discussion of the effect of climate change on fires in natural landscapes

A book in the Californians and Their Environment subseries, dedicated to understanding human influences on the state's ecology and natural resources

Genres: Nonfiction, Science

236 pages, Paperback

First published July 5, 2008

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well researched and written. The author is very knowledgeable, and provides great photos throughout the book. I really like the 1st section where he describes how fire affects various plant habitats. For those of us living in CA there is some invaluable information here.

[Victor]

I got the second edition from 2021 and it's good and it covers a lot of topics such as chaperal and the melanophila acuminata Fire Beetle. The parts about the fires makes me kind of sick, probably every Californian knows someone wildfires have affected. Well it also talks about the early fire technology, from the beginning people wanted to do prescribed burns (previously called controlled burns but now there's enough science their like tree doctors) but the arguments in the San Fransico papers were about "don't burn down the baby trees we will need those for lumber" wildfires in the old days were caused more by unnessissary tree limbs being littered around by the lumber industry, so they did use different methods back then. Now fire is caused by electrity--well it all depends where you live, the book showed that some places campfires getting out of the control is the majority, other places it's industrial tools. It's kind of lame, I just personally thought of this unrelated, that Yosemite always talks about "increasing temperatures makes there be more trees in meadows disappearing meadows" if only there was a way to force the trees to move back from the medow. This book actually mentions that probably a lot of meadows are man-made so what does it really mean to be losing them? It means Yosemite is not following the traditions of the people it vacated to make a park, the people that made the park so spectacular-looking and a "land of many uses" in the first place, Yosemite can't blame everyone (climate change) for decisions that it makes (lazy not managing the trees) burn down tuolumne meadows (safely)