GRA said:
At least you're up higher, they're fairly spread out and most aren't very tall, so you've got a better shot - out here the greatest die off was in the mixed conifer belt (Ponderosa/Jeffrey/Sugar Pine/White Fir/Incense Cedar/Black Oak, lower than you):
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-sierra-dead-trees-20170128-story.html
Even though dead but standing trees pose a greater risk, the forest floor is cluttered with the trunks and branches when they fall, allowing fire to easily connect from tree to tree even if there wasn't all the brush. Last summer at my old Scout camp (5,760+ ft. on the western slope, in the Stanislaus N.F.), what used to be an easy stroll cross country through the forest at any time going back almost half a century, in the the past 5 years has turned into an obstacle course of dead and downed limbs, and it's like that all over the central and southern Sierra.
We have had quite a lot of beetle kill in the montane zone here, albeit not as extreme as the drought kill in much of the California mountains.
The trees on my lot weren't originally spread out. My piñon-juniper-oak forest was
very dense on my lot when I built my house; in many places it was too dense to walk through. Counting rings on a couple of medium sized trees in 1999, I came to 100 for both, meaning that the forest on my lot hadn't burned in at least 100 years. I built a concrete and steel house to reduce the fire danger. However, it turns out that windows are a vulnerable point: a very hot fire will pop the windows and the fire will burn the house from the inside out. I have a lot of very large windows for the splendid mountain vistas, so that was a concern.
After seeing the effects of the Los Alamos fire in 2000 — where the piñon fueled fire was so hot that the baked ground became impermeable to water(!) — plus a drought year here circa 2001, I started thinning the forest around my house. Every winter — when the piñon
Ips beetle is dormant — I remove some more trees to increase the spacing. [Unlike with well-spaced ponderosas, limbing-up piñons and junipers is useless since they are pretty much all crown and they burn so hot. Nevertheless I have neighbors who limb-up every tree — removing none — and think that they are doing fire mitigation, to my ire — it makes the forest look ridiculous and is utterly useless.]
Over the years I've removed hundreds of trees on my little five acre lot but still have hundreds left. I leave an acre and a half of my favorite old growth forest untouched — if it burns, so be it. From my botanist point of view, thinning the forest has several advantages: the trees that are left, as well as other plants — grasses, forbs and shrubs — get more sun and water, making them healthier; it will slow down the spread of a wildfire; it allows more snow to reach and melt into the ground, rather than evaporating directly from the trees, increasing soil moisture. The better-watered and healthier trees, in turn, are more resistant to beetle kill because trees with good sap pressure can force them out; beetles generally kill already stressed trees.
In addition to improving plant health and the number and variety of meadow plants in the clearings, thinning the forest improves habitat for some wildlife, such as deer (and the mountain lions that eat them), bears, bunnies and the like, but reduces habitat for other critters, such as tree squirrels, woodpeckers and nuthatches. It also reduces the pine nut crop that so many critters depend on (Clark's nutcrackers and piñon jays actually commute in from the mountains for pine nut season in a good year), although healthier piñons will individually produce more pine nuts IME. But fire mitigation is the goal. In a very dense forest, such as mine was, the idea is to remove 70-80% of the trees, which drastically reduces the forest fuel load. Nevertheless, I still have a LOT of trees, they are just farther apart and healthier.
If I pushed the forest far enough back I could be pretty much fire-safe. But I have some 25+ foot piñons near a corner of my house that I haven't been able to bring myself to cut. I put my house where I did in part so I wouldn't have to cut those big and beautiful trees for the views. If I did take out those trees I'm pretty sure my house would survive a wildfire, despite piñon fires being so ferociously hot due to the pitch in them.
Keeps me busy in retirement!