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from the imagine-having-two-thousand-birthdays dept.
California wildfires threaten famous giant sequoia trees:
THREE RIVERS, Calif. (AP) — Firefighters wrapped the base of the world’s largest tree in a fire-resistant blanket as they tried to save a famous grove of gigantic old-growth sequoias from wildfires burning Thursday in California’s rugged Sierra Nevada.
The colossal General Sherman Tree in Sequoia National Park’s Giant Forest, some other sequoias, the Giant Forest Museum and other buildings were wrapped as protection against the possibility of intense flames, fire spokeswoman Rebecca Paterson said.
The aluminum wrapping can withstand intensive heat for short periods. Federal officials say they have been using the material for several years throughout the U.S. West to protect sensitive structures from flames.
[...] The Colony Fire, one of two burning in Sequoia National Park, was expected to reach the Giant Forest, a grove of 2,000 sequoias, at some point within days. It was unclear Thursday night whether that had happened. The fire didn’t grow significantly as a layer of smoke reduced its spread, fire spokeswoman Katy Hooper said.
It comes after a wildfire killed thousands of sequoias, some as tall as high-rises and thousands of years old, in the region last year.
The General Sherman Tree[*] is the largest in the world by volume, at 52,508 cubic feet (1,487 cubic meters), according to the National Park Service. It towers 275 feet (84 meters) high and has a circumference of 103 feet (31 meters) at ground level.
[...] Giant sequoias are adapted to fire, which can help them thrive by releasing seeds from their cones and creating clearings that allow young sequoias to grow. But the extraordinary intensity of fires — fueled by climate change — can overwhelm the trees.
That happened last year when the Castle Fire killed what studies estimate were 7,500 to 10,600 large sequoias, according to the National Park Service.
[*] Wikipedia description.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 20 2021, @05:01PM
These trees are thousands of years old. They didn't pick up and move to these areas when, "things got wetter in the last couple thousand years." Things are dryer now to the point that eons old trees are being destroyed by fire, for the first time in eons. And, 20% of the trees were being lost per year to fire in the eons prior to the most recent, these trees would have gone extinct long ago.
There were older giant sequoias than 2000 year old Sherman before humans blew them all up with dynamite in the 19th and 20th centuries.