
U.S. Wildfire Causes 1980-2016 - thebent
http://www.jillhubley.com/project/wildfires/map/
======
bo1024
This is very interesting but I think there is a bigger context too. My
understanding (though I'm not an expert) is that wildfires are a normal,
regular, naturally-occurring phenomenon. When humans artificially prevent
forest fires from taking their natural course, this causes dead wood to
continue building up significantly more, which causes the fires to be much
more destructive when they do happen.

So if these fires are essentially inevitable, maybe there should be less
emphasis on the thing that happened to kick it off and more on preventing the
conditions for it to become huge and destructive.

~~~
woliveirajr
This. There are studies supporting this conclusion [0]: "Without adequate
prevention measures, forest debris can build up, fueling a bigger, more
devastating fire the next time around."

And this [1]: "This leaves authorities with a difficult problem. After decades
of successful wildfire suppression, we can now expect fires to be far worse
when they finally happen."

[0] [http://news.mit.edu/2013/forest-fire-
management-1120](http://news.mit.edu/2013/forest-fire-management-1120)

[1] [http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160722-why-we-should-let-
ra...](http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160722-why-we-should-let-raging-
wildfires-burn)

~~~
nerdponx
Some articles worth reading if you're interested in this topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14318646](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14318646)

[https://priceonomics.com/does-using-airplanes-to-put-out-
for...](https://priceonomics.com/does-using-airplanes-to-put-out-forest-
fires/)

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superbatfish
This is a very cool visualization. Weirdly, though, the visually apparent
proportion of natural vs. human causes seems to change depending on my zoom
level.

Plotting this much data presents several challenges. I recently discovered a
good guide on the subject of "Plotting Pitfalls" from the Bokeh project:

[https://bokeh.github.io/datashader-
docs/user_guide/1_Plottin...](https://bokeh.github.io/datashader-
docs/user_guide/1_Plotting_Pitfalls.html)

I think this visualization suffers a bit from "overplotting".

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stephengillie
This is a huge amount of data, and an interesting way to visualize. An
incredible number of these appear to be started by lightning.

A set of filtering tools would be nice - to sort by year and type.

~~~
craftyguy
Before humans, lightning was THE primary way to start fire on Earth.

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junkscience2017
almost all of the land in the Western US that has been encouraged to overgrow
is held by a government.

the fires on the coast will be nothing compared to the soon-inevitable mega-
fire that will reset the Federal land holdings in the Sierra range

if more of the Sierra range had been allocated for productive use, we probably
would not be in this situation. the Federal government is an absentee landlord

~~~
mattsidesinger
Where I live in Colorado, we see active preventive measures on pubic,
government owned lands as opposed to very little mitigation on large swaths of
private lands.

~~~
junkscience2017
In the Sierra range the government is now funding a very expensive clear-
cutting campaign to try to rid the forest of the 60 million estimated dead
trees that have created a perpetual autumn-like landscape of golden trees. If
the forests been subjected to well-regulated and sustainable harvesting, not
only would the trees have been cut down as needed, but the state of California
would have collected tax receipts. Instead, clear cutting is now a cost to
government.

