“Fire break on the Seven Mile Lake fire made by heavy equipment to remove all combustible material down to bare mineral soil. (Donna Crossland)” Click on photo for CBC story.
Hopefully the heavy rain over the last 24 hours has finally extinguished the fires in SW Nova Scotia.
Donna Crossland, acting Ecologist for Parks Canada at Keji and on a team that has been fighting two of the fires, was interviewed on CBC today about the nature and effects of the fires.
She said that in some cases, fires have burned right down to granite bedrock. Fires occurred at a time when the drought code (referring to topsoil) was highly elevated, so roots, duff, organic matter, and fungal networks burned… the foundation of our forests were very damaged. She said these fires were different from fires occurring at other times, e.g. in spring, which just burn the soil surface. The Keji-area fires burned deep in ground which made them difficult to extinguish: to make fire breaks they have to use heavy equipment to remove all combustible material down to bare mineral soil (see pic). Continue reading →
“A member of an expert panel struck to assess how Nova Scotia’s Department of Natural Resources was managing the province’s forests, minerals, parks and biodiversity says the provincial government is not honouring its commitments to those resources…
