![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_1523.jpg?resize=517%2C388&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
All images by Max unless otherwise credited.<\/em><\/p>\n Previous: Recovering in Burn Scars<\/a><\/p>\n Throughout these Dispatches on wildfire, I’ve been using the word habitat<\/em> as if we’re all familiar with it and understand it in the same way. But is that true?<\/p>\n In ecology \u2013 the study of relationships between living organisms and their environment \u2013 habitat means, to quote Wikipedia: “the array of resources, physical and biotic factors, present in an area that allow the survival and reproduction of a particular species.” Your habitat is the area around your home where everything<\/em> you need comes from: air, water, food, shelter, healthcare, etc.<\/p>\n But because many organisms range widely for the resources they need, habitat can be hard to pin down. We’re most familiar with birds \u2013 they can seemingly go anywhere. For some migrating birds, their habitat would seem to be an entire hemisphere of the earth. Whales, of course, also migrate thousands of miles. But even a colony of ants can live in a forest and harvest food from a nearby meadow \u2013 and vice versa.<\/p>\n As Wittgenstein observed, language is a game. The meanings of words are not prescribed in advance by dictionaries; words acquire meaning during use, and dictionaries are compiled after the fact to report on the usage of words in society.<\/p>\n Experiencing firsthand the changes wrought by wildfire in the Southwestern landscape, I’ve groped for words to describe and share my experience. When biologists, conservationists, and land managers get together in the field, I’ve always heard them refer to a forest, a grassy meadow, a desert, a stream corridor, or a seashore as a type<\/em> of habitat \u2013 for example, “You’ve got that forest habitat next to a sagebrush steppe.” In that usage, habitat<\/em> doesn’t refer to a single species and its needs, it refers to a physical area hosting and providing the needs of a distinct community<\/em> of countless different species \u2013 from bacteria and fungi to trees and large mammals \u2013 whose interactions with each other and the nonliving components of that area constitute an ecosystem<\/em>. That area, that type<\/em> of habitat, has boundaries, beyond which it ends and other, adjacent types of habitat begin, and it’s defined in terms of the recognizable features that distinguish it from other, adjacent habitats. For example, a forest bordering on a meadow, or an ocean bordering on a coast.<\/p>\n Biologists are not really supposed to use the term “habitat” in that vernacular sense, as a place defined by a geographical feature, or an alliance of dominant vegetation, hosting a distinct community of species. But we need a word for such a place, and we grope for something more accurate.<\/p>\n Wildfire makes this need even more urgent. Within hours, a wildfire can turn a forest full of trees and the animals that depend on them into a smoking, ash-blanketed moonscape. The forest provided habitat for countless species, but what do you call the empty moonscape? And when, after monsoon rains, the ashy wasteland is gradually replaced by clumps of annual wildflowers here, stands of ferns there, isolated thickets of aspen here, scattered oak seedlings there, with birds and other animals moving back and forth between them \u2013 what do you call the new landscape? The theory of succession says that the new regime is transitory. Over time, species will grow and spread, competing for light, space, water, and nutrients. The perennials all start small, but some will end up dominating others.<\/p>\n That takes time \u2013 decades and human generations, in the case of this former forest \u2013 and in the meantime, what used to be distinct, homogenous habitat is an unstable, transitional mosaic<\/em> of patches<\/em>. Countless plants and animals begin using it immediately after the fire and increase in numbers and complexity from then on. The “new normal” is evolving, but it still provides habitat for these species.<\/p>\n Thus wildfire forces us to talk about habitat that’s divided into a mosaic of patches that are ever-changing and shared between countless species that overlap in some sort of dynamic network<\/em>. Just as we defined the previous, larger, homogenous and stable area by its most recognizable features, we define each evolving patch by the features that are temporarily<\/em> dominant. The more we strive for precision and follow the mandate of reductive science to focus on individual species, the more wildfire forces us to take a holistic view.<\/p>\n Across my four decades in the Mojave Desert, I can think of only three memorable wildfires. The small one I woke up to in 1989, described in Part 2, is the only one I know firsthand. The other two, the Hackberry Fire of 2005 and the slightly smaller Dome Fire that decimated our most famous Joshua Tree forest in 2020, consumed less than 200,000 acres. During that same period, the forested mountains of Arizona and New Mexico have experienced dozens of mega-wildfires consuming millions of acres. Whereas the prehistory of wildfire in the desert is poorly known and controversial, the forests of the Southwest are widely acknowledged to be adapted to and dependent on wildfire.<\/p>\n During my lifetime, the frequency and intensity of wildfire have increased in both habitats. Most “environmentally-conscious” people now assume that climate change is at fault, simply because media authorities have oversimplified climate change into the scapegoat behind all our environmental problems. But fire suppression, not climate change, is the main reason why more forests burn now than in my youth. Wildfires would’ve been common decades ago if our government hadn’t prevented and aggressively fought them.<\/p>\n Anyone can recognize that a warmer, drier climate will dry out both living and dead vegetation, increasing the risk of fire. But the desert and the forest pose very different risks.<\/p>\n Yes, reductive science tells us that the loss of forest reduces absorption of carbon by the “biosphere,” accelerating climate change on a planetary scale. But Southwestern forests are meant to burn, and the resulting habitat mosaic can be more diverse and productive than the artificial uniformity we created through fire suppression. The forest needs wildfire to restore its balance. Not so in the desert. As I described in Part 3, unlike the Southwestern forests, desert habitats are being degraded and lost at an ever-accelerating rate due to invasive plants \u2013 and of course, due to urban and industrial development \u2013 particularly the misnamed “green” energy. Wildfire in the already extremely arid desert will explode in future decades as our rapidly increasing demand for electricity \u2013 misbelieved to be a “clean” source of energy \u2013 sparks more infrastructure fires, and as more and more invasive plants spread by our “green” electric vehicles provide more and more fuel for high-intensity wildfire, clearing more and more native habitat and replacing it with degraded, biologically impoverished land dominated by aliens.<\/p>\n We Europeans were wrong to call it a desert when we first saw it, because back then, it was a diverse, productive wonderland. Now, we’re making the place fit the name \u2013 a wasteland created by our expansion and innovation, a victim of civilization and progress.<\/p>\n Science doesn’t really answer all our questions or provide a definitive explanation for what happens in nature \u2013 science provides simplified abstractions that can mislead us into thinking nature is orderly and can be controlled by us.<\/p>\n In the ideal, theoretical, stable habitat, with a stable climate, stable landforms, and a stable ecosystem or community of organisms, scientists tell us that wildfire occurs in a pattern they call the fire regime<\/em>. Within that theoretical regime, wildfire occurs in fire cycles<\/em>, meaning that fires repeat at more or less regular time intervals. Each fire is followed by a more or less predictable sequence: flooding, erosion, deposition, plant invasions and colonizations, a period of decomposition, competition, and instability, eventually leading to a stable state in which the habitat and community are just waiting for the next fire.<\/p>\n In this theoretical model, climate \u2013 the yearly cycle of weather, from wind and cloud cover to precipitation, temperature averages and extremes \u2013 enables specific communities of organisms to settle into specific niches where, working together, they establish distinct habitats and ecosystems, adapting to wildfire and further shaping its regime \u2013 its pattern \u2013 and its cycle. This is ecology in the broadest sense \u2013 living and nonliving, earth and sky, ephemeral phenomena and stable pattern \u2013 working together to achieve what in my field of science \u2013 the science of motion and change \u2013 was called a dynamic equilibrium<\/em>.<\/p>\n A particular fire regime, and its corresponding cycle, are of course determined by habitat, which is in turn determined by landscape, its geological foundations, climate, and evolutionary history. Regardless of climate, mountains create elevational zones of habitat, from the desert basins to the arid grasslands, the mid-elevation, fairly open forest of trees with spreading crowns, and the high-elevation mixed-conifer forest of tall, slender trees creating a more or less solid canopy. Mountains create corridors and niches of habitat via their rock substrate, their peaks, ridges, rock outcrops and cliffs, and canyon bottoms. Patches of fast-burning fuel \u2013 accumulations of dry or dead vegetation, especially from invasive plants \u2013 provide a ready-made path for wildfire, diverting it away from slower-burning patches. Both habitat and landforms create the potential for fire and shape its spread.<\/p>\n Within a distinct habitat and ecosystem, the fire adaptations of species, and the conditions of individuals \u2013 their relative age and health \u2013 determine how they react to fire, and how fire may cull weak or unhealthy individuals while protecting the population. The thick bark on the trunks of mature pines and firs acts as insulation, protecting the sapwood inside. Mature trees shade and kill their lower limbs, which fall off, denying surface fires a “ladder” of fuel to climb to the crown. This is particularly effective for ponderosa pines, which have thick branches that could offer substantial fuel.<\/p>\n Succulents like agave, yucca, and cactus, which we think of as natives of the open desert, thrive in the fire regime of forests because their stored water and underground mass cools and protects them from total destruction in a wildfire, so that even if their thick leaves are completely killed, the plant’s hidden heart can still bear fruit.<\/p>\n In southwestern New Mexico, we may reference the four seasons of our European cultural legacy for convenience, but those are not the seasons we get. Our windy season, in March and April, dries out the land, increasing fuel for wildfire. May and June, the buildup to the Southwest monsoon, bring heat and dry lightning in the mountains. Most of our wildfires start in May and June.<\/p>\n If we get a good monsoon, starting in July, rains will start to suppress the fires. Climate is the pattern, weather is the expression, preparing the land for burning, lighting the fires, then putting them out.<\/p>\n We all know how wildfire can be started by lightning strikes. But did you know that rocks falling against each other can spark wildfire?<\/p>\n Humans start wildfires through carelessness \u2013 like the campers in Arizona’s White Mountains who left their campfire smoldering and started the largest wildfire in the history of the Southwest. Or by malicious intent, like the arsonist(s) who destroyed the forest on the little peak I hiked near town.<\/p>\n Our advanced technologies are simply too complex for us to control and keep safe. A driver pulls onto the weedy shoulder of the road to take a call, her hot exhaust pipe catches the weeds on fire, then she drives away, oblivious. Small engines are used millions of times every day at the urban-wildland interface \u2013 chain saws, weed-whackers, lawnmowers \u2013 generating sparks that can cause wildfires.<\/p>\n Recently, some of the most destructive fires at the urban-wildland interface have been started by arcs or failures in electric power distribution systems. As we try to slow climate change by transitioning from fossil fuels to electric cars, the increased demand on electrical infrastructure will spark more wildfires.<\/p>\n Indigenous people have always started wildfires to increase the productivity of habitat, and Europeans have belatedly appropriated indigenous practices in North America. Fires with a non-human cause burn according to non-human constraints of landscape, habitat, and weather. Humans may schedule, locate, and direct their fires \u2013 a prescribed<\/em> or controlled burn<\/em> \u2013 for defined purposes like “fuel reduction.”<\/p>\n Once a fire has started, it develops a life and history of its own. It’s intuitive for us to think of fire as a thing \u2013 even a living thing \u2013 but in the reductive domain of European science, fire isn’t a distinct thing, it’s an ephemeral state or property of the “matter” which is burning at the moment. The flames consuming a tree, and the flames consuming its neighbor, are not considered a continuous entity or phenomenon. From the perspective of physics and chemistry, it’s all just atoms, molecules, and energy.<\/p>\n But in the real world, fire is most definitely a living thing. A wildfire is born, it grows, it travels. It may merge with a neighboring fire, like two cells fusing. Like living organisms, it’s always dying even as it grows and thrives \u2013 embers blackening and cooling in one place while flames blossom in another. Fires that spread from a center die from the inside out, an expanding ring of flames surrounding a blackened core.<\/p>\n But the movements of fire are directed by landscape, weather, and habitat. In mountains, in still air, a fire will burn uphill. But air is seldom still in mountains, and fires generate their own winds. Strong winds may carry sparks for miles to give birth to spot fires<\/em>, children isolated from the parent. While moving, a fire may encounter fast-burning fuel that draws it forward. Or it may hit an obstacle \u2013 a patch of wet or slow-burning vegetation, a cliff or rock outcrop, the sharp crest of a ridge, a river, pond, or lake. The obstacle may stop the fire, force it to detour, slow it down, or simply reduce its intensity. Obstacles or patches of low intensity provide refuges for plants and fleeing animals.<\/p>\n Depending on cause and habitat, a fire may spread through soil \u2013 a ground fire<\/em> \u2013 through surface vegetation \u2013 a surface fire<\/em> \u2013 or from treetop to treetop \u2013 a crown fire<\/em>. But these are just convenient abstractions \u2013 the reality is much more subtle and complex.<\/p>\n A fire is said to make a run<\/em> \u2013 burning a path uphill, downhill, or across country \u2013 directed by landforms, temperature gradients, wind currents, and the availability of fuel. In a complex landscape, it moves like an amoeba, an amorphous being, drawn to patches of available fuel.<\/p>\n Burning vegetation generates smoke, clouds of particulates and gases that warn animals, trigger reactions in plants, release nutrients, and rise into the atmosphere, affecting weather.<\/p>\n Fire doesn’t just consume trees and other plants. Fire interacts with other living things, like any other partner in the ecosystem. Plants come prepared with their adaptations, like the thick bark and limbless trunks of the mature pines, and the water-filled leaves of the succulents. Heat rising from a surface fire in a fuel-rich forest may kill all or most of the leaves and needles above without burning the tree. A tree whose vegetation is killed may die from the top down, its roots rotting until the skeleton is eventually toppled by wind.<\/p>\n A hot crown fire burns downward. If the burning ends at the lowest branches, a standing char<\/em> \u2013 a blackened trunk \u2013 is left and may stand for decades. If the trunk keeps burning to the ground, the fire will follow the roots underground, until all the wood is consumed, leaving tunnels in the soil.<\/p>\n Like plants in the forest, animals are said to be adapted to wildfire, meaning they respond to warnings \u2013 smoke, the sounds of burning, the sight of flames \u2013 by fleeing or taking cover, taking advantage of natural refuges created by variations in landforms, water features, and vegetation. Birds fly away, reptiles hide underground. Some individuals may perish, but the population generally survives.<\/p>\n In the immediate aftermath of wildfire, we see loss, destruction, blackened skeletons, ground covered with ash. What we don’t see is potential new habitat prepared by the fire’s release of massive amounts of raw nutrients. An unhealthy excess of fuel buildup, purged. Unhealthy individuals and populations, cleansed. Fire-adapted roots and seeds, stimulated by fire and waiting, below the ash, for the next rain to sprout.<\/p>\n Many plants of our Southwestern forests are so well-adapted to wildfire that when their aboveground parts are completely consumed, they immediately and aggressively expand underground and re-sprout. Quaking aspen, gambel oak, and New Mexico locust respond this way, filling in burn scars with impenetrable thickets.<\/p>\n Burned agaves, including our narrow-leafed beargrass, immediately re-sprout from unburned root stock, along with ferns and mosses.<\/p>\n Nutrients released into the soil directly by wildfire, and later by the decomposition of fire-killed vegetation, encourage the growth of sprouts from the underground seed bank<\/em> which is always present, waiting to take advantage of disturbances like fire.<\/p>\n When a stand of trees and other vegetation is killed and largely consumed by high-intensity wildfire, the ground that was held in place by roots is now vulnerable to erosion. When it rains after a fire, floods full of ash and sediment rush downstream. Like terrestrial plants and animals, fish and other aquatic organisms are fire-adapted and sense coming changes. Some are killed, but others take refuge or are washed downstream, to return later when conditions are right.<\/p>\n We think of erosion as merely loss of ground, but in nature, erosion opens new habitat, and floods and landslides move old rocks, soil, and dead vegetation downhill, where they’re eventually deposited to form more new habitat. Erosion can expose buried seeds. In general, erosion and deposition are a form of natural tilling \u2013 agitating, turning, and mixing the soil, releasing buried seeds and nutrients. Major erosional and depositional events, like I found in the Pinalenos, create new landforms, which themselves shape new habitats and microclimates of the living earth.<\/p>\n Wildfire releases new chemical nutrients directly, through the burning of soil, vegetation, and dead organic matter, but the process continues for decades after as organisms killed by the fire are consumed by decomposers like fungi, insects, and gut bacteria. The snags and char of fire-killed trees hold precious resources, the product of decades of hard work by the plant. Decomposers process these resources and make them available to the broader ecosystem.<\/p>\nWildfire and Habitat<\/h1>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_7422.jpg?w=330&h=247&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_7422\\"")
<\/a> The habitat of this golden eagle (upper right, carrying a branch for nest-building) includes everything from the crest of the mountain range to the plains below <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_6667-1.jpg?w=162&h=122&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_6667\\"")
<\/a> The habitat of this aquatic plant is restricted to a narrow stream running through a wildfire burn scar, where it benefits from nutrients released by the fire <\/div> <\/div> ![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3762.jpg?w=162&h=121&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3762\\"")
<\/a> The habitat of this alligator lizard is the foundation surrounding my house, where it helps me by preying on cockroaches <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n ![\"Tadpole](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_1870.jpg?w=246&h=185&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_1870\\"")
<\/a> Tadpole Ridge in New Mexico’s Pinos Altos Range, looking east, a year before the 2020 Tadpole Fire <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3166.jpg?w=246&h=185&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3166\\"")
<\/a> The same terrain after the fire, showing a patchy burn which will result in an evolving mosaic – narrow patches of surviving forest separated by patches of annuals, ferns, shrubs, or deciduous trees like locust and oak. Note, in center foreground, the ponderosa pine which appeared in the previous photo. It burned from the bottom up and still has green foliage on the crown. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\nDesert Fires, Forest Fires<\/h1>\n
![\"Wildfire](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/dome_fire.jpg?w=496&h=331&ssl=1\" "\\"dome_fire\\"")
<\/a> Wildfire in the desert \u2013 a new regime? Irfan Khan \/ Los Angeles Times <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n ![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3211.jpg?w=496&h=372&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3211\\"")
<\/a> The huge solar power plant in the background, built in response to public concern about climate change, destroyed several square miles of irreplaceable wildlife habitat. As society switches from internal combustion engines to electric engines in a misguided attempt to “combat” climate change, the power transmission lines (foreground), needed to deliver the electricity to consumers in distant cities, will spark more and more wildfires. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\nForest Reborn in Fire<\/h1>\n
![\"Zones](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_4185.jpg?w=96&h=72&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_4185\\"")
<\/a> Zones of vegetation organized by elevation in Arizona’s Pinalenos, during monsoon season: grassland at left, riparian forest at right, a thin layer of shrubland at the base of the mountains, open pinyon-juniper-oak forest on the foothills, and mixed-conifer forest on the upper slopes <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"Ridges](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_2001.jpg?w=95&h=72&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_2001\\"")
<\/a> Ridges and canyons: looking up a deep canyon of the Mogollon Mountains, in the burn scar of the Whitewater Baldy Complex Fire <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"Ridges](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_4789Pano.jpg?w=186&h=72&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_4789Pano\\"")
<\/a> Ridges and canyons: looking down from the ridge at the head of the same canyon <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Escudilla-Fire-Tower-1.jpg?w=107&h=72&ssl=1\" "\\"Escudilla-Fire-Tower\\"")
<\/a> The broad slopes of Arizona’s Escudilla Mountain, composed of volcanic sediment and uninterrupted by deep canyons or rock outcrops, encouraged the Wallow Fire to spread uniformly. Source of photo unknown <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n ![\"During](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3276.jpg?w=330&h=247&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3276\\"")
<\/a> During the 2020 Tadpole Fire in New Mexico’s Pinos Altos Range, the thick bark of this ponderosa pine protected the sapwood inside from fire damage, so the tree survived <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"During](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3946.jpg?w=162&h=122&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3946\\"")
<\/a> During the 2011 Horseshoe 2 Fire in Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains, these pines and firs were saved by two lines of defense: their thick bark protected them at the base, and having dropped their lower limbs, they denied the surface fire a ladder to climb to their crowns <\/div> <\/div> ![\"Protected](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_4028.jpg?w=162&h=121&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_4028\\"")
<\/a> Protected by its compact form and water-filled stems, this cactus survived the 2012 Gomez Peak fire while all the trees and shrubs around it were destroyed <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"All](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3262.jpg?w=496&h=372&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3262\\"")
<\/a> All the surrounding trees and shrubs were killed in the 2020 Tadpole Fire, but these agaves survived, protected by their thick, water-filled outer leaves. The beargrass agave at far left was burned to the ground but resprouted immediately after the fire. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n ![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_6777.jpg?w=246&h=185&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_6777\\"")
<\/a> The Silver Fire in New Mexico’s Black Range, started by dry lightning during our hot pre-monsoon month of June, 2013 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_0392.jpg?w=246&h=185&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_0392\\"")
<\/a> The Tadpole Fire in New Mexico’s Pinos Altos Range, started by dry lightning in our hot pre-monsoon month of June, 2020 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n ![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_1244Pano.jpg?w=496&h=202&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_1244Pano\\"")
<\/a> The southwest monsoon in the Chiricahua Mountains, July 2020: an ocean pressing down from the sky <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n ![\"A](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_6983.jpg?w=496&h=372&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_6983\\"")
<\/a> A single ponderosa pine, torching at the crown in an unnamed wildfire in the Blue Range, on the border between Arizona and New Mexico, in 2018 <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n ![\"This](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3285.jpg?w=496&h=372&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3285\\"")
<\/a> This stock pond on Tadpole Ridge provided a cool refuge for wildlife and helped protect nearby vegetation in the 2020 Tadpole Fire <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n ![\"Smoke](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_1187.jpg?w=246&h=185&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_1187\\"")
<\/a> Smoke from the 2011 Horseshoe 2 Fire in southeast Arizona is dispersed eastward over New Mexico <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"Smoke](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3717.jpg?w=246&h=185&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3717\\"")
<\/a> Smoke from the 2012 Whitewater Baldy Complex Fire spread across the entire Mogollon range <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n ![\"This,](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3124.jpg?w=87&h=116&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3124\\"")
<\/a> This, and many other conifers in the 2020 Tadpole Fire, burned from the bottom up, leaving a patch of green foliage at the very top. Will the tree survive? <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"This](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3290.jpg?w=155&h=116&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3290\\"")
<\/a> This old deadfall log was completely consumed, while living trees around it survived <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3300.jpg?w=87&h=116&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3300\\"")
<\/a> The roots surrounding this tree’s trunk burned underground, leaving tunnels, while the charred trunk remains standing <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"When](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_5590.jpg?w=155&h=116&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_5590\\"")
<\/a> When a tree burns downward, often all the wood is consumed, leaving these tunnels where the roots used to be <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n ![\"Quaking](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3564.jpg?w=330&h=247&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3564\\"")
<\/a> Quaking aspen filling in the burn scar of the Whitewater Baldy Complex Fire in New Mexico’s Mogollon Mountains <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"Quaking](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3598.jpg?w=162&h=122&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3598\\"")
<\/a> Quaking aspen <\/div> <\/div> ![\"Gambel](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3682.jpg?w=162&h=121&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3682\\"")
<\/a> Gambel oak filling in the burn scar of the Silver Fire in New Mexico’s Black Range <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"Gambel](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3746.jpg?w=163&h=122&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3746\\"")
<\/a> Gambel oak <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"New](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_0297.jpg?w=163&h=122&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_0297\\"")
<\/a> New Mexico locust filling in the burn scar of the Silver Fire in New Mexico’s Black Range <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"New](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_0173-1.jpg?w=162&h=122&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_0173\\"")
<\/a> New Mexico locust <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n ![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3305.jpg?w=315&h=236&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3305\\"")
<\/a> The aboveground parts of these yuccas were completely destroyed in the 2020 Tadpole Fire, but they immediately resprouted from root stock. <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"All](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3307.jpg?w=177&h=236&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3307\\"")
<\/a> All the leaves of this small agave were destroyed in the Tadpole Fire, but the heroic plant was still able to send up a flower stalk and set seed after the fire, doing its best for survival of the population <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n ![\"Annual](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_5253.jpg?w=246&h=185&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_5253\\"")
<\/a> Annual wildflowers in the burn scar 6 years after the Silver Fire in New Mexico’s Black Range <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"Bunchgrasses](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_1712.jpg?w=246&h=185&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_1712\\"")
<\/a> Bunchgrasses in the burn scar 7 years after the Whitewater Baldy Complex Fire in New Mexico’s Mogollon Mountains <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"Ferns](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3285Pano.jpg?w=496&h=209&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3285Pano\\"")
<\/a> Ferns in the burn scar 8 years after the Wallow Fire in Arizona’s White Mountains <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n ![\"Headward](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_0058.jpg?w=246&h=185&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_0058\\"")
<\/a> Headward erosion of a new canyon in the burn scar of the Silver Fire in New Mexico’s Black Range <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"Erosion](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_9707.jpg?w=246&h=185&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_9707\\"")
<\/a> Erosion downstream of the burn scar of the Whitewater Baldy Complex Fire in New Mexico’s Mogollon Mountains <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n ![\"Deposition](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_8994.jpg?w=246&h=185&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_8994\\"")
<\/a> Deposition downstream of the burn scar of the Horseshoe 2 Fire in Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains: a debris flow that killed trees in the canyon bottom and is creating new habitat <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> ![\"Farther](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_3909.jpg?w=246&h=185&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_3909\\"")
<\/a> Farther downstream in the Horseshoe 2 debris flow <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n
![\"Fungi](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_4920-1.jpg?w=246&h=185&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_4920\\"")
<\/a> ![\"Fungus](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maxcarmichael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/IMG_4932.jpg?w=246&h=185&ssl=1\" "\\"IMG_4932\\"")
<\/a>