Monday, February 16, 2009

Thoughts on the Recent Australia Wildfires, YouTube Videos

I found two videos on YouTube that interest me:

This one has dramatic music and a strange ending, but nevertheless. The two things I want to point out about this are that in the first images you can see the speed with which the wildfire spread. In later images, you can see the Eucalyptus-bark fuel on the ground. Eucalyptus trees have evolved with "catastrophic" or stand-replacing fires, and have grown over time to be more fire conducive. The bark of certain kinds of Eucalyptus trees is a fuel that carries fire from tree to tree along the ground, or from the ground up into the canopy of a tree. Once ignited, strips of bark can remain lit and travel on the wind, creating spot fires 2 kilometers or more away from the initial flame. Some species of Eucalyptus have "serrotinous cones," which means that they only open in fire.

This video made me a little bit happier.

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