It's Not Just Scary Burning Flames, Forest Fires Are Doing Irreparable Damage To Our Ecosystem

Forest fires are happening since time immemorial. Initially, there were natural reasons. Then came human beings and started burning the oxygen source of the planet. The number of forest fires and the magnitude of them have been increasing over the years across the world.?

Several reasons including deforestation, global warming among others are being blamed for this situation that has caused many environmental concerns.

The impact of a forest fire is not just limited to the area of land, its flora, and fauna that got reduced into a pile of ash. While it is a huge loss, the lost forest cove makes up only a certain portion of the overall impact and it will take years, if not decades before things get back to normal.

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One of the immediate impacts of a forest fire outbreak is the massive amount of trees that burn down and the animals that get killed. There are two types of forest fire - surface fire and crown fire.

A Surface Fire is a forest fire that may burn primarily as a surface fire, spreading along the ground as the surface litter on the forest floor and is engulfed by the spreading flames. As one can imagine, these are of lesser magnitude and causes less devastation.??

On the other hand, the Crown Fire is which the?crown of trees and shrubs burn, often sustained by a surface fire. A crown fire is particularly very dangerous in a coniferous forest because resinous material given off burning logs burn furiously. On hill slopes, if the fire starts downhill, it spreads up fast as heated air adjacent to a slope tends to flow up the slope spreading flames along with it. If the fire starts uphill, there is less likelihood of it spreading downwards.?

Crown fire can engulf massive areas in a short period and cause huge devastation.?

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Earlier this year, the government had told the Parliament that in 2019 alone Himachal Pradesh has reported loss of forest property of Rs. 81.91 lakh and Uttarakhand has reported a loss of Rs.55.08 lakh. Data from other states were unavailable.??

The ecological and socio-economic consequences of wild land?fires in India include:

Loss of timber, loss of biodiversity, loss of wildlife habitat, global warming, soil erosion, loss of fuelwood and fodder, damage to water and other natural resources, loss of natural regeneration. Estimated average tangible annual loss due to forest fires in the country is Rs.440 crore.

According to the Forest Fire Disaster Management?report, the economic loss of forest fire is estimated to be around Rs 90,000 per hectare per annum.

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Other ecological impacts the forest fires can cause are it could melt glaciers faster — black carbon from smog and ash is covering them, making them prone to melting. This is especially true in states like Uttarakhand.?

Any forest fires can?cause?significant degradation of the environment as uncontrolled fires lead to the burning of vegetation and surface organic matter, increasing the frequency of flooding and causing soil erosion.

Forest fires, by nature, are out of control and nobody can predict which direction it would head to. Any change in wind patterns could drive the fires in any direction.

There have been many cases where forest fires have spread to the nearby plantations and agricultural land causing damage to vegetation and sometimes human lives.

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But probably the biggest impact is the long-term damage a forest fire can cause.?

Under 'normal' circumstance a forest is expected to recover from a moderate wildfire in three to five years. But over the years there has been a disturbing pattern which is on the rise - forests are taking longer time to recover and in many cases, they don't grow back to being normal again.

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One of the reasons behind it is a reasons for the fire itself. It was lit deliberately to clear the vegetation to make way for agricultural land.

Once the thick vegetation is gone and the ground is cleared, it becomes a golden opportunity for those living and farming on the borders of the forest to spread their cultivation into the forests and before you realize the forest could be gone forever.