Mammoth redwood trees have evolved along with fire, but humans are disrupting that delicate balance
When the Grizzly Giant sprouted from the ground in what is now Yosemite National Park, the Roman Republic was nearly two centuries away from forming, Buddhism would not develop for at least more than a century, and the geoglyphs making up the Nazca Lines of southern Peru would not be etched for around 200 years.
Mariposa Grove has recently been threatened by the Washburn Fire, which began on July 7 and has burned through more than 4,000 acres of forest. The Mariposa trees have so far escaped the fate of Alder Creek Grove, another stand of sequoias in the Giant Sequoia National Monument that was scorched during the Castle Fire in 2020. Almost all of the trees in the most intense part of the fire perished—amounting to the loss of 10 to 14 percent of all living giant sequoias.
I think the key to their adaptation and their survival is also that they were adapted to reseed and repopulate and regenerate in a fire-adapted environment. The giant sequoia cones are serotinous, which means that they don’t open and release seed unless subjected to heat. In a normal situation, a ground fire would spark the release of the seeds from those cones, at the same time providing a bare mineral-soil seedbed for the sequoia.
And then the other concern we have is around type conversion and the fact that there was 100 percent mortality in the sequoias [hit by some of the recent fires].
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