Fire is a doozy of a maintenance regime; burning resets the sere (accumulation of habitat and other ecological factors that move a site from young to mature) with a starkness that can only be rivaled by hedgerows and coppice lots. What had been land covered with grasses and/or trees and shrubs is reduced to ash, but this happens along a gradient.
Burns on generally cool days that are fed by very little debris and low winds, and mildly thwarted by relatively high soil moisture levels, tend to burn cool (for a fire.) Burns on hot days that happen in forests that are filled with fallen trees and branches, and that are amped up by high wind velocities and low moisture levels can burn exceedingly hot.
These factors add up to temperature, and this makes a tremendous difference: a fire of 500° F (260° C) will impress the heck out of you, me, and your newspaper, but very few (or no) tree canopies will bother to burn at that temperature- they are too moist.
A fire of over 1300° F (705°C), on the other hand, is hot enough to not only consume the canopy layer of a forest (making it a “topfire”), a significant amount of the organic content of the top layers of soil gets involved, too. The Great Hinckley Fire of 1894 in Michigan burned so hot (estimates put it at +2000° F, or 1100° C) that Continue reading
There’s a lovely new salad I’ve been introduced to, and knowing the general trajectory through my friendship circles I’m betting it’s a creation of 
