Steve Pyne

The pitch pine is a poster child for fire in the NE (USA) - what longleaf is to the SE, ponderosa to the SW, lodgepole to the NW, and sequoia to California. Some similar fire-adapted pines in Mexico. The pitch pine was also Henry Thoreau's favorite.

In the early 20th century the date palm industry in Arizona was hit with a blight of some variety. The trees were saved by spraying them with oil and then burning them. Good fire, bad fire - even in palms?

Burning Bush (publ 1991) tells the story of how Aussie foresters created an alternative fire strategy. WA was critical, but so was MacArthur in ACT, WWII, and several catalytic fires. The reforms were bracketed by the Stretton (1939) and Rodgers (1961) royal commissions.

Before GIS there were fire atlases - all analogue, with printed topo maps, data entered with heavy colored pencils, hard bound in canvas. Here's one from the Kaibab National Forest that was rescued, scorched, from a fire in the supervisor's officer. A fire(d) atlas?

A maturing Pyrocene, nudge by nudge, patch by patch, remaking the Earth.

What America Can Learn from Its Largest Wildfire of the Year When Dragon Bravo ignited, in Grand Canyon National Park, officials decided to let it burn. Then the fire spread out of control.

O'Connor is among the best journalists writing about fire. And the New Yorker? Who would have predicted it would regularly publish pieces on fire? Amazing fire, insightful essay.
www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

A real loss. William had a marvelous vision of fire ecology that challenged notions that began with European forestry and went operational in North America. I always enjoyed hearing him denounce parochial assumptions as 'rubbish.' He'll be missed.

Thanks. I'm researching a fire history of the Kaibab Plateau - the Dragon Bravo fire is too big a provocation for someone who spent so many fire seasons there, but I want the whole plateau and the long history of fire not just DB. Looks like I'll be slogging thru FOIAs though.

Can you identify the fire? Is the photo yours?

As reports tally up the 2025 fires, here's a long view back. I've updated and abridged Vestal Fire - now 40% as long, with half the new text completely rewritten, reorganized, and reconceptualized. The narrative still includes Russia. Should be published in spring, 2026.

Good article, but I did get misquoted. A century ago many timberowners argued for lightburning to protect big trees, while USFS wanted fire suppression to protect young trees as the forest of the future. Now we want to thin out small trees and protect big ones. Interpretations have inverted.

Yep. The power of fire resides in the power to propagate. Arson more resembles a riot than a drive-by shooting - it spreads by contagion. You disarm arson by denying it the power to spread in ways that damage communities and kill people.

Was kind of a fun interview, tho had to drive 90 minutes to find the coniferous forest background the show wanted. Unfortunately, it looks like the video is blocked in US, so I can't speak to how it all came out.

New paper: The role of fire on Earth
doi.org/10.1093/bios... BioScience @aibsbiology.bsky.social
Fire affects all major components of the Earth system: atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, anthroposphere, & biosphere. Fire is an intrinsic factor on our planet.

🧪🌍🔥🌳🌿🌐 wildfire

Easy to praise a seminal paper. Glad they let a guy who is neither a dendrochronologist nor an archaelogist have a crack at it.

(l) Ed Pulaski a few weeks after the Blowup.
(r) Many years later, dispatching a fire guard equipped with his eponymous tool.

Thread: August 20, the anniversary of the Big Blowup, a catalyst for the American way of wildland fire.

(top) Post-season map of the 1910 season, with the Blowup circled in red.
(bottom) Photo of the mine adit where ranger Ed Pulaski held his crew at gunpoint.

(l) Ed Pulaski a few weeks after the fire.
(r) Years later sending out a fire guard equipped with his eponymous tool.

Tree rings reveal persistent Western Apache (Ndee) fire stewardship and niche construction in the American Southwest | PNAS Identifying the influence of low-density Indigenous populations in paleofire records has been methodologically challenging. In the Southwest United...

Shouldn't be a surprise - the fire practices of indigenous peoples in the highly fire-prone SW could locally override even climate signals. But that is what received understanding claimed. Here's the data to bring the Ndee into alignment with other premodern peoples.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

In 1968 lightning started a fire on the Dragon's Head. The park let it burn. The FS said if the park didn't suppress the fire, it would. A B17 dropped retardant. Now a fire is allowed to spread from the Rim to the Dragon. How the meaning of full suppression has changed.This fire remains a cypher.

Thread. Yet another avatar for Dragon Bravo - burning an isolated mesa in the Canyon, this time The Dragon itself (one of the Canyon's most apt placenames).

Dragon Bravo keeps reincarnating - now it's a Canyon fire, sending a giant talon eastward from the Walhalla Plateau across the Canyon at its widest. Always had a Canyon fire or two each season, but - really?

In grad school I studied history of science, geomorphology, American West, and intellectual-cultural history, all aligning with the history of exploration, of which Great Ages makes a conceptual capstone. When I decided to write fire, my exploration stuff was my quasi-model. Just released in pb

Thousands in Greece and Turkey evacuate as winds and heat fan wildfires Czech firefighters and Italian aircraft join rescue effort in Greece, and firefighter among those killed in Turkey

Quite a summer for European fire.
I'm reminded of a passage from A.C.Clarke's 2001: "Beyond the reaches of sea and land and air and space lay the realms of fire.." Not a bad account of the maturing Pyrocene.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Our management metrics can't cope with this kind of shape-shifting complexity. The Kaibab Plateau is becoming a cypher.

It looks like it will link with the burn footprint of the 2006 Warm fire (an escaped WFU; blue arrow). If so it will be bracketed on the north by an escaped WFU and on the south by an escaped Rx fire (the 2000 Outlet fire). If it reaches the White Sage fire, by the entire plateau.

Thread on Dragon Bravo, which continues its serial reincarnations. Began as lightning fire in confine and contain mode (escaped). Morphed into urban fire (incinerated park's developed area). Swelled into proto-megafire (blew over major containment line). Now a free-burning megafire.

Quite a contrast with the managed fires on the Gila NF. But then the Gila was one of the very few places to embrace the policy reforms of 1978 and begin restoring fire. We're seeing resilience from 40 years of sustained effort

There is a lot I'd like to say but I need more facts than I have now. History is about context and contingency. Writing is about voice and vision. As we learn more about the, I'll be able to wrangle the pieces together. Still, having the Grand Canyon as your fireline is a bit gobsmacking.

Dragon Bravo fire - blowing, going, gone. The Kaibab Plateau as microcosm of Earth, consumed in a slow-motion Ragnarok. This is where my life as a scholar on fire began. There is no way I cannot not take on this fire as a project and try to give it context - would be professional malfeasance.