San Diego will look like a moonscape next year..

It will take years for the land to recover..of course this can be called a natural event and even be good for the soil but the view will be absolutely barren

right now. What's important is all the lost homes, businesses, neighborhoods, even lives, and the devastation that will cause.

happens every time we have a big fire, some of those canyons are steep

All the burnt areas will be alive with wild flowers and new growth - assuming sufficient rain. There are many plants that only grow after a fire clears away the competitors, their seeds lying dormant for years, decades, or even centuries. The natural areas should be quite beautiful.

Much of the US has been in and out of drought over the past two years. As climate change progresses, rainfall patterns will shift, and previously green areas may indeed turn to dust.

they were very hopeful. It is called fireweed

Thanks for those pictures.

Hekate

...and you'll be hard pressed to recognize the burned areas. There will be succession though.

of Oct. 2003 (at least the chaparral lands) look almost back to normal now. The forests, though, are not recovering well, particularly in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. The Cedar Fire was a megafire which was much larger than normal. Jeffrey pines and sugar pines which are very tough and usually withstand a typical forest fire were completely killed in the Cedar Fire. They are considering the possibility of planting some seedlings in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, even though this is not the usual policy, the consensus is that the pine forest may never recover. But the chaparral lands, which include various varieties of sage, chemise, ceanothus and manzanita, bounce back quickly. Everything depends on the rainfall, hopefully it will come gently and gradually rather than in a few big deluges which will create mudslides and make it all worse.

if the water doesn't take them down during a rainstorm

And in three years it will look like it always has

And in fifteen next round

The manzanita grows really, REALLY fast

The houses, people and things were saved, but the Earth's creatures were not. It will be a barren moonscape for a long long time.

. . . that's part of the chaparral ecology as well. Those seeds that need fire to sprout also need to not be eaten when they are in the delicate sprouting stage. Fire kills the animals that eat the seeds that sprout after the fire. You could say that if the animals had survived the fire, then the plants would not survive and it would then be a barren moonscape.

Yes, I know it is sad to lose the individuals and I do hope they bolted in the right direction at the first sign of smoke, but Nature is neither cruel nor kind. Nature, given a chance, replenishes herself.

Remember the Mt. St. Helens eruption? That was a real moonscape. Scientists have been studying the comeback of plants, insects, and animals to the area for years now. Water, sunshine, blowing dirt and seeds....

The thing is, I rather suspected that would be the case. I grew up in Hawaii and well remember the great volcanic eruptions of 1959-1960 and flows that took out villages and farmland. Kapoho. Yet when I visited the Big Island less than 20 years later many green ferns and bright bougainvillea had established themselves on the former lava flows.

It was then that I knew without a doubt that Nature comes back from natural disasters.

Our California will return. We human beings simply must learn how to live with it better than we do and understand that we, too, are a part of Nature.

Please understand that this is a philosophical observation and does not negate the necessity for active compassion toward all living beings, including humans. Living beings are suffering terribly right now. We owe them such care as we can provide now, and foresight for the future.

Hekate

...can only germinate after passing through fire. It is a truly amazing ecology.

The mudslides are something else though! They come when the ground becomes saturated from heavy rains over a long period of time, and then look out below.

People are suffering terribly just now, and will for some time to come. But the land -- including the animals -- will come back sooner than you think.

Hekate

The Pingree Park area in Colorado south of Poudre Canyon was hit by a huge wildfire in 1994.

The area still shows signs of the fire - lots of downed trees & such, but a spectacular amount of new life as well - grasses, sapling pines, aspens, etc. It doesn't take long for them to start growing.