How beaver can help fight wildfire

For Canadian people, the beaver is more than a deer-dinner rodent-it is a national symbol, nickel for the original story of the country and on the central. Now, a new US study suggests that this symbolic animal can create a flexible western landscape more than blowing droughts, slowing the flood fire and molding areas from the forest fire, which from the forest fire with the dams built by them.

StudyPublished by researchers at Stanford University and Minnesota University and published in Nature, analyzed over 1,500 beaver ponds in 40 streams in Western United States. The study found that the size of those ponds was not random. Instead, he followed the damable rules related to the length of the dam, stream power and surrounding vegetation.

Conclusions increase weight in the growing body of evidence that beepers can serve as engineers of the ecosystem, re -shaping the waterways that not only benefit their own survival, but of the entire landscape. By slowing the currents and spreading water on the floodlines, their dams create a succulent pocket of the residence that can caress for a long time after fire or drought.

And long -term droughts such as climate change, heavy floods and fierce forest fire season, researchers and land managers are looking for low cost, natural solutions to make flexibility. The study suggests that the Canadian icon can be part of the answer – where human engineering cannot.

Aerial images reveal the scope of beaver engineering

To catch the full scope of beaver engineering, researchers used air and satellite imagori to show how the group of dams working in the leading could change the landscape.

Emily Fairfax, one of the researchers at the University of Minnesota, and one of the researchers in the study, Emily Fairfax told CBC News in an interview, “Aerial imagery is such a different perspective.”

On the ground, it may take a full day to navigate the beaver wetlands, he said. But images from air can reveal 10 times larger landscape in minutes.

The study mapped more than a thousand beaver ponds in Colorado, Vyoming, Montana and Oregon, using air photographs and water-detection algorithms. The ponds working simultaneously were included that the researchers called the “complex” and analyzed that environmental factors determined how big the ponds and dams found.

Researchers found that climate, soil and landforms all played a big role, and that large dams firmly created large wetlands.

For example, the ponds in the north -western mountains were smaller than the great plains, likely because there are narrow valleys and various water flows in the mountains. The task helps explain where the beats can succeed and how big their ponds can be.

Beaver Complex as Wildfire ‘Speed ​​Bump’

Beaver Complex make wet, greenery patches in a scenario. Fairfax compared the landscape to give a patchwork to the landscape to give a patchwork of the fire resistant “speed bumps”, allowing wildlife to give shelter to the wildlife and the ecosystem was allowed to give a springboard to fix a springboard more quickly.

One in 2020 studyResearchers found a clear example of this during the 2000 Munner Fire in California, where an image showed that a bealer lived in green near the pond while the surrounding areas were burnt.

This recently discovered power is a sharp twist from his historical role as a prized object in the early development of Canada. Animal pelt forged economic relations between European settlers and indigenous communities and to the west side.

At one point, extreme cutting of their thick furs Motivated them to get close to loveBut the animals have made a remarkable comeback since then – and not only in Canada. In the UK, where the beats were motivated to extinct during the Middle Ages, they have caused their reproduction Environmental damage and made them a disturbance,

Beaver ‘can make a difference’

“It is incredibly original,” an Edmonton-based scientist Mark-Andre Perisian, who study how the forest fire spreads in the landscape with Canada’s forest service, said about the recent study of the beaver pond. He was not involved in research.

“There are many studies about the effects of the landscape-level,” he said. “There is a decrease in this fuel that is created by those beaver, which is only based on the vegetation of those dams and wet greenery. So it can make a difference.”

However, he notes that given the size and intensity of some recent wildfires in Canada, not Planki Beaver is also a chance to stop a dead in his tracks.

He said, “You have found a 50 -meter wall of fast moving flame in the entire scenario; you can dump whatever water you want in front of it. It is like spitting in a camp fire,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that you can rely on the beaver to prevent a big fire … but they fragment the landscape in terms of fuel continuity, and you can work with it.”

Fire crew beaver ponds can be assumed as natural anchor points, the Parisian said, the use of wet patches slowed down for platform operations and the spread of flames.

Initially doubting the impact of the beaver wetlands, he said, “I think (research) has assured me.”

In Ontario, where dozens of forests have been burnt through thousands of hectares of forest in this summer, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry said it would not bring more beefs to help.

“The beaver population is already wider and abundant in Ontario,” spokesperson Sarah Fig said in an email, the ministry is not considering any transfer or re -production efforts.