![]() “The fraction of individuals killed depends upon the prescribed PFT fire resistance, which represents the PFT survivorship during a fire (see Table 1). However, the study cited as the source of this statement (3) says exactly the opposite: “The fire resistance for grasses is 0.5 while that of trees range from 0.1−0.3, making grasses more resistant to wildfires than trees, which is roughly consistent with field-observations since in the event of a wildfire, when compared to trees, a smaller fraction of the biomass of grass is damaged.” (1) The study also bolsters its mistaken conclusions by erroneously claiming that forests are more likely to burn than grasses: They confirmed that they did, indeed, make that inappropriate comparison. It seemed such an unlikely comparison that I asked the study’s authors to confirm they had compared below ground carbon storage in grassland with above ground carbon storage in forests. ![]() It’s a classic case of inappropriately comparing apples with oranges to the disadvantage of forests. The study (1) that claims grassland may be a more reliable carbon sink than forests reaches its erroneous conclusion by comparing below ground carbon storage in grassland with above ground carbon storage in forests. If the forest burns, the carbon it has stored in soil remains, just as the below ground carbon sink of grassland remains. That is true of both grassland and forests. Most carbon storage is below ground, in roots and soil. Pre-settlement grassland was as much a human creation as any modern landscape. They don’t acknowledge that burning by Native Americans and grazing by native ungulates were the primary reasons why grassland did not succeed to shrubs and forests prior to settlement. That sets the stage for a study published in 2018 that predicted that “grassland may be a more reliable carbon sink than forests in California.”(1) The study was quickly adopted by native plant advocates as a weapon in their battle to destroy non-native trees in favor of grassland they prefer. (2) They prefer grassland because it was the pre-settlement coastal landscape. ![]() In other words, “garbage in, garbage out.” However, a computer model is only as predictive as the assumptions used to build it. The rapidly changing climate is putting pressure on scientists to predict the trajectory of the change and the impacts those changes will have on the environment. Computer modeling is an increasingly popular tool used in ecological studies.
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