Burn marks left on trees show that fires occurred frequently in North America from 1750 to 1880, but they tended to be less ...

In the wild, you can sometimes see scars in the rings from where a tree was in a fire. I counted the rings on a large pine ...

Not only that, the heat of the fire actually burns and damages the soil, creating a water-repellent, or hydrophobic, layer. What once was a vegetated hillslope, with leaves and trees to intercept rain ...

With debris from the Park Fire still remaining ... been at work marking thousands of trees for trimming or removal. Meanwhile, damage left from the burn scar appears to be washing away sediment ...