Fields
noun
/feld/
1. An area of open land, especially one planted with crops or pasture, typically bounded by hedges or fences.
2. A place where a subject of scientific study or of artistic representation can be observed in its natural location or context.
3. A space or range within which objects are visible from a particular viewpoint or through a piece of apparatus.
The conveyance of electricity into Los Angeles from outside the city boundary creates a continuous threat of wildfire along the hundreds of miles of transformers and transmission wires that crisscross the arid landscape. This interface between technological ingenuity and environmental forces, particularly wind, is one of the most prevalent sources of wildfire in Southern California.
Visible from space, the spreading fields of Pacoima, CA and other areas of Los Angeles speak towards the power of the Flood Control District and the millions upon millions of dollars spent each year to manage the processing of debris transported from the San Gabriel Mountains. These mono-territories take up vast areas of the city, creating infrastructural water fields adjacent to neighborhoods and communities.
In Los Angeles, all the debris basins, combined, has the equivalent area of Central Park. This vast field of infrastructure, developed in the mid-20th century as a reaction to the devastating debris flows and mudslides in the San Gabriel Valley, is now approaching its 50-year lifespan. Debris basins capture sediment shedding from the mountain terrain throughout the year, but particularly following rain events which become exasperated when unrestrained by vegetation due to wildfire. The basins, sometimes measuring hundreds of feet deep, capture this material which is then trucked off to “spreading grounds” where the saturated soil is allowed to percolate water back into aquifers. With the aging of this infrastructure, and the reduction in maintenance budgets, these systems are failing.
Bark beetles have long been culling sickly trees in North American forests. But prolonged droughts and shorter winters have spurred bark beetles to kill billions of trees in what has been the largest forest insect outbreak ever recorded, about 10 times the size of past eruptions.
Mountain pine, spruce, piñon ips, and other kinds of bark beetles have consumed 46 million of the country’s 850 million acres of forested land, from the Yukon down the spine of the Rocky Mountains all the way to Mexico. At the height of the outbreak, trees were falling sometimes at a rate of 100,000 trunks per day. As climate change warms the North American woods, it is expected that bark beetles will continue to proliferate and thrive in higher elevations—resulting in more beetles in the coming century, preying on larger areas of the country.
From 2000 to 2014, bark beetles destroyed large swaths of forests in the American West. In response, the United States Forest Service, which oversees 80 percent of the country’s woodlands, initiated a program to prevent future infestations. The USFS believes this strategy reduces trees’ competition for resources, allowing the few that remain to better resist invading bugs. This theory also benefits loggers, who are more than willing to help thin the forests, as well as politicians, often on behalf of the timber industry: More than 50 bills introduced since 2001 in Congress proposed increasing timber harvests in part to help deal with beetle outbreaks. However, the wood destroyed by bark beetles is usually not useful or marketable, removing any incentives for logging companies to remove them. To compound the problem, the state of California has not allocated the necessary funds to remove the dead trees, hence not eliminating the fire hazard and exacerbating the potential for future fires.
SPECULATIONS
Microgrids
The infrastructure and enormous amount of energy required for transporting water and power over vast distances is unsustainable. Not only does it reinforce the city’s dependency on resources outside of its border, but it also creates dangerous overlays within the wildland-urban interface which, through the failure of power infrastructure (transformers, downed powerlines) have created some of the largest wildfires in the history of California. Utility companies have answered with widespread imposed blackouts, impacting tens of thousands of people at a given time, with vulnerable communities, such as the poor and elderly, disproportionately feeling the effects. What is needed is a radical restructuring of our centralized utility systems, breaking them up, instead, into self-sustaining localized communities that can operate independently before, during, and after a disaster. The establishment of micro grids to support self-sustaining communities, based on alternative ‘closed loop’ electricity and water resources, provides increased security and equity in the event of wildfires or other natural disasters.
Microbasins
The Los Angeles County Flood Control District (LACFCD) debris management infrastructure has entered its 50-year lifespan, leaving a void in the city’s management of these systems. By hacking into this network of debris basins and spreading fields, we can begin to not only provide an updated, ecologically resilient, line of defense against debris flows following a wildfire, but provide the much-needed publicly accessible open space in the process. Imagine the existing debris basin infrastructure being transformed into a more sustainable model that protects residents living at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, while simultaneously allowing greater access by the public. Singular basins are replaced with fields of micro-basins, distributed across the hillsides after a fire. These chevron-shaped, or wedge-shaped, micro-infrastructures capture debris before it can gather more material and increase to dangerous velocities. In addition, debris is captured and redistributed along historic lines of mudflow, creating larger urban connections in the form of greenbelts, and establishing open space networks for adjacent residential neighborhoods, which serve as a catalyst for increased public space, habitat corridors, and property values.
Fuel Flocks
More extreme, climate induced weather cycles necessitate fuel management13 as an important part of wildfire mitigation. An increase in intense rainy seasons lead to an increase in grasslands, which in turn dry out in the hotter, drier summer sun.
There are many factors at play in the prevention of wildfires, with human occupation being primary. However, given that it is impractical to expect the removal of residents from the wildland-urban interface territories, we must turn to addressing the second most important factor: fuel management. Mountainous and steep hillside terrain is difficult, if not impossible, to access and the amount of acreage needed to be cleared is cost prohibitive to maintain on a yearly basis. California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire)14 officials estimate that a human crew costs roughly $28,000 to clear an acre, while a goat crew costs an average of $500. Deploying flocks of goats across the Santa Monica Mountains allow for fuel management to occur year-round, establishing a 5-year cycle whereby they are moved between different areas on a rotating basis.