Fire laddering is how fires on the forest floor transition to a "crown fire", the hallmark of a destructive forest fire.

During and immediately after the last ice age, North America - forests and otherwise - was populated by giant mammals. Mastodons, Woolly mammoths, Woolly rhinos, Short-faced bears, Steppe bison, Caribou, Musk ox, Giant beavers, Camels, Gigantic ground-dwelling sloths, Glyptodons, and Dire wolves were everywhere and all of them were huge. As they crashed through forests they would effectively clean off dead side-branches of trees halting the spread of a ground based fire into the tree crown. Too bad we killed them all. They had great utility.

Stay tuned for more interesting ways our hubris gets in the way of our success as a species.

(NOTE: a Glyptodon was, effectively, a giant armadillo.)

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