Community Corner
How Nature Heals From Fire
Angeles National Forest, Southern California - Forest Recovery Project illustrates nature's response to fire
The Station Fire of August 2009 remains the largest in the history of Los Angeles County, and at the time was considered to exhibit extreme fire behavior. In the fire seasons that followed it became clear that this catastrophic arson fire represented the "new normal" given the severe drought cycle, bark beetle infestations and the overall change in climate that is in process on landscapes which have been protected from fire for the last one hundred years.
An effort to approach fire from an organic, personal and even artistic approach, the Forest Recovery Project is a collection of photographs eight years in the making, chronicling the recovery of the Angeles National Forest from the fire, not as a didactic visual guide but as a learning and discovery experience in one of the nation's most visited forests.
Over one hundred thousand images comprise this body of work, which is in progress. The decision was made to release the image gallery to the public in the summer of 2017 even with some portions of the work not yet edited and ready for viewing. There is enough information available to give viewers a sense of how ecosystems respond to fire and why it's critical to embrace a new attitude toward fire moving forward...one which acknowledges it as a powerful tool as well as a potentially destructive force. Arranged by year and then by month, and including a "best of" gallery with some of the most visually appealing images from the collection, the Forest Recovery Project can be viewed here:
