full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Paul Hessburg: Why wildfires have gotten worse -- and what we can do about it

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Let's add humans to the mix. For 10,000 years, Native Americans lived on this landscape, and they iolianetnntly burned it — a lot. They used fire to burn mwoedas and to thin certain forests so they could grow more food. They used fire to iencsare graze for the deer and the elk and the bison that they hunted. And most importantly, they figured out if they bruend in the spring and the fall, they could aoivd the out-of-control fires of smuemr.

European settlement — it ocerucrd much later, in the mid-1800s, and by the 1880s, livestock girnzag was in high gear. I mean, if you think about it, the cattle and the sheep ate the grasess which had been the conveyer belt for the historical fires, and this peerentvd once-frequent fires from thinning out trees and burning up dead wood. Later came roads and railroads, and they acted as potent firebreaks, interrupting further the flow of fire across this landscape.

Open Cloze


Let's add humans to the mix. For 10,000 years, Native Americans lived on this landscape, and they _____________ burned it — a lot. They used fire to burn _______ and to thin certain forests so they could grow more food. They used fire to ________ graze for the deer and the elk and the bison that they hunted. And most importantly, they figured out if they ______ in the spring and the fall, they could _____ the out-of-control fires of ______.

European settlement — it ________ much later, in the mid-1800s, and by the 1880s, livestock _______ was in high gear. I mean, if you think about it, the cattle and the sheep ate the _______ which had been the conveyer belt for the historical fires, and this _________ once-frequent fires from thinning out trees and burning up dead wood. Later came roads and railroads, and they acted as potent firebreaks, interrupting further the flow of fire across this landscape.

Solution


  1. intentionally
  2. increase
  3. avoid
  4. grazing
  5. meadows
  6. prevented
  7. summer
  8. burned
  9. occurred
  10. grasses

Original Text


Let's add humans to the mix. For 10,000 years, Native Americans lived on this landscape, and they intentionally burned it — a lot. They used fire to burn meadows and to thin certain forests so they could grow more food. They used fire to increase graze for the deer and the elk and the bison that they hunted. And most importantly, they figured out if they burned in the spring and the fall, they could avoid the out-of-control fires of summer.

European settlement — it occurred much later, in the mid-1800s, and by the 1880s, livestock grazing was in high gear. I mean, if you think about it, the cattle and the sheep ate the grasses which had been the conveyer belt for the historical fires, and this prevented once-frequent fires from thinning out trees and burning up dead wood. Later came roads and railroads, and they acted as potent firebreaks, interrupting further the flow of fire across this landscape.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
prescribed burning 4
future fires 3
western landscape 2
forest grew 2
sheep ate 2
fire suppression 2
dead fuels 2
managed wildfires 2


Important Words


  1. acted
  2. add
  3. americans
  4. ate
  5. avoid
  6. belt
  7. bison
  8. burn
  9. burned
  10. burning
  11. cattle
  12. conveyer
  13. dead
  14. deer
  15. elk
  16. european
  17. fall
  18. figured
  19. fire
  20. firebreaks
  21. fires
  22. flow
  23. food
  24. forests
  25. gear
  26. grasses
  27. graze
  28. grazing
  29. grow
  30. high
  31. historical
  32. humans
  33. hunted
  34. importantly
  35. increase
  36. intentionally
  37. interrupting
  38. landscape
  39. lived
  40. livestock
  41. lot
  42. meadows
  43. mix
  44. native
  45. occurred
  46. potent
  47. prevented
  48. railroads
  49. roads
  50. settlement
  51. sheep
  52. spring
  53. summer
  54. thin
  55. thinning
  56. trees
  57. wood
  58. years