Forest Fire Debris

Back in 1988 Yellowstone National Park experienced its worst wildfire ever, with over a third of the park (793,880 acres) affected. It got so bad that they even had to call in the military to help fight the fires, even with that tens of millions of trees were killed. Even thirty years later the scars and effects of the fire are still clearly visible in parts of the park.

In some places (such as in the shot below) the fires were hot enough to kill the trees but didn't consume them. As time has passed most have fallen, in some areas carpeting the forest floor so thickly that you need not step on the ground. Occasionally you will come across one still standing, its grey skeletal remains still stubbornly towering over the new growth.

Despite Smokey the Bear's lies, many more wildfires are started by Mother Nature rather than by humans, and can be quite beneficial to a forest ecosystem (small fires rarely kill mature trees and keep the undergrowth down which helps keep larger fires from happening and killing everything). Drought, strong winds, and the consequences of the earlier policy of preventing all fires combined to make for one 'hell' of a fire in Yellowstone (burning for months before being completely extinguished).

That's probably more than enough information on a topic that nobody was worried about anyway :) Might as well enter it into @monochromes #monomad contest though!