You are not logged in.
In 2026, the recent episode of fires burning out of control in Canada, Spain, France and other nations inspired this inquiry.
In post #3, I asked ChatGPT (paid version) to investigate the possibility of using tall poles in forests to prevent ignition of material by lightning. RobertDyck predicted the result would be disappointing, and indeed that turned out to be the case.
A few highly valued trees are protected on Earth with their own customer lightning rod and related protection systems.
The best solution for fire protection is adequate supplies of fresh water, but in 2026 the human race is clearly not in position to do more than just ** think ** about what that would look like.
Since this topic is created in Science Category, we have the opportunity to collect knowledge about the history of lightning protection, starting with Benjamin Franklin and on to the present day when research is ongoing.
In addition, we have the opportunity to study how lightning develops and how currents flow under various circumstances. A great many people have spent a lot ot time studying lightning and how to deal with it.
I've noticed (for just one example) that modern lightning protection systems appear to move away from the traditional sharp point to an oblate spheroid shape, that I presume is better at defusing electrical potential so that lightning strikes do not occur. I'd greatly appreciate someone investigating that observation and reporting on it.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
This post is reserved for an index to posts that may be contributed by NewMars members.
Index:
Post #3: Opening session with ChatGPT regarding lightning and possible protection of forests
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
In this post ChatGPT agreed to take on the challenge of thinking about lightning protection for forests. The conclusion is realistic.
Could Lightning Protection Systems Help Protect Forests?
Firestorms in Canada, Spain, France, and many other locations have renewed interest in preventing lightning-caused wildfires.
Humans have protected buildings from lightning since Benjamin Franklin developed the lightning rod in the eighteenth century. This raises an intriguing question:
Could a properly designed network of lightning protection systems prevent enough forest fires to justify its cost?
The short answer is that lightning protection has been used for individual trees and structures located in forests. Attempts have also been made to suppress or guide lightning. However, I have not found evidence of an operational network of conventional lightning towers designed to protect an extensive forest.
That makes the proposal neither obviously impossible nor already solved. It appears to occupy a largely unexplored middle ground.
What Has Already Been Attempted?
Protection of individual valuable trees
Lightning conductors have long been installed in historic, exceptionally valuable, or potentially hazardous trees.
Such a system normally includes an air terminal high in the crown, a flexible down-conductor, and buried grounding electrodes.
This demonstrates that a tree can be protected without attempting to prevent lightning itself. However, this practice protects selected trees rather than the entire surrounding forest.
The International Society of Arboriculture was publishing guidance about lightning protection for trees by at least 1979:
Protection of fire-lookout towers and forest facilities
The United States Forest Service routinely protects lookout towers and communications installations.
A complete system may include strike interception, heavy conductors, electrical bonding, grounding electrodes, and surge protection.
These systems can prevent a strike to a lookout tower from igniting the tower or nearby combustible material. Their primary purpose, however, is to protect the structure, its equipment, and its occupants. They are not intended to intercept lightning throughout the surrounding forest.
The Forest Service has published a technical guide describing these installations:
Evaluating Lightning Protection on Lookouts and Communication Facilities
Attempts to suppress lightning through weather modification
An important historical precedent is Project Skyfire, begun by the United States Forest Service in the late 1940s.
Researchers investigated cloud seeding and other methods of changing thunderstorm electrification in the hope of reducing lightning-caused forest fires.
The experiments did not establish a dependable operational method. Cloud modification also introduced substantial scientific and practical difficulties.
Project Skyfire was an attempt to prevent lightning from forming. It was not a system for intercepting lightning after it approached the ground.
A recent historical review discusses Project Skyfire and the later Project Thunderbolt:
Experimental laser lightning rods
A European experiment conducted on Säntis Mountain in Switzerland demonstrated that rapid laser pulses could guide part of a lightning discharge toward an instrumented tower.
This was a significant scientific achievement. However, the equipment is expensive, power-intensive, and presently suited to protecting a small and exceptionally valuable location—not thousands of square kilometres of forest.
Additional information is available here:
The Lightning Rod Project: A Laser Beam to Control Lightning
Why Ordinary Lightning Rods Do Not Easily Scale Up to Forests
A building is a comparatively small and clearly bounded object. A forest is an immense field of competing natural lightning terminals.
Every prominent tree, rocky outcrop, ridgeline, communications mast, and observation tower can become a possible attachment point.
A lightning rod does not pull in every lightning strike from a large district. It becomes a preferred attachment point only when a descending lightning leader comes sufficiently close to it.
Modern lightning protection design therefore uses methods such as the rolling-sphere model. Engineers do not assume that a lightning rod provides an unlimited cone of protection.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has noted that even objects apparently within a nominal protection zone may occasionally be struck, particularly by lower-current lightning strokes:
NIST Discussion of Lightning Interception and Protection Zones
A Simplified Example
Consider a hypothetical forest with the following dimensions:
Forest canopy height: 20 metres
Lightning tower height: 40 metres
Design rolling-sphere radius: 46 metres
Using a simplified calculation for an isolated mast, the protected horizontal distance at canopy height would be only about 38 metres.
Complete blanket coverage could therefore require hundreds of towers per square kilometre. The exact number would depend upon terrain, canopy height, the required level of protection, and the amount of unprotected space considered acceptable.
Each tower would require considerably more than a pointed metal rod.
A complete forest lightning protection installation could require:
An air terminal or conductive tower
One or more heavy, low-impedance down-conductors
Properly engineered earth electrodes
Electrical bonding of nearby conductive objects
Surge protection for power, sensors, and communications
Safe access for inspection and maintenance
A cleared or noncombustible area around the grounding system
Regular testing for corrosion, physical damage, and changing soil conditions
The Grounding Problem
Safely conducting the lightning current into the Earth may be more difficult than intercepting the strike.
Forest soils can be dry, rocky, frozen, or rich in poorly conducting organic material. These conditions can produce high electrical resistance.
A poorly designed grounding electrode might cause:
Side-flashes from the tower to nearby trees
Electrical arcing across the ground surface
Heating or damage to tree roots
Current flowing through nearby trees
Ignition of dry leaves, needles, grass, or organic soil
Such effects could create the very fire the installation was intended to prevent.
A forest system would therefore need the same essential elements as a building lightning protection system, including interception, conduction, bonding, grounding, and surge protection. It would also need special measures to prevent ignition around the grounding electrodes.
Could the System Be Economically Justified?
For an entire ordinary forest, blanket lightning protection initially appears unlikely to compete economically with other measures such as:
Vegetation and fuel management
Prescribed burning
Satellite fire detection
Ground-based cameras
Lightning-location networks
Aircraft and drone patrols
Rapid deployment of initial-attack crews
The answer could be different for a small, exceptionally valuable, or exceptionally dangerous location.
Possible candidates might include:
The forest perimeter surrounding a community
Municipal watersheds where a severe fire would cause catastrophic erosion
Giant-sequoia groves or collections of ancient trees
Hazardous-material facilities surrounded by forest
Power stations and communications installations
Narrow mountain passes through which fires commonly spread
Remote islands or ecological preserves
Ridgelines with unusually concentrated lightning activity
Locations where one escaped fire could impose enormous suppression and property costs
A Basic Economic Test
The annual benefit could be estimated in plain text as follows:
Annual benefit equals the number of lightning ignitions prevented per year, multiplied by the expected loss associated with each ignition.
That benefit would be compared with:
Annualized construction cost, plus inspection, maintenance, access, ecological, and eventual replacement costs.
The expected loss associated with a wildfire includes much more than the immediate expense of fire suppression.
It may include:
Homes and public infrastructure
Timber and other natural resources
Damage to municipal watersheds
Evacuations and business interruption
Human illness caused by smoke
Deaths and injuries
Wildlife and habitat loss
Carbon emissions
Post-fire flooding, erosion, and mudslides
Long-term community displacement
A small reduction in the probability of an exceptionally destructive fire could have substantial economic value.
The Importance of Geographic Location
Lightning does not account for the same proportion of wildfires everywhere.
On United States national forests and grasslands, the Forest Service reports that approximately 46 percent of wildfires over a recent ten-year period were ignited by lightning:
United States Forest Service: Wildfire Response
In metropolitan France, approximately 90 percent of forest-fire starts are attributed to human activity. Lightning is the principal natural cause, but it accounts for a much smaller portion of the total:
French Forest Observatory: Causes of Forest and Vegetation Fires
A forest lightning protection system would therefore be more valuable in a region where lightning causes a large percentage of destructive fires.
A Potentially More Practical Form of the Idea
The most promising concept may not be an attempt to protect every tree.
Instead, a network of strategically positioned, multipurpose towers might combine:
Lightning interception
Measurement and recording of intercepted strikes
Real-time lightning detection
Optical and thermal fire detection
Weather instruments
Radio and emergency communications
Cameras or drone support
A local supply of water or fire suppressant
A maintained fuel-reduction zone around each tower
Such a tower could provide useful fire detection, weather information, and communications during every fire season—even during years when it intercepted no dangerous lightning strike.
These additional functions could help justify part of its construction and maintenance cost.
Initial Conclusion
Humans have protected individual trees and forest structures from lightning. They have also experimented with suppressing or guiding lightning. However, no documented example has yet been found of a conventional, properly grounded tower network intended to prevent lightning ignition across a substantial forest area.
Protecting every tree in every forest appears far beyond present human capabilities.
However, that conclusion does not eliminate every form of the idea.
A carefully designed system might still be economically justified for a relatively small area in which a lightning-caused fire would have exceptionally severe consequences.
The most promising subject for further investigation may therefore be a multipurpose forest protection tower that combines lightning interception with fire detection, weather observation, communications, and immediate fire-suppression support.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
Lightning tends to hit the highest item in a location, most of the time not hitting in a field. In the new England area it was done to keep livestock barns from having strikes to the animals. Seems that with the fall of farming less of these are being installed.
An upper class male was struck on his glasses from a hayloft entrance and survived on his families farm.
Offline
Like button can go here
Here's a helpful post by RobertDyck:
Canada has 3.69 million square kilometres of forest. Assuming a hexagonal pattern with hexagons 30 metres apart centre-to-centre, will require 1,283 hexagons per square kilometre. To prevent lightning strikes, the tower must extend 30 metres taller than the trees. Trees of the Boreal Forest grow 15 to 20 metres tall (50 to 65 feet). To protect from lightning towers must be 50 metres tall. Trees of the Pacific coast can grow 70 metres tall (230 feet) or higher, but let's focus on the majority. So that's 4.73427 billion towers, each 50 metres tall. The whole tower need not be copper, but requires a copper cable heavy enough to carry a lightning strike. Then there's the steel for the tower.
The alternative is to run wire up the taller trees in a neighborhood.
That is the method used today for valuable trees, or trees in neighborhoods where a fall would be unhelpful.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
Copper wire for lightning rod: 32 strand, 17 gauge, braided, not insulated, 7/16" diameter, a 5-foot section weighs 17.1 ounces.
Protection extends 45° from tip of lightning rod. Maximum coverage is 30-metre radius. To protect tops of trees, must extend 30-metre taller than the trees. In a forest with 20-metre tall trees, to prevent lightning strike, requires rod total of 30+20=50 metre height. Assume 1 metre (3' 3.7") taller than a tree, then cable must extend 49 metres. Add a copper spike for the soil, at least 1 metre deep copper spike. To hold rod so tip is 30 metres taller than tip of tree, assume it must attack to the top 2 metre of tree for sufficient strength so it doesn't bend. That means the holder must be 31 metres tall.
Rod could be made of brass instead of pure copper, for strength, and to prevent corrosion. Standard 1.1 meter brass spike (0.1 meter for mounting). 16 mm (0.63 in) diameter. Mass 1.9kg of brass.
Cable alone: 48 meter, plus slack. 48 metre = 157.48 feet. For slack, round to 160 feet. At 17.1 ounces per 5 feet, that's 547.2 ounces of copper = 15.5 kg of copper for cable.
A 1 meter long spike, also known as a ground rod, mass will vary depending on thickness. Assume 3/8" thickness, the thinnest with enough strength to penetrate ground. Mass 0.93 kg (2.05 pounds).
For 4.73427 billion lightning rods, the cable plus ground spike will require 77.7840561 billion kg of copper = 77.7840561 million metric tonnes. 700 million metric tonnes of copper have been mined in the world through all of human history.
Rod itself will require 8.995113 billion kg of brass = 8.995113 million metric tonnes. Lightning rods are often made of C23000 (Red Brass) which is 85% copper, 15% zinc. This requires 8.995113 Mt * 85% = 7.64584605 million tonnes. Rod mass * 15% = 1.34926695 million tonnes of zinc.
Total now comes to 85.42990215 million metric tonnes of copper + 1.34926695 million metric tonnes of zinc.
And that doesn't include the mount to hold the lightning rod above the tree top. Does that sound practical to you?
Offline
Like button can go here
most of this is to protect high value trees or forest towers that are for lookout observation.
A comprehensive lightning rod (or protection) system consists of air terminals, down conductors, bonding, and grounding rods, all designed to safely intercept strikes and disperse electrical energy. While it protects buildings and individual high-value trees from direct fires, deploying a widespread lightning rod network across entire forests is impractical and excessively expensive due to the vast, inaccessible areas involved
NH still has fire towers
Active Status: It is one of only 16 active fire lookout towers remaining in New Hampshire's statewide forest fire detection network. Blue Job Mountain Fire Tower in Farmington, NH is still active. It is officially owned and operated by the New Hampshire Division of Forests and Lands.
Offline
Like button can go here
The article at the link below addresses the fires in Canada, and assigns blame for the increase squarely on Climate Change.
To most readers of this forum that would be no surprise.
A detail that I thought interesting is the proportion of fires started by lightning compared to humans.
The authors appear to be of the opinion that there is little chance of improving the outlook.
The article provides detail about the uncontrollable nature of firestorms which create their own weather.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/wha … oxic-smoke
I am of the opinion that any problem can be solved, given sufficient thought and effort, but this one is in the upper tier of problems to solve.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
Forest fires in areas actively managed such as parks and areas harvested for lumber can have controlled burns. Since forest fire is a natural feature of the forest. As I said, pioneer species of trees tend to be less flammable. They are replaced by slower growing trees and trees that require forest cover for young seedlings. Later growth forest tends to be more flammable. Controlled burn required establishing a fire break to contain the burn before igniting it.
The planet has been warming for the last 20,000 years. It has gone through dramatic changes. Ice over Canada and the northern states has melted. Sahara changed from a cold subarctic desert to grassland 14,500-14,600 years ago, then to the hot desert we know today 6,000-5,000 years ago. It will continue. As the planet warms, agriculture will be possible farther north. Some of Canada's forest could be cleared for farmland. There are already areas limited by soil rather than climate. East of Lake Winnipeg is thin soil just inches thick over bedrock: rugged Canadian Shield. I have suggested a couple ways to make that area productive. Northwest Ontario at similar latitude could use the same methods.
Offline
Like button can go here
planned harvesting is the best way to control but it also drops pricing by having a surplus of logs to make into product as one of the controlling factors as to why its not happening.
Offline
Like button can go here