With Climate Change, Wildfires Getting Worse in the West

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Across the western United States, wildfires grew bigger and more frequent in the past 30 years, according to a new study that blames climate change and drought for the worsening flames.

"It's not just something that is localized to forest or grasslands or deserts," said lead study author Phil Dennison, a geographer at the University of Utah. "Every region in the West is experiencing an increase in fire. These fire trends are very consistent with everything we know about how climate change should impact fire in the West," Dennison told Live Science.

The number of fires jumped by seven per year since 1984, and fires burned an additional 90,000 acres (36,000 hectares) each year, according to the study, published online April 4 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. [Yosemite Aflame: The Rim Fire in Photos]

Dennison and his co-authors aren't the first to note that Western wildfires are getting worse. But with so many different landscapes in the West, from alpine forests to inland deserts, the reasons underlying the trend have been hotly debated. Causes could include bark beetle infestation, fire suppression policies, severe droughts, global warming and population increases in fire-prone areas.

"There are a lot of different causes for fire and a lot of different things that contribute to a fire regime, and those vary tremendously across the West," Dennison said.

But because the bump in wildfires seen in the study is so widespread, Dennison thinks one main factor likely underlies the trend: climate change.

"This is over too short of a period to say this is definitely climate change, but it does point in the direction of changing climate having an impact on fire," he said.

Dennison and his co-authors analyzed satellite data from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity Project. This relatively new database goes back to 1984 and contains all fires that burned more 1,000 acres (400 hectares) in the United States. They examined nine "ecoregions" — such as the Rocky Mountains, the Southwest desert and the Southern plains — and some 6,800 fires.

Between 1984 and 2011, the increase in fire activity was greatest in regions that were also hit hard by drought, the researchers found. This includes the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada and Arizona-New Mexico mountains; the Southwest desert in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Texas; and the Southern plains across western Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and eastern Colorado.

"Most of these trends show strong correlations with drought-related conditions, which, to a large degree, agree with what we expect from climate change projections," said Max Moritz, a study co-author and fire specialist at the University of California-Berkeley Cooperative Extension.

http://news.yahoo.com/climate-change-wildfires-getting-worse-west-132206221.html

Edited April 21, 2014 by Porterhouse

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

It has little to with climate change, and more to do with human settlements encroaching more and more into the wildlands. The natural cycle of fire is being broken and fuel loads allowed to accumulate. For those of us living in or near these wildlands, this is a grave concern that the state and federal government has done little about, rather they have this rather perverted obsession to keep the forest in an unnatural "pristine" state. While fire and grazing would remove the suckers and young hardwoods, effectively reducing the fire loads, these growths have been allowed to accumulate, inhibiting the natural grazing and providing the tinder for hotter, more intense fires that move slowly through the forest floor damaging the trees, rather that rapid less intense burns that do not do as much damage to the older growth trees and other plants that need fire to procreate.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

It has little to with climate change, and more to do with human settlements encroaching more and more into the wildlands. The natural cycle of fire is being broken and fuel loads allowed to accumulate. For those of us living in or near these wildlands, this is a grave concern that the state and federal government has done little about, rather they have this rather perverted obsession to keep the forest in an unnatural "pristine" state. While fire and grazing would remove the suckers and young hardwoods, effectively reducing the fire loads, these growths have been allowed to accumulate, inhibiting the natural grazing and providing the tinder for hotter, more intense fires that move slowly through the forest floor damaging the trees, rather that rapid less intense burns that do not do as much damage to the older growth trees and other plants that need fire to procreate.

You're talking about the U.S. Forest Service, yes?

The U.S. Forest Service has nearly depleted its budget for fighting wildfires at the peak of wildfire season, a development which has forced the agency to divert $600 million in funds from timber and other areas to continue fighting fires.

As of Wednesday, the agency was down to $50 million after spending $967 million this year on fighting wildfires. So far in 2013, 33,000 wildfires have burned in the Western U.S., spanning 5,300 square miles and destroying 960 homes and 30 commercial buildings.

This year is the second consecutive year and the sixth year since 2002 that the Forest Service has had to divert funds for fighting fires. The Forest Service’s wildfire fighting budget was slashed by $115 million by automatic, across-the-board sequester cuts that went into effect earlier this year. In addition, a wildfire reserve fund created in 2009, known as the FLAME Act has dropped from $413 million in 2010 to $299 million this year after sequestration. These cuts come as costs to fight wildfires each year are soaring: during the 1990s, the federal government spent less than $1 billion a year fighting wildfires, but since 2002, it’s spent a yearly average of more than $3 billion.

These cuts and the trend of the Forest Service’s depleting funds are made all the more troubling by warnings that wildfires will only become more intense and more frequent and as the climate warms — already, wildfire seasons last about two months longer than in previous decades.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/08/23/2519671/forest-service-money/

Edited April 21, 2014 by Porterhouse