“Climatologists are predicting that the area burned since 2000 will double or triple in the next three decades.”
As Dr. Hessburg explains in his talk “Why wildfires have gotten worse-and what we can do about it”, humans have suppressed fires and allowed our forests to fill in with dense stands of young, fire prone trees. In today’s Wildfire Ecology Education message, we’d like to reiterate his point that the blanket of trees that now cover our landscape act not only as continuous fuel-beds for fires, but enable disease and insects outbreaks to move easily as well. As diseases and insect outbreaks spread, forest die and dead trees and branches add to the fuels. What’s more, our summers are getting drier, hotter, and windier. Fire season has extended by 40-80 days and, Dr. Hessburg warns, wildfires are predicted to increase significantly over the next three decades.