Natural Environment: Wildfires are a natural part of many ecosystems. Although wildfires produce a number of greenhouse gases and aerosols including carbon dioxide, methane, and black carbon, the plants that re-colonize burned areas remove carbon from the atmosphere, generally leading to a net neutral effect on climate.
How to Build Resilience Communities, builders, homeowners, and forest managers can reduce the likelihood and impacts of wildfires by: Discouraging developments especially residential near fire-prone forests through smart zoning rules. Increasing the space between structures and nearby trees and brush, and clearing space between neighboring houses. Incorporating fire-resistant design features and materials in buildings. Increasing resources allocated to firefighting and fire prevention.
Removing fuels, such as dead trees, from forests that are at risk. Developing recovery plans before a fire hits, and implementing plans quickly after a fire to reduce erosion, limit flooding, and minimize habitat damage. Related Content. View Publication Resilience Strategies for Wildfire The risk of wildfire is expected to grow across the United States due to reduced precipitation in some regions, and higher temperatures caused by climate change.
View Publication Resilience Strategies for Extreme Heat Climate change is contributing to more frequent, severe, and longer heat waves during summer months across the United Sates.
The number of heatwaves observed in and were triple the long-term average, and require planning for economic, health and … View Details Download pdf, 1 MB.
View Publication Resilience Strategies for Drought Across the United States, the risk of drought is expected to grow due to reduced precipitation and higher temperatures caused by climate change. For example, a recent CIRES research project suggests that hotter, uncontrolled fires produce more harmful substances.
Introducing controlled fires that generally are not as hot could help reduce emissions. The current increase in extreme fires in some regions is part of a global ecosystem shift driven by human-caused global warming, Denning said. He warned that societies need to adopt strong policies to prevent huge regions of carbon-storing forests from being replaced by lower-carbon grasslands and shrubs.
Bob Berwyn an Austrian-based freelance reporter who has covered climate science and international climate policy for more than a decade. Previously, he reported on the environment, endangered species and public lands for several Colorado newspapers, and also worked as editor and assistant editor at community newspapers in the Colorado Rockies.
The U. ICN provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Skip to content The extreme wildfires sweeping across parts of North America, Europe and Siberia this year are not only wreaking local damage and sending choking smoke downwind.
Newsletters We deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Get ICN Weekly. Get Inside Clean Energy. Today's Climate Twice-a-week A digest of the most pressing climate-related news, released every Tuesday and Friday. Get Today's Climate. Get Breaking News. Email Address. I agree to the terms of service and privacy policy. Satellite images from July 23, , show how the jet stream spreads wildfire smoke across Russia top and Canada bottom.
Credit: NASA. Temperatures in California, Washington and Oregon have increased noticeably since the beginning of the 20 th century. Washington state has been 1. At the same time, rain has increasingly replaced snow in the Northwest , warmer temperatures have reduced snowpack, and soils are drying out.
All of these factors combine to create drier conditions that allow wildfires to ignite and spread. The western U. Elevated temperatures dry out vegetation, which then acts as a tinderbox for fires. Despite the risks wildfires pose to homes and lives, housing growth in once sparsely settled areas near forests and other vegetation has also increased rapidly, leading to more wildfires from human-caused ignitions and more loss of property.
As these conditions worsen, the overall burned area expands. Burned area has increased across the United States over the past two decades, and is particularly bad. The West Coast is on track to see more area burned in than any other year. In California alone, wildfires have already destroyed an area almost the size of the state of Connecticut 3.
The most recent science suggests that with further warming, the Western United States could see 2 to 6 times the annual area burned in than it does today.
As fires burn, carbon stored in trees and other vegetation combusts, releasing carbon dioxide and other potent greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. Climate change is raising average global temperatures, bringing with it longer droughts, with cascading effects for forests and wildfires.
These impacts are highly place-dependent — they are determined by the ecology an ecosystem and its history of disturbance, like wildfires, insect outbreaks or logging. Across many forest types, increasing temperatures and droughts dry out fuels, including vegetation like dead trees and fallen branches , more quickly and completely, priming them to burn.
In some forests in California and British Columbia, climate impacts can reduce snowpack and speed up spring snow melt , which can lead to even drier vegetation and increase fire risk. In ecosystems plagued by drought, like areas of the southwestern U. As a driver of climate change, wildfires release huge quantities of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. In British Columbia, extreme fire years in and each produced three times more greenhouse gases than all other sectors of the province combined.
While trees can and do regrow after fire, building back carbon takes time, which is precisely what we lack in the fight against climate change.
People, specifically European colonizers in North America, have created and perpetuated conditions that increase the risk of large, severe fires. We are just one of many species that suffer from the consequences. Fire has long played an important role in maintaining the health of many types of forest.
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