A century of fire suppression, combined with global warming and drought, has led to increasingly destructive wildfires in the Western United States.
A century of fire suppression, combined with global warming and drought, has led to increasingly destructive wildfires in the Western United States. Forest managers use tools like prescribed burns, thinning, mastication, and piling and burning to reduce fuel – live and dead trees, needles and leaves, and downed branches – that can feed intense wildfires. These methods aim to lower fuel levels, reduce crown density, and protect fire-resistant trees, fostering healthier, more resilient forests.
However, prescribed burning efforts haven’t kept up with the rapid buildup of surface fuel, creating a “fire deficit” – the gap between the amount of fuel that has accumulated, and the fire management efforts needed to reduce it – and raises the risk of severe wildfires.
Prescribed fires in the Western U.S. are an essential tool for managing forests and reducing wildfire risks, but they also come with significant social and environmental consequences. These controlled burns can escape and become wildfires, degrade air quality, reduce visibility and pose serious health risks, particularly respiratory illnesses. In the Pacific Northwest, emissions from prescribed fires have been linked to hundreds of deaths, thousands of respiratory problems, and significant workday losses due to poor air quality.
Read more at Florida Atlantic University
Image: A field plot in the Sierra Nevada where researchers surveyed the effects of wildfires. (Credit: Asha Paudel, Ph.D., Florida Atlantic University)
