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While the month of May means spring flowers for much of the country, its arrival in California brings the ominous start of wildfire season, and this year’s forecast calls for record-breaking fires and a greater need for wildfire resiliency. Looking at the forecast can help the state align proper resources and perhaps put other measures in place, but the built environment is what it is. However, future construction offers more possibility for wildfire resiliency……..Continue reading….

By Jennifer Castenson

Source: Forbes

Critics:

The spread of wildfires varies based on the flammable material present, its vertical arrangement and moisture content, and weather conditions. Fuel arrangement and density is governed in part by topography, as land shape determines factors such as available sunlight and water for plant growth. Overall, fire types can be generally characterized by their fuels as follows:

Ground fires are fed by subterranean roots, duff on the forest floor, and other buried organic matter. Ground fires typically burn by smoldering, and can burn slowly for days to months, such as peat fires in Kalimantan and Eastern Sumatra, Indonesia, which resulted from a riceland creation project that unintentionally drained and dried the peat.

Crawling or surface fires are fueled by low-lying vegetative matter on the forest floor such as leaf and timber litter, debris, grass, and low-lying shrubbery. This kind of fire often burns at a relatively lower temperature than crown fires (less than 400 °C or 750 °F) and may spread at slow rate, though steep slopes and wind can accelerate the rate of spread. This fuel type is especially susceptible to ignition due to spotting (see below).

Ladder fires consume material between low-level vegetation and tree canopies, such as small trees, downed logs, and vines. Kudzu, Old World climbing fern, and other invasive plants that scale trees may also encourage ladder fires.

Crown, canopy, or aerial fires burn suspended material at the canopy level, such as tall trees, vines, and mosses. The ignition of a crown fire, termed crowning, is dependent on the density of the suspended material, canopy height, canopy continuity, sufficient surface and ladder fires, vegetation moisture content, and weather conditions during the blaze.Stand-replacing fires lit by humans can spread into the Amazon rain forest, damaging ecosystems not particularly suited for heat or arid conditions.

Climate change promotes the type of weather that makes wildfires more likely. In some areas, an increase of wildfires has been attributed directly to climate change. Evidence from Earth’s past also shows more fire in warmer periods. Climate change increases evapotranspiration. This can cause vegetation and soils to dry out. When a fire starts in an area with very dry vegetation, it can spread rapidly. Higher temperatures can also lengthen the fire season.

This is the time of year in which severe wildfires are most likely, particularly in regions where snow is disappearing. Weather conditions are raising the risks of wildfires. But the total area burnt by wildfires has decreased. This is mostly because savanna has been converted to cropland, so there are fewer trees to burn. Climate variability including heat waves, droughts, and El Niño, and regional weather patterns, such as high-pressure ridges, can increase the risk and alter the behavior of wildfires dramatically.

Years of high precipitation can produce rapid vegetation growth, which when followed by warmer periods can encourage more widespread fires and longer fire seasons. High temperatures dry out the fuel loads and make them more flammable, increasing tree mortality and posing significant risks to global forest health. Since the mid-1980s, in the Western US, earlier snowmelt and associated warming has also been associated with an increase in length and severity of the wildfire season, or the most fire-prone time of the year.

A 2019 study indicates that the increase in fire risk in California may be partially attributable to human-induced climate change.Wildfire risk is the chance that a wildfire will start in or reach a particular area and the potential loss of human values if it does. Risk is dependent on variable factors such as human activities, weather patterns, availability of wildfire fuels, and the availability or lack of resources to suppress a fire.

Wildfires have continually been a threat to human populations. However, human-induced geographic and climatic changes are exposing populations more frequently to wildfires and increasing wildfire risk. It is speculated that the increase in wildfires arises from a century of wildfire suppression coupled with the rapid expansion of human developments into fire-prone wildlands. Wildfires are naturally occurring events that aid in promoting forest health.

Global warming and climate changes are causing an increase in temperatures and more droughts nationwide which contributes to an increase in wildfire risk. Residents in communities surrounding wildfires are exposed to lower concentrations of chemicals, but they are at a greater risk for indirect exposure through water or soil contamination. Exposure to residents is greatly dependent on individual susceptibility.

Vulnerable persons such as children (ages 0–4), the elderly (ages 65 and older), smokers, and pregnant women are at an increased risk due to their already compromised body systems, even when the exposures are present at low chemical concentrations and for relatively short exposure periods. They are also at risk for future wildfires and may move away to areas they consider less risky.

Wildfires affect large numbers of people in Western Canada and the United States. In California alone, more than 350,000 people live in towns and cities in “very high fire hazard severity zones

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