(Twitpic: PB Post Photo)
Climate
change is worsening wildfires, lengthening the wildfire season and
increasing their size, the head of the nation's forest service warned
Congress on Tuesday.
In testimony to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, U.S. Forest Service Chief Thomas Tidwell
said:
Around the world, the last two decades have seen fires that are
extraordinary in their size, intensity and impacts. In Australia in
2009, the Black Saturday Bushfires killed 170 people. Domestically,
Florida, Georgia, Utah, California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and
Colorado, have all experienced the largest and/or the most destructive
fires in their history just in the last six years. On average wildfires
burn twice as many acres each year as compared to 40 years ago, and
there are on average seven times as many fires over 10,000 acres per
year.
In 2012 over 9.3 million acres burned in the United States. The fires
of 2012 were massive in size, with 51 fires exceeding 40,000 acres. Of
these large fires, 14 exceeded 100,000 acres. The increase in large
fires in the west coincides with an increase in temperatures and early
snow melt in recent years. This means longer fire seasons. The length of
the fire season has increased by over two months since the 1970s.
"The largest issue we now face is how to adapt our management to
anticipate climate change impacts and to mitigate their potential
effects," Tidwell told the committee.
Illustrating how climate change has quickly impacted on wildfires, Tidwell told the
Guardian,
"Ten years ago in New Mexico outside Los Alamos we had a fire get
started. Over seven days, it burned 40,000 acres. In 2011, we had
another fire. Las Conchas. It also burned 40,000 acres. It did it in 12
hours."
Last week, Santa Barbara County fire Capt. David Sadecki
said of the
White Fire
that burned nearly 2,000 acres in southern California, "It's still
spring—it's not even summer—and it's burning like it's August or
September."
These increasingly severe wildfires have a monetary effect as well.
Fire activities represented 13 percent of the U.S. Forest Service's
total agency budget in 1991, but that figure jumped to over 40 percent
in 2012.
In the most recent wildfire potential
outlook
released June 1 by the National Interagency Fire Center, warmer, drier
than usual conditions are contributing to above normal potential for
wildfires in large swathes of the west. And the most recent drought
monitor shows dry conditions plaguing much of the western half of the
country.
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