Interactive Environmental Journalism

Climate change will limit wildfire management

Fire ecologists think that global climate change is going to make fire in the West much more difficult to manage than it has been in the past, according to this article from the Missourian. The Association of Fire Ecologists has issued a declaration describing how global climate change is lengthening the fire season in the West and increasing the threat of hotter, more frequent fires.

You can read the San Diego Declaration on Climate Change and Fire Management online: http://emmps.wsu.edu/firecongress (click on the declaration's link.)

While citizens at Lake Tahoe may feel that they can't do much to affect global climate change, they will have to deal with the effects of it, according to a variety of scientists (including the new head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science who told the BBC that the climate was changing much faster than predicted).

How should we factor in this global trend to our work in a very localized area? Do we treat it as a given and factor it into fire management plans? Consider it still a hypothesis to deal with when it's more noticeable? Or take it as a challenge to more proactively address as a community?

posted by donica @ 12:48 AM