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Oct 19, 2023 · How Fire Impacts Wildlife. Wildlife tend to have a very different relationship with fire. Some have evolved to live with it, and some even thrive after fires. That’s not to say all wild animals call fire a friend—there are some who can’t outrun the quickly moving flames, and young or small animals are particularly at risk.
Nov 30, 2023 · Vaillant: Fire suppression is a legitimate culprit for one of the reasons our fire seasons have been so bad in North America. The good fire, as some people call it, has been taken off the land.
- Climate change is turning up the heat. You’re not imagining things: wildfires are getting bigger and more destructive. One of the main forces driving this trend is climate change, which has intensified summertime droughts; reduced the mountaintop snowpack, making fire seasons longer; and even increased lightning strikes that can trigger big fires in tinder-dry forests.
- Development is encroaching on forests and wildlands. As communities grow, more development is happening near forests, grasslands or other wild landscape.
- We’re not managing forests properly. For many decades, federal agencies’ dominant strategy for dealing with wildfires was to prevent them or fight them whenever they popped up.
- Wildfires Can Create Hazardous Air
- Wildfires Fuel Climate Change
- Wildfires Threaten Water Security
- Wildfires Can Increase The Risk of Flooding
- Wildfires Can Cause Direct and Indirect Economic Losses
As the recent fires in Quebec illustrated, wildfires can have far-reaching impacts on air quality, with wind pushing smoke across hundreds of miles and causing widespread health hazards. The fine particlesin wildfire smoke pose the biggest threat to human health: They can cause burning eyes, respiratory illnesses like bronchitis, and aggravated sym...
In addition to creating poor air quality, wildfires produce planet-warming greenhouse gases that fuel climate change. Because trees store carbon, they also release it into the air as they burn. In 2021 alone, wildfires in boreal forests across North America, Europe and Asia released 1.76 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Ranked as a country, this wou...
Forests are vitally important for safeguarding water quality and freshwater access. Forested watersheds provide over two-thirds of the world’s drinking water, with 33 of the world’s 105largest cities relying on forested areas for their water supplies alongside many smaller cities and rural regions. Forests and trees increase infiltration and reduce...
Cities are especially susceptible to flooding. Urban areas have high amounts of impermeable surfaces, such as sidewalks and roads, which results in more runoff when it rains. Healthy forests near cities can act like sponges, increasing infiltration into soil, storing excess runoff and slowing water down. In other words, they serve as barriers that ...
Each of these impacts can result in negative economic effects: 1. Air quality: The health effects of wildfire-induced air pollution can carry significant medical costs. In the United States alone, the health impacts of wildfire smoke cost $16 billion annually. 2. Water quality: If a watershed that a city depends on is affected by wildfire, the city...
Aug 23, 2023 · For Loretta Mickley, a Harvard wildfire expert, the fires present a dual problem: Not only are they a symptom of climate change — becoming bigger, hotter, and more common in regions where they can affect large population centers — but they also make the crisis worse. By burning vast layers of partially decomposed vegetable matter called peat, fires like those in Canada release even more ...
- Harvardgazette
Jul 25, 2022 · As thousands of firefighters are battling wildfires worldwide, Newsbeat looks at why they happen. ... Live. Audio. Weather. Newsletters. ... So if a fire is going up a mountain it will go very fast."
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Oct 11, 2017 · Fire crews put their efforts to suppress wildfires around the most fire-prone areas, such as communities, municipal watersheds, and sequoia groves. Otherwise they are learning to let some fires ...
