Wild Fire

Fire Ecologists: Climate Change Will Hinder Wildland Fire Managment

By Courtney Lowery, 8-29-06

Global warming will cause wildfires to burn bigger, faster and hotter in the future, making fire management more costly and more difficult, say fire ecologists.

In a five-page declaration released today, the Association for Fire Ecology warns that humans' ability to manage fire and use prescribed fire may soon be limited by climate change conditions. The declaration, called the "San Diego Declaration on Climate Change and Fire Ecology" will be submitted at the Third International Fire Ecology and Management Congress scheduled for November in San Diego.

"Currently, we are observing wildland fire conditions previously considered rare, such as extreme wildfire events (e.g. high heat release and severe impact to ecosystems), lengthened wildfire seasons, and large-scale wildfires in fire-sensitive ecosystems (e.g. tropical rain forests and arid deserts)," the declaration reads. "Research indicates that climate change has, in part, caused these trends. Therefore, we are deeply concerned that wildfire conditions will only become exacerbated by further climate change."

The declaration (read here as a PDF) says climate change may lead to more extreme fires, which can disrupt the natural processes of fire within ecosystems and as these events become more frequent, habitats will be converted or all together eliminated, plant and animals will be at greater risk of extinction and finally, "extreme wildfire events and a lengthened fire season would greatly increase the risk to human lives and infrastructures, particularly within the wildland urban interface."

"We're going to see more fire, not less," the association's president Robin Wills said in a release, "and these increases in wildfire occurrence and severity are going to be part of our new reality. We, as a society, must be prepared to cope with these changes."

The declaration sets out a list of actions to help mitigate the situation, including increased allocation for fire management resources, more monitoring in fire-influenced landscapes and better fuel management (i.e. use of fire in fire-dependent ecosystems to restore historic fire regimes and reduce fuel loads.)

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