Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Sierra and the West in wildfire 'bulls-eye'

Reno Gazette Journal: The Sierra and other parts of the West are in a "bull's-eye" of danger from larger and more frequent wildfires that become a partial cause of climate change, a new study says. The conclusions of more than 20 international scientists studying fire and the environment were published recently in the journal Science.

"Extraordinary" fires are "occurring like a rash all over the planet," David Bowman, a forestry and wildfire expert from University of Tasmania, said in a teleconference about the research. Fires of unprecedented ferocity swept across parts of Australia last February, killing some 200 people. Similar fire activity can be expected there and elsewhere across the globe as the climate warms, including in the Sierra, where a 2007 blaze at Lake Tahoe destroyed 254 homes, scientists said.

Last week, South Carolina's biggest wildfire in more than three decades -- 4 miles wide -- destroyed dozens of homes and threat-ened some of the Myrtle Beach-area's golf courses. "We are witnessing an increasing amount of so-called megafires," Thomas Swetnam, an expert on fire history and forest ecology from the University of Arizona, said. "Unfortunately, I think we are going to see more large fires in the western United States. The western United States is in a bull's-eye."…

S-64 dropping water on the Ahorn Fire, Montana, September 2007

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