This episode explores the increase in wildfires in recent years and decades, how fires start and proliferate, and what we may be able to do to reduce them.

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Apocalyptic orange skies over parts of California serve as a stark reminder of climate change causing increased wildfire activity. Wildfires have been getting worse in the last three decades, and even more so in the last five years.

In less than a month, the August Complex fire became California's largest wildfire ever recorded, burning over 875,000 acres. The third and fourth largest fires ever recorded also started at about the same time. That's three of the four largest fires ever, all in one month. Why have these fires been getting worse and what can we do about them?

Fires need a combination of three essential ingredients: oxygen, fuel, and heat. Oxygen is the obvious one, and can be further added by winds. Fuel comes mostly in the form of dead and living vegetation, and anything else that can burn. Dry brush and leaves are a prime wildfire fuel source. Heat can come from natural sources such as lightning or the sun, or from human sources, such as campfires, power lines, fireworks, arson, or even a cigarette. Hotter weather provides more of the third ingredient, heat, and produces less rain, creating more dry fuel to burn. Therefore, mitigating climate change is essential to combating wildfires.

In 1910, after the massive Big Burn fire, the U.S. governments began actively combating forest fires, eventually fighting around 95% of all wildfires that arose. As a result, forests became overgrown and dense, storing more fuel for fires to grow much larger, and faster. Essentially, some became ticking time bombs, just waiting for a spark. We're slowly reintroducing controlled-burn policies that mimic nature's fires, but more needs to be done.

Not only do prescribed fires carefully burn the overgrown vegetation; they also rid forests of diseased trees and damaging insects, and increase diversity. Grazing animals can also help reduce overgrown vegetation and underbrush. Goats are particularly good at this. They can graze on steep or difficult terrain that is hard for humans to manage. And they eat nearly everything!

New technologies may be able to help as well. Advanced tools let us study fires, revealing new information about how they behave and move. Lidar, or Light Detection and Ranging, uses lasers to record points in space, creating three dimensional imaging. It has recently been used to analyze and study plumes from large fires. Computer simulations can use this data to reveal more about a fire's internal conditions and how it creates its own weather, which in turn may help to better predict how fires spread.

We have long known that winds have a significant effect on fires and their movement. Recent studies show that severe fires can create their own wind. These winds compound a fire's strength and make its behavior harder to predict.

Scientists are also combining drone imaging with NASA satellite data, hoping to correlate them to one day quickly and easily survey the state and health of a forest from above. Already, an AI system called Firemap is helping to predict the path of wildfires in real time, using weather data and satellite imaging of terrain, vegetation and human development to model the movement of an active fire.

Through education, combating climate change, land management, and new technologies, we hope to be able reduce deadly wildfires in the future. Please visit the links in this video to learn how you can help right away!

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#wildfire #firefighting #climatechange #globalwarming #forests #fires #smoke #satellites #drones #goats

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