Nation must adapt to greater wildfire risk

Yet global warming's fingerprints – earlier springs, earlier snowmelts, and warmer temperatures – have been appearing in other forested areas, he adds. In a study he and colleagues published in the journal Science in August 2006, the team found a sudden, marked increase in the number and lifetime of fires, as well as a longer fire season in the West generally – especially during the mid-1980s. These trends were particularly noticeable in forests in the northern Rockies at middle elevations. There, the interaction of people with the forest ecosystem – which can have its own powerful effect on fires – is far less pronounced than in other parts of the West.

Indeed, model projections point to similar trends in Canada and Russia's immense reaches of high-latitude forests, according to a research by a team led by Amber Soja, a researcher at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

That global warming might bring a greater fire risk to the already arid Western US might seem obvious. But the big surprise in the future may come farther east, says Ronald Neilson, a bioclimatologist at the US Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland, Ore. It's in the east and southeast where global-warming-related wildfire risks will grow the most dramatically, his research suggests, even though the western US remains the country's wildfire hot spot.

Two out of 5 US homes are on the front lines

Why? As temperatures warm, the growing season will get longer. Woodlands will grow faster – at least for a few decades – fertilized by more atmospheric CO2. But annual precipitation amounts are expected to remain relatively constant.

Today, forests usually dry out just as the trees are going dormant for winter. In the future, however, eastern forests may dry long before the trees have a chance to shut down. Combined with bark beetle infestations (themselves a product of warming temperatures; they have occurred in the southern and western US and recently moved east), an increasing number of eastern woodlands could become prime wildfire fuel.

On a related front, two years ago, a team led by Volker Radeloff, a forest ecologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, pulled together the first national assessment of the collision between development and wild lands. The effort was driven by increased concerns about wildfire risks, Dr. Radeloff says.

The team looked at 2000 census data and found that 44,348,628 homes – nearly 39 percent of all the housing units in the lower 48 states – were built along the wildland-urban interface. In some cases, these were single homes built on large tracts of forest or grassland. In other cases, they represented dense developments that bordered extended wild areas, such as national forests.

Agencies pool efforts to identify 'fire-wise' practices

The results were amazing, Radeloff says. "Because the West has the drought, most of the discussions about the wildland-urban interface focused on those states," he says. "But when we look at absolute numbers, there is much more wildland-urban interface in the East than in the West. That came as a major surprise to us."

Combined with the projected effects of global warming on the eastern forests, this came as potentially troubling news. Little wonder, then, that several federal agencies and national associations have pooled their efforts to support "fire-wise" communities, spreading the word on what works and what doesn't to make homes and communities more resistant to fires.

The solutions, experts says, don't require rocket science. Good approaches are already out there. They just need to be applied more widely and consistently.

Mr. Smalley of the National Fire Prevention Association recalls a recent query he received from the US Government Accountability Office inquiring about new ways to reduce the risk of wildfires.

"They asked: 'What new technology can we look forward to?' I said there is no new technology that will help. It comes down to good building [techniques] and good clearance around each home."

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