![]() Most of this burn rate increase, as well as 72 percent of the total area burned between 19, resulted from fires in 2020 alone.Ĭredit: Amanda Montañez Sources: “Rocky Mountain Subalpine Forests Now Burning More Than Any Time in Recent Millennia,” by Philip E. 770 and saw the area’s highest temperatures prior to the 21st century. The study found that from 2000 to 2020, the forests burned 22 percent faster than they did during an unusual warming period that started in A.D. To find out how frequently these tough woodlands nonetheless have caught fire through the ages, Higuera and his colleagues combined records from modern satellite-observed fires, fire scars in tree rings from the 1600s onward, and flecks of charcoal that settled in lakes over thousands of years. ![]() The central Rocky Mountains’ subalpine forests grow in cool, wet conditions and burn less readily than their lowland counterparts. “If we’re all wondering what happens when our forests warm up,” he says, “let’s see what happened in the past when they warmed up.” West tinting skies ochre this year and last, residents and researchers alike asked, “How much worse can fire seasons get?” University of Montana fire paleoecologist Philip Higuera has spent his career trying to determine the answer by looking at history. ![]() With smoke from blazing forests in the U.S.
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