Class Project Essay

Zackery Monson
Sever & Hazards Weather

The purpose of this paper is to show the impact of wildfires though analyzing the past
trends of the fires that have occurred and also to predict the future trends of wildfires. There are a
lot of variables that go into wildfires and how they are created. Some of the variables that cause
fires are climate change, the influence of people, and also location. These causes of wildfires
lead to many trends such as larger fires and the fire seasons become longer which cause more
fires within the fire season. Analyzing these trends we can expect there to be more and larger
wildfires in the future. Understanding these causes and these trends will help us understand the
importance of being prepared so that we can prevent the increase of wildfires.
Wildfires are a type of fire that are not controlled and are found in an area with
combustible vegetation that is starts in the wilderness or countryside. Wildfires are vary because
there are many different types. Some are larger and others are smaller depending on their
characteristics. There are many different causes of wildfires which some are the climate and
weather such as thunderstorms, temperatures, and the amount of precipitation can also be the
cause of wildfires. Climate conditions are a fundamental driver of fire spread and fire induced
emissions influence future climate scenario and fire weather. (Fire and The Earth System,
Bowman, 2009). Another cause of wildfires are people or the human factor. People may cause
wildfires through camp fires. If they are in the event of not practicing safe fire extinguishing,
then that allows the opportunity for a wildfire to begin because most likely the campfire has been
left unattended. It is the responsibility of those at a campfire site to properly extinguish the fire
and remain there until it has. Location can also cause wildfires because you will see more fires in
a location like Idaho because of the dry grass areas then a place like Washington that has a lot of
wet vegetation and rain fall.

As we look at past fires like the ones given as examples in the articles provided, we start
to analyze them and see different trends in the fires as the years go on. There are many different
trends that one can see as you start to look at the fires. One of the trends that you can see is that
the fires are starting to burn faster and they are also burning more area of vegetation. A. L
Westerling stated Forest regrowth after extensive logging beginning in the late 19 th century,
combine with an absence of extensive fires, promoted forest structure changes and biomass
accumulation, which now reduces the effectiveness of fire suppression and increase the size of
wildfires and total area burned.(Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest
Wildfire Activity, Westerling, 2006). The increased burned area of the fire can also be caused by
the increase of the many different variables. For example, a rise in temperature change can lead
to an increase in the size of a wildfire. Another trend that you can see is that because of the hotter
temperatures there may be the effect of longer fire seasons. Due to snow melt and also less
precipitation or droughts that cause more fire activity not only because of the warm temperatures
(Large wildfire trends in the western United States, 1984-2011, Dennison, 2014) and also more
time for wildfires to start. Fire releases atmospheric aerosols and charges the surface albedo
black carbon aerosols that have strong solar radiation absorption properties (Fire and The Earth
System, Bowman, 2009). Is a big part of these warm temperatures that cause the fire season to
start earlier. There is also a trend in how many fires there are annually. It has been tested and
shown that in most of the western US the large fires are increase by 0.6 while in the rocky
mountain and Southern plain are increasing 1 large fire per year. (Large wildfire trends in the
western United States, 1984-2011, Dennison, 2014) These increase of large fires can be caused
by less water so droughts which lead to hotter temperatures. There is a basic cycle that is being

created through the fact that having less precipitation will lead to warmer temperatures and then
that will lead to a bigger potential of wildfires.
Wildfires impact people and the earth in many different ways. Well one of the things that
impact people is that when there is wildfires it gives off greenhouse gases such as carbon
monoxide and also carbon dioxide. Daniel Bowman talked about this in his review he stated
Currently, all sources of fire (landscape and biomass) cause CO2 emissions equal to 50% of
those stemming from fossil-fuel combustion. When there is a fire it releases CO2, in addition to
other gases that are released. There has been a big jump in the CO2 between 1997 and 2001 and
this big jump was because of biomass burning which was two-thirds of this increase of CO2
(Fire and The Earth System, Bowman, 2009). CO2 and the other gases that are release from the
fire is one of the reasons for global warming which impacts all of us because we have to deal
with higher temperatures and less water. The gases that are release can also be bad for ones
health. CO2 and Methane can be dangerous for the health of the people that are close to the fire
and also the smoke that is given off also is bad for us. This is because of the fact that the gas is
toxic and damages our lungs permanently. In other ways people are impacted by wildfires is that
hundreds of homes are burned annually by wildfires, and damages to natural resources are
sometimes extreme and irreversible. (Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest
Wildfire Activity, Westerling, 2006). This can cause a big problem for us to lose our homes not
only because of not having a shelter or a safe place to stay but it also hurts anyone to lose all of
your belongings. Fires also have a big impact economically. For the people that lose their houses
to the fire they have to pay to rebuild not only their homes but also all of the belongings that they
lost. In the US alone about 8.8 to 9.3 billion dollars are lost to the result of the wildfires. Also 1
billion dollars are used for health effects of smoke haze. (Fire and The Earth System, Bowman,

2009). Fires also cost money to contain them and to try to send people out there so they can be
controlled. The efforts of firefighting crews also has an impact on the economic cost of a wild
fire. The firefighter have to get payed to do their job and with the increase of fires there will also
be a need for more people that are willing to become firefighters to help control these
uncontrollable fires and help protect people and their property. With more firefighters there is
more money needed to pay them.
With the trends that we have seen and that have been able to analyze we can predict what
is expected to happen in 20 to 30 years from now. As we look at the past we can find trends that
are occurring and will help us plan and predict what was is going to happen in the future.
Starting in the year 900 to the 1700 we can see a trend that there was no big increase or decrease
in wildfire activity it is all consist. This trend lasted until the late 1700s to the early 1800s there
was a rapid increase in fires during the Industrial Revolution. We can assume that the Industrial
Revolution and all of the factories and all of the new transportation such as cars, boats, and trains
that work on burning wood or coal to run had an impact on the earth that cause there to be more
fires. There was an increase found until the 1900 when increased fire suppression such as
firefighters and other people or things helped the number of fires decrease. From the 2000s we
can see that we are having another increase for fire activity. This time the climate is the cause of
this increase for fires. Like it shows in the figure we can predict from the trends that we see and
also the raising temperatures we can see expect that fire activity will increase.

In conclusion, this paper has shown and explained some of the impacts that wildfires
have on us living on earth and also the impact on the earth that which we live. Through longer
hotter fire seasons with less precipitation we can see that the number of wildfires will increase. It
is important to understand this so that we can start to prepare ourselves and others for the chance
of having to deal with a fire that will be in our area. Wildfires can and are very dangerous
because you really cant predict when and where a fire will start but by knowing the trends you
can prepare yourself and your family so that if the time comes that you do have a fire near your
home you know what to do and you are ready to protect your family.

References
NASA_Class_project_image.jpg
B, D. S. (2009, April 24). Fire in the Earth System. Science, 324, 481-483.
Dennison, P. E., S. C. Brewer, J. D. Arnold, and M. A. Moritz (2014), Large wildre trends in the
western

United

States,

19842011, Geophys.

Res.

Lett., 41,

29282933,

doi:10.1002/2014GL059576.
Dennison, P. E., S. C. Brewer, J. D. Arnold, and M. A. Moritz (2014), Large wildre trends in the
western

United

States,

19842011, Geophys.

doi:10.1002/2014GL059576.project
_image.jpg

Res.

Lett., 41,

29282933,