While 4 million acres burned in California seems staggering, studies show it's on par with the state's natural life cycle over millennia — influenced by Native American tribes who used fire proactively to shape the landscape.
Ernesto Alvarado, University of Washington
Public authorities could also report on a broader human impact: the number of people experiencing harmful air due to smoke. While detailed maps are available with smoke concentrations, showing the air quality index, there are few measures of the scale of that public health impact. Poor air quality due to smoke is linked to a rise in emergency room visits due to asthma, stroke and heart attacks.
"The thing that's absolutely striking to me this fire season is how quickly some of these fires are spreading," Hurteau says."When we have significant impacts to society, it has a lot to do with how quickly the fire is spreading, because that affects how much firefighters can do." "If you don't allow fire to burn in those places regularly," Kolden says,"you get a build up of too many trees, too much shrubs in the understory and that is what we have seen is driving a lot of these really large fires."
Kolden says creating a scorecard for these benefits could help the public see the importance of fire, even if the air is smoky. Hotter air pulls moisture out of plants and vegetation, making them more flammable. Drier soils, in turn, make the air itself hotter. Normally, temperatures fall at night, humidity rises and fire activity declines, giving firefighters a break. Now, nighttime temperatures are warming, too.
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