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After analyzing two decades' worth of U.S. government agency wildfire records spanning 1992-2012, the researchers found that human-ignited wildfires accounted for 84 percent of all wildfires, tripling the length of the average fire season and accounting for nearly half of the total acreage burned.
The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"There cannot be a fire without a spark," said Jennifer Balch, Director of CU Boulder's Earth Lab and an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and lead author of the new study. "Our results highlight the importance of considering where the ignitions that start wildfires come from, instead of focusing only on the fuel that carries fire or the weather that helps it spread. Thanks to people, the wildfire season is almost year-round."
The U.S. has experienced some of its largest wildfires on record over the past decade, especially in the western half of the country. The duration and intensity of future wildfire seasons is a point of national concern given the potentially severe impact on agriculture, ecosystems, recreation and other economic sectors, as well as the high cost of extinguishing blazes.
-- submitted from IRC
Jennifer K. Balch, Bethany A. Bradley, John T. Abatzoglou, R. Chelsea Nagy, Emily J. Fusco, Adam L. Mahood. Human-started wildfires expand the fire niche across the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017; 201617394 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1617394114
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 01 2017, @03:19PM (3 children)
Or maybe I should elaborate, "drunken idiots".
We spent whole summers in the woods and always checked that our camp fire was out, stirring/watering the ashes. And this was when we were kids, well before we were "responsible adults".
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 01 2017, @03:36PM
Well I would have pissed on the fire again, but needed to drink some more first. We were all out of beer, so I just left to find some more. It seemed like a good idea at the time...
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Wednesday March 01 2017, @04:22PM (1 child)
In the UK most forest fires are started deliberately by kids for a laugh. That does not seem to have been metioned here. Seems that all the banging on about ecology that we all get these days hasn't made the slightest dent on a certtain percentage of the population. So much for worrying about recycling your iPad packaging.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Wednesday March 01 2017, @08:09PM
At last that's the UK, trees do grow.
A former coworker in SoCal told me shooting bottle rockets (small fireworks) with high-school friends started a fire over 20 years ago. Then he pointed out the line on the hill where the fire stopped: Real trees on the unburnt side, short brush on the other. 20 years passed, and it hasn't recovered. May never do.