The area affected by forest fires in Europe could almost triple by the end of the century
A team of researchers in Germany has analyzed various factors to estimate the potential annual forest area burned in Europe by the end of the century. According to their findings, in a low-emissions scenario, the area burned would increase by 39%, while it could almost triple in a high-emissions scenario. However, improvements in fire management have the potential to significantly limit these projections. The authors, who published their work in the journal Global Change Biology, point out that “while reducing emissions is essential to lessening the impact of fires, the results also show that improvements in prevention, early detection, and firefighting play a key role in helping to reduce the extent of the affected area."
Wikimedia Commons
Resco - Incendios Global Change
Víctor Resco de Dios
Lecturer of Forestry Engineering and Global Change, University of Lleida and researcher at Agrotecnio
The fire season is often accompanied by an unproductive exercise in assigning blame and searching for scapegoats. This fire season, for example, we have seen discussions about the effect of climate change or land management. The problem of forest fires would not be worsening if we were heading towards an ice age (instead of global warming), and it would have been largely mitigated if our landscapes were those of a century ago, with a much smaller forest area. Fires, therefore, result from the interaction between climate and fuel management (the vegetation that burns in a fire).
This study reinforces the idea that reducing the problem of fires to a purely climate-related issue is as absurd as ignoring the reality of forests. That is, the study shows how the problem of fires will worsen significantly in a climate change scenario if we do not take adaptation measures, and also that much of the problem (though not all) can be mitigated with fuel management. In other words, the study reminds us that we must move beyond scapegoating and focus on adapting to climate and global change.
Billin et al.
- Research article
- Peer reviewed
- Modelling
