[Vision2020] Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity

[Ted Moffett]

All-

Given what is happening in California...
---------------
THOMAS W. SWETNAM

tswetnam at ltrr.arizona.edu<http://by106fd.bay106.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/compose?curmbox=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001&a=a7e5a3abeb5b6a0625bb45e354a7149a4d29389e8c475ac18c842e0a4e26013b&mailto=1&to=tswetnam@ltrr.arizona.edu&msg=E055B94D-A1F0-4006-B829-4C899F630C1E&start=0&len=6834&src=&type=x>

http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/~tswetnam<javascript:ol('http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/~tswetnam');>


   Co-author of the piece "Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S.
Forest Wildfire Activity" in Science magazine, Swetnam is director of the
Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research and Dendrochronology at the University of
Arizona. He said today: "Increasing numbers of large forest fires and total
area burned in the western United States are significantly correlated with
warming and drying trends. ... There is a clear upward trend in the area
burned and numbers of large forest fires in the western U.S., especially
since the mid-1980s."
   This Sunday, Swetnam was interviewed on "60 Minutes," where he said: "As
the spring is arriving earlier because of warming conditions, the snow on
these high mountain areas is melting and running off. So the logs and the
branches and the tree needles all can dry out more quickly and have a longer
time period to be dry. And so there's a longer time period and opportunity
for fires to start. ... We're dealing with a period of climate, in terms of
temperature and humidity and drought, that's different than anything people
have seen in our lifetimes."

Swetnam's piece in Science is at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/18/60minutes/main3380176.shtml<javascript:ol('http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/18/60minutes/main3380176.shtml');>
"60 Minutes" "The Age Of Mega-Fires" segment from Sunday is available on
video:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/18/60minutes/main3380176.shtml

and transcript:

http://heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?ID=6671&Method=Full

-----------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20071023/51be0d6e/attachment.html