California Weather whiplash There was a problem Dating centuries, or more. Fire is natural and necessary part of California’s various ecosystemsBut the so -called ”Expanding bull“From urban areas spreading into main wildlife zones have complicated things.
Before people arrived in Southern California, Safford estimates, the average watershed may take 30 to 90 years without a wilderness. With the addition of 20 million people and climate change, “Some places in Socal are burning every second to 10 years now.”
At this rhythm, wooden shrubs cannot regrill enough after fire, and the growing frequency of fire pushes the region into a crossing of Chaparral and Oak forests to a meadow And, in some cases, naked soil. When ecosystems lose their leaf cover and deep roots, facilitate the soils to slide down.
It has been getting worse lately. These days Southern California oscillates between wet and dry regimes almost as fast as Beyoncé’s latest tour is exhausted. Over the past few months, Southern California quickly plunged into severe drought Immediately after two of its wettest years on a record. This prompted extensive vegetable growth and then quickly dried it: a perfect recipe for a warm, destructive, uncontrollable fire – and rubbish flows to follow.
“The risk of damaging post-fire debris is increasing as climate change, as we see stronger storms, among more intense dry times, this can lead to instability in previously burned areas,” says Faith Kearns, a wild expert at Arizona State University. “At the same time, wild fires themselves also burn more intensely, leaving grounds of fire, which can push water and little vegetation to hold slopes intact.”
Combined, Palisades and Eaton of January of January killed 29 people, destroyed more than 16,000 homes and produced an economic impact About 10 times greater than any previous wild disaster in California history. The Eaton Fire, near Pasadena, and the Palisades Fire, near Malibu, Now rank As the second and third most destructive wildlife in California history, after 2018 Camp Fire This destroyed the city of Paradise.
Fire regimes Changes worldwideand when you take into account the degeneration of forest health and more intense heavy rains, This leads to a much greater frequency of post-fire waste in areas where they have occurred in the past. In fact, A recent study showed that “by the end of the 21st century, post-fire rubbish flow activity is estimated to increase in 68 percent of areas in which they occurred in the past and decrease in just 2 percent of locations.”
The main driver here, according to Luke McGuire, a geos scientist at the University of Arizona and the main author of this study, is not so that heavy rainfall is weighing more and more – there is no need for much rain to start a flow of waste – but that the fires are getting worse. .
“If climate changes lead to greater probability of moderate to high severity fire,” says McGuire, “then that would increase the potential for post-fire waste more often creating the conditions that feed them.”
And in California, fires have undoubtedly become more intense in recent years.
Thirteen of the 20 largest fires in California over the past century have taken place In only the past seven years. These seven years include three of the driest and two of the wetter years in state history.
Data shows that this problem is not limited to California. “Fire -activity is projected to increase through many portions of the western United States,” says McGuire, “which could cause increases in the probability of damaging rubbish.”
As the planet continues to change into a warmer, more drought version of itself, hills will grow more and more crumbling into valleys below where any fires occur. It is an inevitable consequence of the speed with which geological scale changes now occur on human timelines.
