Fire suppression biases fires to be more extreme
/Decades of fire suppression have increased fuel loads and fire severity, leading to the “fire suppression paradox”—by suppressing fires we make fires harder to put out in the future. However, in this study, the authors show a separate impact of fire suppression that may cause even greater increases in average fire severity than climate change or fuel accumulation.
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Kreider, M.R., P.E. Higuera, S.A. Parks, W.L. Rice, N. White, A. J. Larson. 2024. “Fire Suppression Makes Wildfires More Severe and Accentuates Impacts of Climate Change and Fuel Accumulation.” Nature Communications 15 (1): 2412. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-46702-0.
