William Deverell, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and Elizabeth A. Logan, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
The US has learned that it cannot suppress its way to a healthy relationship with fire in the West. That strategy failed, even before climate change proved it to be no strategy at all.
Heat and dryness are leaving high mountain areas more vulnerable to forest fires.
David McNew/Getty Images
Every year, the number of wildfires caused by humans spikes on Independence Day. There are safer ways to celebrate amid the heat and drought.
Snow melts near the Continental Divide in the Bridger Wilderness Area in Wyoming, part of the Greater Yellowstone Area.
Bryan Shuman/University of Wyoming
The area’s iconic national parks are home to grizzlies, elk and mountain snowfall that feeds some of the country’s most important rivers. A new report show the changes underway as temperatures rise.
Colorado’s East Troublesome Fire jumped the Continental Divide on Oct. 22, 2020, and eventually became Colorado’s second-largest fire on record.
Lauren Dauphin/NASA Earth Observatory
Scientists studied charcoal layers in the sediment of lake beds across the Rockies to track fires over time. They found increasing fire activity as the climate warmed.
Heat and dryness are leaving high mountain areas more vulnerable to forest fires.
David McNew/Getty Images
Pikas – small cousins of rabbits – live mainly in the mountainous US west. They’ve been called a climate change poster species, but they’re more adaptable than many people think.
Australia’s dingo fences, built to protect livestock from wild dogs, stretch for thousands of kilometers.
Marian Deschain/Wikimedia
Millions of miles of fences crisscross the Earth’s surface. They divide ecosystems and affect wild species in ways that often are harmful, but are virtually unstudied.
Flames approach houses during the Blue Ridge Fire on Oct. 27, 2020 in Chino Hills, California.
David McNew/Getty Images
For the first time in the US, a ballot measure will ask voters whether to restore wolves to a place where they’ve been eradicated. Coloradans have strong views on both sides.
A mixed-conifer forest in the central Sierra Nevada after restoration, with unthinned forest in the background.
Roger Bales
Restoring western forests – thinning out small trees and dead wood – is an important strategy for reducing the risk of massive wildfires. But these projects aren’t fast, easy or cheap.
An airtanker drops retardant to help stop the spread of the 2015 Eyrie Fire in the foothills of Boise, Idaho, which was ignited by sparks from construction equipment.
Austin Catlin, BLM/Flickr
Wildfires aren’t always wild. Many of the most expensive and damaging fires happen in suburban areas, and nearly all blazes in these zones are started by humans.
The Riverside Fire, viewed from La Dee Flats in the Mount Hood National Forest in Oregon on Sept. 9.
USFS
Do public lands in the West belong to Westerners, or all Americans? Moving a federal agency’s headquarters from Washington, DC to Colorado is the latest skirmish in a longtime struggle.
A valuable resource: Snowpack on Oregon’s Mt. Hood.
USDA NRCS/Spencer Miller
New research forecasts that climate change will make multiyear stretches with low snow levels more common across western North America – bad news for water managers, farmers, foresters and skiers.
The white “bathtub ring” around Arizona’s Lake Mead (shown on May 31, 2018), which indicates falling water levels, is about 140 feet high.
AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
Western states adopted a 7-year plan in May 2019 to manage low water levels in the Colorado River. Now they need to look farther ahead and accept that there will be less water far into the future.
Dawn on the south rim of the Grand Canyon.
Murray Foubister/Wikimedia
The Grand Canyon, which marks 100 years as a national park on Feb. 26, 2019, is known today as an iconic natural wonder. But early European visitors weren’t impressed.
Samual A. Graham Dean, and William B. Stapp Collegiate Professor of Environmental Education, School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan