Wildfires in California, exacerbated by human-driven climate change, are getting more severe. To better manage them, there's a growing need to know exactly what fuels the blazes after they ignite. Scientists now report that one of the chief fuels of wildfires in California's Sierra Nevada mountains is the decades-old remains of large trees.
Wildfires in California, exacerbated by human-driven climate change, are getting more severe. To better manage them, there's a growing need to know exactly what fuels the blazes after they ignite. In a study published in, Earth system scientists at the University of California, Irvine report that one of the chief fuels of wildfires in California's Sierra Nevada mountains is the decades-old remains of large trees.
Researchers have known for decades that an increasing number of trees and an increasing abundance of dead plant matter on forest floors are the things making California wildfires more severe -- but until now it was unclear what kinds of plant debris contribute most to a fire. The KNP Complex Fire burned almost 90,000 acres in California's Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. In the fire's smoke, the team took samples of particulate matter-laden air and analyzed the samples for their radiocarbon content at UCI's W.M. Keck Accelerator Mass Spectrometer facility with co-author and UCI Earth system science professor Claudia Czimczik.
"What we did was pretty distinctive, as we were able to identify fuel sources by measuring the wildfire smoke," said Czimczik."Our approach provides what we think of as an integrated picture of the fire because we're sampling smoke produced over the course of the fire that has been transported downwind."
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Scientists reveal what fuels wildfires in Sierra Nevada MountainsWildfires in California, exacerbated by human-driven climate change, are getting more severe. To better manage them, there's a growing need to know exactly what fuels the blazes after they ignite. In a study published in Environmental Research Letters, Earth system scientists at the University of California, Irvine report that one of the chief fuels of wildfires in California's Sierra Nevada mountains is the decades-old remains of large trees.
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