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Papers
- Biochar Solution for Forests (Biochar-US.org)
"Forest fires burn an average of 1.5 billion tons of fuel per year in the U.S. alone, emitting almost 5 metric tons of greenhouse gases per acre! To reduce the intensity and spread of these fires, the U.S. Forest Service conducts fuel reduction projects on over a million acres of public lands per year, removing over 100 million tons of biomass." 06-2019
- Forest Fires and Thinning (EastOregonian.com)
"So-called 'megafires' are burning bigger and hotter than before, according to researchers, due to changes in both the climate and landscape." 10-17
- Intense Forest Wildfires Can Power More Climate Change (Washington Post)
"According to one 2010 study, between the years 1997 and 2009, half a billion metric tons worth of net carbon per year came from global fires (these were emissions that, the study said, 'may not be balanced by regrowth following fire')."
"There is, at least, one partial bit of good news here. Forest managers are not powerless in the face of stronger wildfires — there are things they can do to partly curb intense fires and, thus, their carbon emissions. It is generally considered, for instance, that many years of ill-advised 'fire suppression' tactics have actually worsened the U.S. wildfire situation, by contributing even more to the volume of fuels that can combust in forests." 05-15
- Preventing Megafires and Improving Forest Health (ProPublica.org)
"This is a story about frustration, about watching the West burn when you fully understand why it’s burning — and understand why it did not need to be this bad."
"We live with a deathly backlog. In February 2020, Nature Sustainability published this terrifying conclusion: California would need to burn 20 million acres - an area about the size of Maine - to restabilize in terms of fire."
"The week before this past round of fires saw the hottest temperatures ever recorded in California, the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded on earth: 130 degrees, more than half the boiling point of water, and just 10 degrees below what scientist consider to be the absolute upper limit of what the human body can endure for 10 minutes in humidity." 08-20
- Sources of CO2 in the Air (Wikipedia.org)
"Most sources of CO2 emissions are natural, and are balanced to various degrees by natural CO2 sinks. For example, the natural decay of organic material in forests and grasslands and the action of forest fires results in the release of about 439 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide every year, while new growth entirely counteracts this effect, absorbing 450 gigatonnes per year.[12] Although the initial carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of the young Earth was produced by volcanic activity, modern volcanic activity releases only 130 to 230 megatonnes of carbon dioxide each year,[13] which is less than 1% of the amount released by human activities (at approximately 29,000 megatonnes).[14]"
"This addition, about 3% of annual natural emissions as of 1997, is sufficient to exceed the balancing effect of sinks.[24] As a result, carbon dioxide has gradually accumulated in the atmosphere, and as of 2009, its concentration is 39% above pre-industrial levels.[3]" 01-13
- Wildfires and Carbon Release (Washinton Post)
"But a study released last month by researchers from the National Park Service, the University of California, Berkeley, and several other institutions suggests that’s not a safe assumption. From 2001 to 2010, it found, the state had seen 'a carbon stock decrease occurring largely in areas burned by wildfire.' And that helped drive the state’s ecosystems to contribute “as much as five to seven percent of state carbon emissions,” having lost some 69 million metric tons of carbon over the time period. 02-16
- Wildfires and Forest Health (Google.com)
"A century of fire suppression followed by the worst drought in recorded history has put California’s forest landscapes and water supply at risk. A study led by Van Butsic of U.C.Berkeley proposes a new way to manage forests." 10-17
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