Think About The Earth

Global Warning Sends Forests Ablaze (2 of 2) August 13, 2009

Study co-author Anthony Westerling of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego in the US said, “At higher elevations, what really drives the fire season is the temperature.  When you have a warm spring and easily summer, you get earlier snowmelt.  With the snowmelt coming out a month earlier, areas then get direr earlier overall, and there is a longer season in which a fire can be started—there’s more opportunity for ignition.”

Changing Function of Forests

Scientists believe that the increased frequency of forest fires will eventually reduce the density of trees and change entire forest landscapes.

The forests in western United States traditionally function as storage sinks or absorbers by taking in as much as 20 percent to 40 percent of the country’s total carbon output.  But with the occurrence of more and more wildfires, these same forests are being transformed into potential sources of atmospheric carbon dioxide as they burn up.

Thomas Swenam, director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in the US said that while lot of people think that the full effects of global warming are 50 to 100 year away, the fact is that the alarming consequences of global warming are already being observed today.

“It’s happening now in forest ecosystems through fire.” Said Swetnam.

Sources:

►Charles Q. Choi.  Increasing Forest Fires Pump Mercury into the Air,

►www.livescience.com/environment/060821_fires_mercury.html

►Sara Goudarzi, Global Warming Fuels U.S Forest Fires.  www.livescience.com/environment/060706_global warming_fire.html

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