Faraway Fires Strain Forest Management Resources in the East
"If you want to understand what's happening to the trees and the forest and the fish and wildlife that inhabit it, you have to understand fire," says Eastern Threat Center Director Danny Lee. His insight appears in an Asheville Citizen-Times article describing the complexities of managing wildland fire during times of unprecedented fire seasons in the West, increasing numbers of homes located near forests, and skyrocketing fire management costs with far-reaching impacts on local forest management resources. "To the extent that we anticipate hotter, drier conditions in the summer season, then for at least the immediate future we are going to be dealing with larger and perhaps more extreme fires," says Lee. But, he adds, "There's a feedback mechanism in that the more fire you have, the more it becomes self-limiting. That is, the same acres can't burn every year, so the fires themselves are going to create fire breaks on the landscape." Read the article...
