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Forest Journalism for a Sustainable Future

Climate change in the West: Preparing for a future that is here

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The Rice Ridge fire near Seeley Lake, Montana, produced in-town particulate-pollution readings higher than any ever recorded in Missoula County. Photo: U.S. Forest Service.

The vacation cabins that ring Seeley Lake emptied long before Labor Day this year. The tourists who come to swim, fish, and boat on the lake where Norman Maclean spent his summers had taken their fun and their recreation dollars elsewhere. Even many of the town’s full-time residents cleared out — as the Missoula City-County Health Department urgently recommended.

It happened because Seeley Lake, where the growing tourist trade has superseded Pyramid Mountain Lumber Co. as the primary driver of the economy, had turned into a hellscape. Smoke from the nearby Rice Ridge fire rolled down the surrounding hillsides with each night’s cooling air and filled the valley with so many pollutants that the county’s air-quality monitor was often pushed beyond its limits. Visibility shrank to less than a quarter mile, and streetlights along the main drag came on during cloudless days. [Read more…]

Wildfires, the smoking gun of Western climate change?

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The Rice Ridge fire near Seeley Lake, Montana, burned more than 160,000 acres this summer, forcing weeks of evacuation alerts and the worst air quality ever recorded in the mountain town. Photo: inciweb

As cooler temperatures and precipitation finally bring a hint of relief to smoke-weary Montanans, the unusual nature of summer 2017 is coming into focus and the influence of climate change is impossible to ignore.

Extreme weather has no doubt been the dominant story throughout the country this summer as hurricanes and tropical storms have ravaged the southeastern United States and wildfires have wreaked havoc in the West. A simple Google search will yield hundreds of stories about the impacts of these events, but very few mention climate change as a contributing factor. And that’s unfortunate.

Collectively, we have over 65 years of experience studying western climate and forest systems, and we are among the authors of the forthcoming Montana Climate Assessment (MCA), a report that focuses on climate trends and their consequences for three of Montana’s vital sectors: water, forests, and agriculture. The Assessment sheds some light on common questions about climate change and its effects on things like drought and wildfires. [Read more…]

Tufts University professor calls for expansion of U.S. forests to combat climate change

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The Earth’s forests can be a storehouse for carbon, but deforestation has the opposite effect. Photo: Shirley Atkins

Forests have been removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing carbon for more than 300 million years. When we cut down or burn trees and disturb forest soils, we release that stored carbon to the atmosphere. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, one-third of all carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere from human activities have come from deforestation.

To slow climate change, we need to rapidly reduce global emissions from fossil fuels, biofuels, deforestation, and wetland and agricultural soils. We need to also accelerate the removal of carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere.

In a new report published by the nonprofit Dogwood Alliance, my co-author Danna Smith and I show that we have a major opportunity to make progress on climate change by restoring degraded U.S. forests and soils. If we reduce logging and unsustainable uses of wood, we can increase the rate at which our forests remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and ensure that it will remain stored in healthy forests. [Read more…]