Forest Journalism for a Sustainable Future
Earth is a flammable planet. It’s been that way for 320 million years, since vegetation first took hold on the land.
“So fire is this natural phenomenon,” said Phil Higuera. “But when it interacts with humans, it is truly a disaster.”
Thus the eight experts on everything from insurance to incident command who gathered Tuesday night in Missoula to reflect on the 2017 wildfire season – and on how, after 320 million years, humans can learn to live with fire. [Read more…]
A diverse panel of nine professionals whose work involves wildfires and land management headline a Tuesday, Oct. 24 examination of this year’s wildfire season.
Sponsored by Treesource, the free public event will be held at the University of Montana’s University Center Theater. A pre-event reception is set for 6:30 p.m., with the panelists’ presentations beginning at 7 p.m.
The event will be streamed live via Treesource’s Facebook page for those who cannot attend in person. A video of the entire event also will be posted on the Treesource YouTube channel. [Read more…]
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It happened because Seeley Lake, where the growing tourist trade has superseded Pyramid Mountain Lumber Co. as the primary driver of the economy, had turned into a hellscape.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…]
Are the 2017 wildfire season and its long, miserable, smoke-choked days the new normal?
University of Montana journalism professor Joe Eaton recently sat down with UM fire ecology professor Philip Higuera to explore the reasons why the West is burning up this summer.
The resulting Q&A, published Sept. 11 by City Lab, is a thoughtful look at the role of global warming, shorter-term climate events, and longtime forest and fire management policies on the severity of a wildfire season, this one being the case in point. [Read more…]
Naturally burning timber and brush launch what is called fine particulate into the air at a rate three times as high as levels noted in emissions inventories at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to a new study. The microscopic specks that form aerosols are a hazard to human health, particularly to the lungs and heart.
“Burning biomass produces lots of pollution. These are really bad aerosols to breathe from a health point of view,” said researcher Greg Huey from the Georgia Institute of Technology, which led the study. The research also describes other chemicals in wildfire smoke, some never before measured, and it raises the estimated annual emission of particulate matter in the western United States significantly. [Read more…]