Still, researchers have found that fire severity overall is trending in a more dangerous direction. “Generally speaking I would anticipate it being a mixture of high severity, moderate severity and maybe in some places low severity.” “There are definitely pockets of high severity but not as broad as one would expect,” he said. While the official prognosis is yet to come, Brian Rhodes, the deputy director of fire and aviation management with the US Forest Service, says he is optimistic some areas may have been spared the worst. The Burned Area Emergency Response (Baer), specialized crews with the US Forest Service staffed by engineers, biologists, archeologists and other highly trained experts, are deploying into the cooled parts of the Dixie scar to assess the damage. It’s still unclear what’s been left in the footprint of the Dixiefire. “The result is small, isolated, genetically inbred populations that are often extremely compromised, with less resilience to catastrophic challenges associated with climate change and with little chance of recovery.” “It’s a very nasty feedback loop,” Shaffer said. But without mitigation, some animals may not be able to adapt. Shaffer, who is studying how ecosystems recovered in the Woolsey fire, which burned in Los Angeles and Ventura counties in 2018, says research on the issue is still unfolding.
“It is very hard to move across that super burnt landscape in a short amount of time.” For small animals, like the lizards and amphibians he specializes in, “you have to wait for it to come back”. “What you are creating is analogous to an ocean that has a few little islands on it,” Shaffer said.
Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images Surviving animals, faced with reduced populations after a fire, may resort to inbreeding, ultimately reducing their resilience while the climate becomes less hospitable.įirefighters work to contain the Dixie Fire in California. Scientists are also finding that some landscapes remain permanently changed and trees struggle to grow where they once flourished. These moonscapes can take between five and 10 years to regenerate – far too long for some species to wait. The soil itself changes, and even beneath the ground, tree roots are burned. In these high-severity burns, vegetation on the forest floor is consumed by the flames, and shrubs and stumps are reduced to ash. “If you don’t kill them then when they come back and it’s just a big ash field, there are no plants and therefore no insects. When you get these big intense fires, you mostly kill those animals,” said ecologist Brad Shaffer, the director of the UCLA La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science. “There is the extent of the fire and there is the intensity of the fire. Fires that exhibit erratic behavior and burn with more intensity are more likely to leave behind only patches of living landscape. The size but also the severity of today’s wildfires is a growing concern. But fueled by warmer, drier conditions and an overabundance of parched vegetation, blazes are increasingly burning more ferociously, consuming nearly everything in their path. The American west has evolved alongside fire, which is a natural part of the landscape. Scientists are warning that the severity of today’s wildfires is making the recovery process increasingly challenging, sometimes for years after the flames are put out. A fter more than two months, the battle to contain the Dixie fire – a behemoth blaze that swept nearly 1m acres, leveling mountain towns and blackening the conifer-covered landscape – is nearing its end.īut even after the fire crews pack up, threats remain for the plants and animals that call this area home.