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Are we having more forest fires in the US? [Greg Laden's Blog]
I’m not sure about the NUMBER of fires. That might be hard to count. If five small fires emerge and are put out, there are five fires. If five fires emerge, join into one configuration, and wipe out a handful of mountain villages in the Rockies, that’s one fire. It might be better to look at acreage burned per year.
My friend John Abraham has used the data supplied by National Interagency Fire Center to make a graph of acreage burned per year since 1960. The graph is a 10-year running mean of millions of acres burned in the US.
Here is the graph:
The annual rate of acreage burned in forest fires in the US seems to be increasing, presumably related to global warming.
Looks like a bit of an upswing.
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Fire Photo Credit: T i q s © via Compfight cc
2013-01-30 13:45:54
Source: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/01/30/are-we-having-more-forest-fires-in-the-us/
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