The West Is Literally On Fire, And The Impacts Could Be Widespread

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   The West Is Literally On Fire, And The Impacts Could Be Widespread

As expected, the 2015 wildfire season has meant more bad news for drought-stricken Western states. As of June 30, 45 wildfires large active wildfires burned from Alaska down to Arizona and as far west as Colorado. Wildfires in Southern California had driven thousands from their homes, while fires in Alaska have burned more than one million acres this year.
Separate from human interference, wildfires are a completely natural occurrence that help a forest ecosystem with regeneration and growth. But decades of fire suppression tactics combined with climate change have provided wildfires with an abundance of dry, dead fuel, leading to more fires and a longer fire season. Fighting wildfires also comes with a large price tag, with an average of $1.13 billion spent on wildfire suppression each year. With climate change, that price could increase to $62.5 billion annually by 2050.
But wildfires impact more than just forests and the economy — they can have far-reaching impacts on public health, water quality, and climate change.
“These cascading impacts are the things that keep me up at night,” Jason Funk, a senior climate scientist for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told ThinkProgress. “We haven’t been looking at them so much.”
Fires Can Cause Choking Pollution That Rivals Beijing
Wildfires come with smoke — and as residential developments continue to blur the boundaries between forest and urban, communities are increasingly facing health risks associated with smoke pollution.
“In the West, we have a lot of development and people living in the wildland-urban interface, and they’re in a position to be exposed to smoke and wildfire risk when it happens,” Funk said. “It’s rather difficult to predict where these smoke plumes are going to end up.”
These cascading impacts are the things that keep me up at night
In 2013, Climate Central looked at air pollution related to 11 of the largest Western fires from the past 12 years, and found that in nine cases, the worst air pollution day of the year in a nearby urban area was caused by a wildfire. Fires that burned within 50 to 100 miles of a city often resulted in air quality five to 15 times worse than normal. And, on at least two different occasions, wildfires burning in Southern California caused air quality in cities like Los Angeles and San Diego to resemble that of Beijing.
The biggest threat from wildfire smoke comes from the fine particles present in the smoke, which can enter into the lungs through the eyes, mouth, and nose, or aggravate preexisting health conditions like lung or heart disease. In 2007, during a period of sustained wildfires near San Diego, six area hospitals saw a 25 percent increase in respiratory syndrome diagnosis, and a 50 percent increase in asthma diagnoses.
As climate change accelerates snowpack loss across the West and drives up temperatures, wildfire seasons are expected to increase in length, with wildfires becoming more numerous and potentially more intense. That means more days of the year where communities could be exposed to lowered air quality due to wildfire smoke.
Eroding Soil Can Pollute Already Depleted Water Sources
As fires burn through forests, surface vegetation — trees, bushes, even leaf coverings — also burn, exposing soil to erosion. Soil erosion makes it easier for sediment and pollutants to make their way into water sources, diminishing water quality for fish and humans alike.
“It’s easier for water to runoff of a burned area than a forest area, because forests act as sponges,” Sheila Murphy, a research hydrologist with the National Research Program at the U.S. Geological Survey, told ThinkProgress. “Immediately after a fire, there’s an impermeable layer [of soil], and there’s no vegetation or trees to slow [runoff] down.”
According to the University of Wyoming, the annual volume of runoff in the year after a fire can be as much as 30 percent more than the year before, and impacts of soil erosion from wildfires can be seen as far as 100 miles from the actual site of the burn. High-intensity fires tend to impact soil erosion more than low-intensity fires, because they destroy greater amounts of surface cover…..More Here