In a warmer world, the\neconomic costs associated with wildfires are increasing, writes the team of\nauthors led by Matthew Hurteau of the University of New Mexico and including George Koch<\/strong> (NAU), Malcolm North (U.S.\nForest Service) and Bruce Hungate<\/strong> (NAU)\u2014the\nU.S. federal government has spent more than $7 billion on fire suppression\nefforts in the three warmest years on record. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But the costs to the climate\nare rising, too: in the last two decades, wildfires in temperate North America\nreleased 167 teragrams of carbon into the atmosphere. The authors call for\ngovernments to better factor in those climate, economic and social costs when valuing\ncarbon in fire suppression and management decisions. They reviewed forest\nmanagement policies used by governments including the United States, Australia,\nand California and then used publicly available fire data in the LANDFIRE\ndatabase to evaluate wildfire risk throughout the U.S. and the carbon stores in\nthe forests they threaten. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Taking the risk of fire into account is so\nimportant when considering the carbon costs and benefits of forest management,\u201d\nKoch said. \u201cManagement activities like thinning and low-intensity, prescribed\nfire release carbon to the atmosphere. But without these activities many dry\nwestern forests are more prone to severe fires that emit much more carbon. In such\nforests, paying upfront carbon costs can actually help reduce the impacts of\nfire carbon on climate change.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe data and research on wildfire and forest\nmanagement goes back to the \u201870s and \u201880s, and we\u2019ve known that humans have\nbeen changing the climate for decades,\u201d Hurteau said. \u201cWe could have done\nsomething a lot sooner. As humans, we’re really good at dealing with acute\nproblems and not real good with the chronic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n “How a forest ecosystem\nstores carbon, and how at-risk that carbon\nis, really depends on where you are in the world,\u201d Hungate added. \u201cThat makes pricing carbon complicated. But\nwe’ve done it for other natural hazards, like floods and earthquakes, and we\nought to get it right in forest management, too\u2014especially since\nforests represent such a giant piece of the global carbon\npuzzle.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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