A UC Davis study summarizing the 2020 California wildfire year said just over 9,900 wildfires burned 4.3 million acres in 2020. That's twice the previous record but only average compared to burn rates before Euro-American settlement. Fire severity is the far greater concern. wildfires, 2020, fire, fire ecology, Hugh Safford, California wildfires, forestry, fire management, fire severity, pre-Euro-American settlement, what's causing California wildfires
Study Highlights the Role of Forest Fuels Amid a Warming Climate
by Kat Kerlin
January 13, 2021
California’s drought of 2012-2016 killed millions of trees in the Sierra Nevada mostly by way of a bark beetle epidemic leaving a forest canopy full of dry needles. A study published from the University of California, Davis, and the U.S. Forest Service helps answer concerns about what effect dense, dead foliage could have on subsequent wildfires and their burn severity.
In the study, published in the journal Ecological Applications, scientists found that the presence of recently dead trees on the landscape was a driver of wildfire severity for two large fires that occurred toward the end of the drought: the 151,000-acre Rough Fire in 2015 and the 29,300-acre Cedar Fire in 2016.