Mountain fires burning higher at unprecedented rates

Forest fires have crept higher up mountains over the past few decades, scorching areas previously too wet to burn, according to researchers from McGill University. As wildfires advance uphill, a staggering 11% of all Western U.S. forests are now at risk. "Climate change and drought conditions in the West are drying out high-elevation forests, making them particularly susceptible to blazes," says lead author Mohammad Reza Alizadeha , a PhD candidate at McGill University under the supervision of Professor Jan Adamowski. "This creates new dangers for mountain communities, with impacts on downstream water supplies and the plants and wildlife that call these forests home." Climate warming has diminished 'flammability barrier'. In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the researchers analyzed records of fires larger than 405 hectares in the mountainous regions of the contiguous Western U.S. between 1984 and 2017. Their results show that climate warming has diminished the 'high-elevation flammability barrier' - the point where forests historically were too wet to burn regularly because of the lingering presence of snow. The researchers found that fires advanced about 252 meters uphill in the Western mountains over those three decades.