Study Reveals Western Forest Wildfires At Similar Or Slower Rate Than in 1800's

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Natural cycles of dry warming and wet cooling span 3 generations, so of course when we reach the maximum of either a warm or cool cycle that generation thinks it is something new. Tree ring studies that go back as far as 2,000 years in western North America show that severe droughts like the ones we experienced in 2002 and 2012 in Colorado have happened many times in the past. In California, the tree ring record shows that droughts like the current one are the normal situation. What has happened in the past 100 years is fire suppression. Prior to settlement of the west, fires that consumed the undergrowth but did not affect the taller mature trees happened every 5 to 10 years.  Early settlers in the west were able to ride their horses through any forest because the understory was clear and mature trees were spaced relatively far apart. Fire suppression has allowed newer trees to grow in the spaces between mature trees resulting in an unhealthy tree density that provides a ladder for pine beetles to make it into the upper canopy and for flames from ground fires to reach the upper canopy.