Why have we lost control of wildfire in the western United States?

In the western United States, the annual wildfire area increased by nearly 300% over the past 40 years, mostly due to a 10-fold increase in forest-fire extent. Fire is not inherently bad – it’s been on the continents for as long as plants have, and many ecosystems depend on it – but the ongoing rapid increase in wildfire activity is nonetheless concerning. Forest fires have grown increasingly large and severe despite our best efforts to prevent ignitions and suppress spread. In this talk, Dr. Park Williams will unravel the story of why western U.S. society has lost control of wildfire after nearly eliminating it from the landscape for the better part of a century. The conclusions can guide our understanding of fire in the western U.S. and how we can change our ways to live sustainably with it.

About the speaker

Park Williams is a hydroclimatologist whose research aims to understand the causes and consequences of hydrological extremes such as drought. Much of his research focuses on hydroclimatology in its own right, and much also aims to improve understanding of how hydrological extremes affect life on earth (bioclimatology). Questions that he finds especially interesting involve the effects of human-caused climate change on the hydrological cycle, ecological systems, and humanity through extreme events such as heat waves, wildfires, and flooding.