Catastrophic Wildfires: Enormous Emitters
Facts
Catastrophic wildfires account for vast amounts of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions each year. With a hotter dryer climate in the future, this situation will only be exacerbated. Not only do catastrophic wildfires emit tons of GHGs into the atmosphere, they also destroy critical wildlife habitats, key watersheds, and recreation areas, while also placing life and property in harms way. A thoughtful and meaningful climate change policy must include a strategy to mitigate and minimize catastrophic wildfire.
• On average, six tons of CO2 are released for every acre burned, not including the emissions from fire suppression operations, depending on fire severity and forest type, up to 100 tons of CO2 per acre can be released. (Winrock, Intl.)
• To date, roughly 5 million acres have burned in the United States—meaning at least 30 million tons of CO2 has been released due to catastrophic wildfires.
• Last year alone, ten million acres of forests burned. By conservative estimates, that means that 60 million tons of CO2 was spewed into the atmosphere, not to mention other GHGs and air pollutants. That’s roughly the equivalent of 12 million vehicles for one year.
• According to the EPA, 562.3 million metric tons of carbon was unleashed upon the atmosphere by forest fires between 2000 and 2005.
• A new study of Eastern Washington forests (Lippke, et al.) shows that those forests, left alone, will become net emitters, rather than carbon sinks, by the late century due to emissions from catastrophic wildfire. The study predicts that the forests would burn at a rate of 1.7% per year—meaning the entire forest would burn in less than 100 years.
• For numerous threatened and endangered species, catastrophic wildfire is the number one threat to survival and recovery.
• Actively managed forests can lead to at least a 50-60% reduction in the current level of acreage burned due to wildfire. (Finney, Mark A. June 2000. “Design of Regular Landscape Fuel Treatment Patterns for Modifying Fire Growth and Behavior” Forest Science Journal).
• California is currently burning up at a rate of about 0.64% per year (FIA, 2005) and that number is expected to increase by up to 55% by the end of the century, due to warming temperatures and reduced snowpack. (December 2005, Possible Scenarios of Climate Change in California, CEC-500-2005-186-SD)