California, New Mexico and Arizona Are Best Chance for $7 Billion Wildfire Prevention Funding, Says New Study

As the government earmarks $7 billion on wildfire prevention, a new study indicates that the investment would be most effective in forests located in California, New Mexico and Arizona.

The study, which was led by ecologist Jamie Peeler, a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Montana, analyzed two metrics: the areas where fires put humans at the greatest risk and the areas where a fire would have the worst environmental impact.

The second metric was based on the presence of exposed carbon in vulnerable forests. Healthy forests absorb carbon dioxide from the air and store it inside of trees and soil. When wildfires break out, that carbon is released back into the atmosphere and contributes to climate change, the study explained.

While this is the case for any forest, some areas contain a larger amount of carbon than others, making the occurrence of wildfires even more dangerous. 

“We found that forests in California, New Mexico and Arizona were more likely to lose a large portion of their carbon in a wildfire and also have a tough time regenerating because of stressful conditions,” Peeler wrote in the Conversation.

Once the vulnerable forests were identified, ecologists compared the relevant forests to human communities which were previously identified as being vulnerable to wildfires. 

This allowed scientists to locate areas where a government investment would both protect the environment and human lives. 

This study comes in the wake of a summer marked by record-high temperatures and devastating natural disasters, including the wildfires that destroyed the city of Lahaina, Hawaii. 

And while the study’s analysis indicates that interventions like forest thinning and controlled burns will help mitigate the damage caused by wildfires, Peeler acknowledges that these methods are “not a silver bullet.” 

“The world needs to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels to curb climate change impacts that increase the risk of wildfires becoming community disasters,” she wrote.