Climate Change May Drastically Increase Forest Fires in Europe

Climate change is continuing to impact the globe. Now, scientists have found that our changing climate may increase forest fires in Europe as temperatures increase and as droughts stretch on for longer in the future.

Fires are a natural part of the ecology of many forests. They burn off dead material and allow for new growth to emerge while fertilizing the soil. Yet when fires rage out of control, they can burn huge areas and even spread to neighboring homes.

In this latest study, the researchers examined both the impact of climate change when it comes to fires in addition to the adaptation to forest fire danger on a pan-European scale. They examined both fire prevention options and their impacts. In addition, they looked at the potential of better firefighting to additionally help decrease burned areas.

So what did they find? It turns out that by 2090, the area burned by forest fires in the European Union could increase by 200 percent due to climate change. That said, preventative firest could keep that increase to just below 50 percent.

"There is still a big debate on the effectiveness of prescribed burning as a forest fire management tool," said Nikolay Khabarov, the lead researcher of the new study, in a news release. "This study shows that it can be a promising option to protect European forests from the impact of climate change."

The findings reveal that managing fires could greatly help reduce the number of wildfires caused by climate change. This and other management strategies could be crucial in the future as temperatures continue to warm and as forest fires spread.

"In more populous areas, the chance of occurrence of forest fires rises dramatically," said Andrey Krasovskii, co-author of the new study. "We could prevent many of these fires simply by being more responsible."

The findings are published in the journal Regional Environmental Change.