We have a fire deficit – Watt?

Kip Hansen's guest paper – February 12, 2025 – 750 words

One published in Natural Communications Parks et al., February 10, 2025, “The fire deficit in North American forests remains despite the recent increase in burning areas.” (2025), said:

“… Despite the increase in burning area in recent decades,…a wide range of Insufficient fire Continued in various forest types, anomalous combustion in burning areas has not been unprecedented in recent years, considering the multi-century perspective provided by burning trees. ”

Let's review it again:

“Big fires in the wild were common, and in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many forests and woodlands in North America were extensive. In the subsequent decades, burns were excluded due to traditional burning, grazing and actively suppressing fires from humans and lightning shots ( Prevent and suppress almost all wild fires). As a result, since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the average annual area has generally been less than the annual area experienced under the historic fire system of many North American forests, resulting in 20 relative to earlier times. The “fire deficiency” of the century is widespread. Period.”

Note: The author uses “The term “traditional burning” encompasses Native fire management and post-colonial burning traditions that are widely adopted in the eastern United States. ”

Here is their finding in a simple table:

[ click here for full sized image in new tab/window ]

The eco-zone is displayed in this map:

The table shows that in the 1984-2022 study interval, there was only one single area, Taiga & Hudson Plain in northern Canada, whose fires were predicted by burn scar data before 1880.

The concept of this study on causes and effects is explained as:

[ This figure has a rather long explanation.  See it by viewing the image in its full size here. ]

The results of this study are:

“In general, Contemporary Fire (1984-2022) burned NAFSN [North American tree-ring fire-scar network] The frequency of fires was less than that of fire during the historical reference period (1880 years ago), indicating that a large number of fire deficits persisted and still accumulated in many forests and woodlands in the United States and Canada (Table 1). According to historical fire range records, NAFSN sites will be expected to burn 4346 times starting from 1984 to 2022, but they burned 989 times, or only 23% under the historic fire system. ”

The mass media would rather focus on “the American fires became bigger, more frequent, and more extensive in the 2000s,” Iglesias et al. (2022), discovered in scientific progress. Iglesias et al. Only researched fire Since 1984. Watching Parks and so on. (2025) Figure 4 above, we regard that period of time as a 100-year fire deficit-crazy fire.

Bottom line:

1. Propositions repeatedly made in mainstream media claim that wildfires are becoming more common and do not support the findings of this study.

2. We have had a severe fire deficit over the past 200 years, not an oversupply. In the studied eco-regions (US and Canada), fires were much less frequent and the result was Insufficient fire. This is true for all eco-regions except the northernmost part of Canada.

3. The long-term fire deficit, unburned wilderness, built the wilderness to burn more intense fires, consuming all the extra fuel left due to the lack of fire.

4. Parks et al. (2025) has a very interesting discussion section covering the long-term effects and regime shifts that may be suppressing the fire century.

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Author's comments:

Fire has always been a topic worthy of news. Even in our technologically advanced era, human beings seem to be fascinated by fire, but at the same time they know nothing about its causes and effects. This can be seen all over the United States by building highly flammable homes in our forests and throughout Los Angeles.

With this in mind, Washington Post In a AboutWhat does the house surviving a Los Angeles fire reveal”.

Why are some fires so hot recently? The basic knowledge of fire has not changed: fuel + oxygen + heat = fire. More fuel and enough oxygen can cause the fire to get hotter.

Short-term datasets that study long-term phenomena are not very scientific.

After the above article, I found that Roger Pielke Jr. had already undergone the same study. His work is the fire deficit in North America.

Thank you for reading.

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