Causes, Effects and Mitigation of Global Wildfires 2021

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Initially, a fire was common in Western woodlands, especially in wet areas like the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. Lightning and Indigenous fires produced patchworks of grasslands, shrublands, and recovering woods. Previous fires affect how and what future fires leave behind. By reducing the quantity and connectivity of fuels that cause enormous, catastrophic wildfires, indigenous burning methods improve cultural resources and animal habitats (Sidder, 2021). This paper discusses the occurrences, causes, and impacts of wildfires in 2021 across the globe. It further goes ahead to propose solutions to the stated problem.

Several nations have had record wildfire seasons in 2021. Most are related to the severe heat and drought-ravaged much of the area in recent years. June was the second-hottest month ever recorded in Europe. This week, temperatures in Greece are predicted to reach 47 degrees Centigrade (117 degrees Fahrenheit) (Pausas & Keeley, 2021). Greece and Turkey have been experiencing a heatwave that may be the worst in three decades, bringing up memories of the horrific 1987 wildfires that killed over 1500 lives in Greece alone. Since July, wildfires have ravaged the northern hemisphere, destroying vast swathes of land and cities in Europe, North America, and Russia. While many of these nations are accustomed to summertime fire seasons, global warming increases the frequency and intensity of these circumstances. A summer of severe heat waves has come in areas of the western US after a poor rainy season and a two-year drought. In mid-July, flames erupted in Oregon and California, burning about 2.5 million hectares, part of a yearly toll of over 1 million hectares.

According to Siegel, C. (2020), Wildfires burn unabated in northern Russia’s Sakha Republic, commonly known as Yakutia. Despite the season’s partial completion, the EU’s Copernicus satellite monitoring unit said these fires had “generated a record quantity of carbon emissions. According to Pinkerton & Rom (2021), wildfires frequently result in massive land loss due to Russia’s vastness, which will be confirmed in 2021. As of September 9, there were 155 fires in Siberia, impacting almost three million acres. Since the start of the wildfires in May, nearly 15 million acres have burnt down. The smoke has been so thick that it reaches the North Pole for the first time. The storm forced hundreds of people from their homes.

On September 1, tourists in Pescara, on the eastern coast of Italy, fled a beach as a neighboring wood caught fire. In the isolated Kalajoki River valley, about 2,000 kilometers north of the Eastern Mediterranean, 400 hectares of forest were destroyed in the final week of July, the country’s biggest wildfire since 1971. Some of the most severe climate change-related fires occurred in the Yakutia region of Siberia, thousands of kilometers east of Finland. Scientists worry the fires damage wetlands and melt permafrost, releasing vast quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas (Rodríguez Vásquez et al., 2021). On August 4, the EU’s Copernicus Environment Monitoring Service reported that local fires just admitted 505 megatons of CO2 equivalent into the atmosphere, already exceeding the record set in 2020. All of this puts us in danger of a destructive cycle: if greenhouse gases from flames like these and other human activity like fossil fuel burning continue to raise global temperatures, circumstances are expected to worsen and become conducive to fires, which will likely raise temperatures further (Rupasinghe & Chow-Fraser, 2021).

According to Stirling (2021), poor land management contributes to wildfires, but changing climate increases their frequency and intensity. In June, a Climate Crisis Service was drier than average over much of Europe, the US West, Canada, and South America, causing forest fires. Since January, Yakutia’s wildfires have burned almost 6.5 million acres. There is no answer for Western forests. However, reviving and maintaining cultural burning traditions, controlled burning, and woodland thinning with managed burning may decrease overpopulation and the risk of catastrophic fires. Thinners and prescribed burns are not always possible. A small percentage of landscapes is handled this way. Allowing more wildfires to flare in mild weather is also partially correct. Creating fire-adapted populations and searching for chances to reintroduce fire to global forest landscapes to promote resilient Western forests will also be a working strategy.

Wildfires damage thousands of businesses and homes each year. Thus, being informed of the possibility of wildfires is critical to preventing their spread. Before lighting any wildfire, it is essential to respect all local laws. Many towns have rules regulating what may be burnt, when, and how. Wind may both accelerate and spread a fire. Also, examining the state’s current fire risk scoring system will explain any regions prone to flames and any required additional measures. Each state’s fire risk rating is updated regularly by the Wildland Fire Assessment System (Webb, 2021). Making sure that all campfires are in completely enclosed pits and are kept at a minimum is also a valid recommendation that will help prevent future occurrences. It is essential to burn in a regulated region. Fires may rapidly get out of regulation; therefore, it is necessary to keep them contained.

To sum up, if the recommendations discussed above are followed later, wildfires will be reduced to a large percentage, and lives and property will be saved. The negative impact of wildfires is a motivation to society to find reasonable ways to curb forest fires.

References

Pausas, J., & Keeley, J. (2021). Wildfires and global change. Frontiers In Ecology And The Environment, 19(7), 387-395. Web.

Pinkerton, K., & Rom, W. (2021). Climate change and global public health.

Rodríguez Vásquez, M., Benoist, A., Roda, J., & Fortin, M. (2021). Estimating Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Peat Combustion in Wildfires on Indonesian Peatlands, and Their Uncertainty. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 35(2). Web.

Rupasinghe, P., & Chow-Fraser, P. (2021). Relating pre-fire canopy species, fire season, and proximity to surface waters to burn severity of boreal wildfires in Alberta, Canada.Forest Ecology and Management, 496, 119386. Web.

Sidder, A. (2021). Uncovering Patterns in California’s Blazing Wildfires. Eos, 101. Web.

Siegel, C. (2020). The ABCs of global warming.

Stirling, M. (2017). Fort Mcmurray Wildfire 2016: Conflating Human-Caused Wildfires with Human-Caused Global Warming. SSRN Electronic Journal. Web.

Webb, A. (2021). Wildfires increasingly impact rivers and water supplies. Water Science Policy. Web.

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Causes, Effects and Mitigation of Global Wildfires 2021

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