Why California Fires Are Getting Bigger | Jim Steele

California Insider

“What makes these fires bigger has a lot to do with how we’ve mismanaged the landscapes for the last 100 years. Fire suppression, changes in grazing patterns, loss of wetlands. We allow shrub lands and grasses to build up underneath it, add more fuel to the fire, and you have more urban development, just the more asphalt, the more cement you’re raising temperatures,” says professor Jim Steele, Director emeritus of San Francisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus.

Siyamak sits down with ecologist and author Jim Steele, who has studied the factors behind the increasing wildfires in California, and Ian Faloona, an associate professor and Biomicrometeorologist at the University of California Davis, who has been researching how wildfires impact air quality in the state.

“It’s a different type of chemical environment. This new source, not only has it become visible, it’s growing tremendous. It’s a new era of how we think about air pollution,” professor Faloona says.
*Views expressed in this video/article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of California Insider.

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