People have been saying for years that forests ravaged by the mountain pine beetle are more fire-prone than healthy ones. But a new study out this week says, think again.
University of Colorado researcher Sarah Hart was the lead author on the study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
“Our approach to answering this question was to overlay maps of infested forest that are from the U.S. Forest Service with maps of where fires have burned.”
Hart says, in comparing the maps, they found no difference in fire frequency between the beetle-killed forests and healthy ones. Instead, the study shows that fires are more affected by weather.
“So if you think about Colorado and Wyoming, there’s relatively large fires in 2012,” Hart says. “And a lot of that was because we actually had warm and dry fire weather. And so we think that these warm and dry conditions can actually dry out healthy forests.”
With such droughts on the increase due to climate change, Hart says forest managers should consider spending less to log and clear the beetle-killed forests and instead put resources into hazard tree removal and other safety issues.
