Climate Change, Wildfires, and Resilience

Trust for Public Land: Using climate science to strategically guide habitat conservation. from WCS Climate Adaptation Fund on Vimeo.

Last week, another headline from Western Today caught my eye: "The Great Burning - How Wildfires are Threatening the West." This headline referred to an article recently published in the "politics" section of Rolling Stone explaining how climate change has caused an increase in wildfires to become "the new normal." This piece made its way into Western Today because in it was a quote from Huxley Professor Michael Medler, who was cited as testifying before a House committee in 2007:

"Global warming is changing fire behavior, creating longer fire seasons, and causing more frequent, large-scale high-severity wildfires."

This also got me thinking about the wildfires in Washington this past summer, and about the numerous effects of climate change on forests in the Pacific Northwest, which led me to something really interesting--Did you know the US Forest Service has a really great website chock-full of information about climate change? Of particular interest to me is the "Pacific Northwest Research Station," and also the "Climate Change Resource Center," which is where I found the video that I posted above. What I like about this video is that it brings up some intriguing perspectives by focusing on planning for resilience, understanding connectivity, and integrating climate science into the conservation work that is taking place. Pretty cool stuff!