By Lynn Jenner23 September 2015 (NASA) – The widespread burning of lowland forests on Borneo as well as southern Sumatra, as seen in this image taken by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite, is an annual, manmade occurrence. People use fires to manage agricultural lands which in this part of the world includes large […]
2 September 2015 (CU-Boulder) – The longest and largest controlled burn experiment ever conducted in the Amazon rainforest has yielded new insight into the ways that tropical forests succumb to—and bounce back from—large-scale wildfires, according to new research co-authored by a University of Colorado Boulder professor. The findings, which were published today in the journal […]
By Veronica Rocha, Paige St. John, Frank Shyong, and Hailey Branson-Potts22 September 2015 SACRAMENTO, California (Los Angeles Times) – As firefighters continued to advance on the deadly wildfires in Northern California, President Barack Obama declared a major disaster for the Valley fire. The move frees up federal assistance for home repairs, replacements and other aid. […]
By Adam Voiland13 September 2015 (NASA) – Russians normally flock to the shores of Lake Baikal during the summer to camp and enjoy spectacular views of the world’s deepest freshwater lake. In summer 2015, such views were frequently obscured by smoke. For months, fires have raged around the lake, inspiring observers to use words like […]
By Tim Dickinson 15 September 2015 (Rolling Stone) – In May this year, the nearly unthinkable happened in the Pacific Northwest: The rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula, one of the wettest places on the continent, caught fire. By August, an inferno was stirring in the forests east of the Cascades. A wind-whipped blaze near the […]
20 September 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Here’s an update to last month’s post on wildfire data from the Western United States. Data from the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center (Fuels and Fire Danger [pdf]) show that the area burned by wildfires in the Northwest is well above average, and a spike in the number of wildfires […]
4 September 2015 (Insurance Journal) – The monthly report for August from Aon Benfield’s Impact Forecasting catastrophe model development team cites the “severe drought conditions” in the western U.S. as resulting in “economic losses expected to reach at least $3.0 billion – mostly attributable to agricultural damage in California.” Several Caribbean and Central American nations […]
By Brian Skoloff and Kristin J. Bender 15 September 2015 MIDDLETOWN, California (Associated Press) – Some residents cried as they walked through the rubble of their homes while others shared amazing stories of survival as more people returned to their houses Tuesday and surveyed the twisted metal and smoking ruins left behind by a devastating […]
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Olga R. Rodriguez13 September 2015 MIDDLETOWN, California (Associated Press) – At least 100 homes were destroyed by a wildfire in Northern California’s Lake County that raced through dry brush and exploded in size within hours, officials said Sunday. The devastation comes after a separate wildfire to the southeast destroyed at least […]
By Olga Gertcyk11 September 2015 (The Siberian Times) – Buryatia has been hit in summer 2015 by the massive destruction of its pristine forests in a series of fast-spreading fires. Most shocking have been the scenes – pictured here – showing uncontrolled burning around Lake Baikal, the oldest and deepest lake in the world, containing […]
