April 28, 2011

Is the Average Size of Wildfires Growing?

Wildfire Today collects some interesting graphs that seem to say yes.
One statistic I concentrate on is the average size of fires, not so much the number of fires or the total acres burned each year, two stats that the mainstream media harps on. The average size is affected not only by the weather, but also by the fuel condition and age, how many fires were burning at the same time, the short-term availability of firefighting resources, the skill and efficiency of the firefighting effort, strategy used on fires, and the number of firefighting resources on the payroll of the firefighting agencies.
The commenters see this shift as being more about fire policy the deployment about firefighting resources than anything else.

No comments: