On any given day, there’s a wildfire burning somewhere in the U.S. — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Many western forests have evolved with fire, and actually benefit from the occasional wildfire.
A nice little ground fire every few decades cleans house in the forest. It burns the grass and brush, and maybe some smaller trees — the “ladder fuels” that might carry a fire up into the tree canopy. Those canopy fires are the worst kind — they kill forests.
But scientists are discovering that some trees in the West that previously would survive and thrive with …read more
Source: NPR Science – ingested into KQED