- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
When the Detwiler Fire broke out near his family's ranch in 2017, Tony Toso was home to take defensive action to protect his family and animals. The Mariposa County rancher feels fortunate that he was on site.
“We were on the front end of the fire damage and it started on a Sunday,” recalled Toso. “Had I not been home that day, it would have been very difficult for me to access my property and help keep our livestock safe. Within a matter of hours of the fire starting, the CHP had our county road closed and would not let anyone in.”
Emergency personnel close roads around wildfires for the...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
The Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise and other wildfires that have devastated communities in recent years have convinced wildfire experts that Californians need to take more than one approach to coexist with fire.
To better protect new houses against wildfire, California has building codes, but where residential communities are built on the landscape and how they are designed are also very important to limit wildfire-related losses, according to University of California Cooperative Extension specialists Max Moritz and Van Butsic.
“Defensible space and vegetation management is important, but in the long term, where and how we build new...
- Author: Jeannette Warnert
The California Natural Resources Agency released California's Fourth Climate Change Assessment today (Monday, Aug. 27), at http://www.ClimateAssessment.ca.gov. UC Agriculture and Natural Resources scientists contributed substantially to the report.
The Fourth Assessment is broken down into nine technical reports on the following...
Current wildfire policy can't adequately protect people, homes and ecosystems from the longer, hotter fire seasons climate change is causing, according to a new paper led by the University of Colorado Boulder.
Efforts to extinguish every blaze and reduce the buildup of dead wood and forest undergrowth are becoming increasingly inadequate on their own. Instead, the authors—a team of wildfire experts—urge policymakers and communities to embrace policy reform that will promote adaptation to increasing wildfire and warming.
“Wildfire is catching up to us,” said lead author Tania Schoennagel, a research scientist at CU Boulder's
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
A report on climate change and its effects on California released on July 31 by the California Natural Resources Agency and the California Energy Commission features more than 30 reports by UC scientists. Experts from UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Merced, UC Riverside, UC San Diego/Scripps Institution for Oceanography, UC Santa Cruz, UC Cooperative Extension and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory contributed to "Our Changing Climate."
The report, the third such assessment since 2006, provides new data to help Californians plan and adapt to climate change.
"Significant increases in wildfires, floods, severe storms, drought and heat waves are clear...