California’s constant wildfires have profoundly impacted the state’s environment, and experts say poor land management, warming temperatures, and the climate are to blame.
North of Sacramento, the Park fire is 49 percent contained and so far has destroyed more than 670 square miles in four counties, according to Cal Fire.
Also this summer, the Borel fire in Kern County burned over 92 square miles, and in Fresno County, the SQF Lightning Complex fire consumed just over 51 square miles of grassy foothills, per Cal Fire.
These are just some of the many examples of wildfires that have destroyed natural habitats and threatened neighborhoods in California this year. The fires also lower the state’s air quality by polluting the air with particulate matter.
The latter is “the most concerning pollutant” in wildfire smoke, according to the California Air Resources Board. Such particles are inhaled and affect the lungs or the heart and cause irritation, asthma, and disease, per the board.
“The bottom line is that our understanding of air pollution is, I think, undergoing a seismic shift,” said Ian Faloona, a professor at the Land, Air and Water Resources Department of UC-Davis.
On a recent episode of EpochTV’s “California Insider,” he said air quality improvement had “plateaued” over the past 10 years as air pollution has become dominated by the state’s wildfire seasons.
“Approximately every five years, there’s a mega-fire,” he said.
"Traditionally, air pollution has always been considered an issue to be handled locally, 'It's your backyard, it's your problem.' But we're going to have to treat air pollution to some extent how we treat greenhouse gases," says Ian Faloona. Lisa Brettschneider, CC BY-NC 2.0
Faloon said the environmental problems associated with a warming climate—which he believes contributes heavily to California’s wildfire season—are a “public emergency.”
“Aside from the fact that we need to get off fossil fuels and convert to renewable energy—that is a no brainer ... but beyond that, we need to do something about the forest, we need to completely eliminate accidental sparks that happen from power lines, all that needs to be just completely zeroed out,” he said.
In California, 19 percent of wildfires were caused by electrical power network problems between 2016 to 2020, according to a study from the International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems.
In July 2021, the Dixie fire in Northern California became the second most destructive blaze in state history, destroying more than 1,500 square miles, according to Cal Fire.
The fire was sparked when a tree fell on some power lines owned by PG&E, resulting in a $45 million penalty for the utility provider, according to the Public Utilities Commission.
Faloon said it’s not that there’s just more fires, but they are increasingly intense.
He also blamed such on emissions related to fossil fuels, combustion production, and the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
“It’s just the dominant force driver in increasing these fires,” he said.
Faloon noted that Central Valley communities were particularly impacted by wildfire smoke and air pollution, thanks to their heavy agricultural industry and location between two mountain ranges: the Sierra Nevada mountains and the California coastal foothills.
The bowl-like landscape of the valley has a “blocked flow” that can cause stagnation of air pollutants, he said.
In California, 95 percent of wildfires are manmade, according to Cal Fire, which means just 5 percent are caused by environmental factors like lightning strikes.
But while most fires may be sparked by human-related events—such as a downed power line or the sparks from a lawnmower on dry grass—not everyone attributes the increased intensity and frequency of wildfire events to climate change.
“In California, it’s naturally hot and dry in the summer—we have that Mediterranean climate, and you have these [dry] grasses,” said Jim Steele, director emeritus of San Francisco University’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus and a member of the CO2 Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group centered on providing educational resources about the effects of carbon dioxide.
“It doesn’t take much; these grasses, these one and 10-hour fuels of small twigs, are so easily lit ... to be blaming wildfires on climate change—it’s inconceivable that any good scientist, any objective scientist, would ever make that claim now,” he told California Insider during the same episode.
He said Californians had “mismanaged the landscape” in the state, referring to a lack of prescribed burns in the forest—as well as the historical slaughtering of wild buffalo, which ended the grazing that kept the grass short and clipped.
“There’s a number of things, like fire suppression, changes in grazing patterns, loss of wetlands ... those kinds of things made California—that is naturally prone to a lot of fires—more susceptible to them,” he said.
Other underlying causes of fire included invasive grasses, deforested areas, and allowing shrub lands and grasses to proliferate, adding “more fuel to the fire,” he said.
El Niño—a heavy wet climate pattern that occurs over the Pacific Ocean—also has a particularly acute effect on the California landscape. The wet years cause more grass to grow, Steele said. That grass will later become fuel for wildfires.
Steele said warmer temperatures can have an effect on wildfires, but the natural temperatures in California can’t be blamed for the blazes that burn now.
“What gets very misleading is a lot of times people say, ‘Well, there’s global warming. [The temperature has] risen by a degree and a half.’ But they don’t look at the natural dynamics, where some places are actually cooling,” he said.
In metro areas like Atlanta, Georgia, he noted that a broad warming effect was based on an increase of urbanization driven by more asphalt and concrete, which “causes the minimum temperatures to increase” and which can appear to be an effect of global warming. This same phenomenon is apparent in California, he suggested.
He noted that despite appearances, “about two thirds of California” was experiencing a cooling trend in its maximum temperatures. He also said that some of the reported warmer temperatures were the effect of urban areas—which are generally not where wildfires are reported.
But what can California leaders do to reduce the number of wildfires every year in the state?
“Understand our natural vegetation, understand our natural climate, so you understand where your biggest concerns and your biggest efforts have to be placed to make it safer for everybody and to benefit the environment,” Steele said.
