Dear Editor:

What should we here in southwest Georgia learn from the southern California fires? As an ecologist I say it is ‘take care because your turn may come.’ Let me explain. Fuels (like dead trees, brush, and grasses) and weather (i.e., climate) are two of the most important factors influencing wildfire. Fuels build up as forests grow, and in the southeast we do better at reducing fuels with prescribed fire than anywhere else in the nation. It’s part of the culture we inherited from native Americans and it is rightfully a source of pride among land managers. As columnist Randy Young notes, California has not done as well at applying prescribed fire to wildlands, so score a point for Georgia.

On the other hand, weather and climate. Dry air dries out fuels making them more combustible. When air is heated, as it increasingly is due to human-caused climate change, the relative humidity drops and the air effectively becomes drier. This mechanism is behind much of the increased fire behavior we see in California. California is much drier than Georgia – there is no rain at all for 5 months in much of the state. And its air temperatures increased more than Georgia’s and the rest of the southeast did over the 20th century for reasons that are not fully known. So Georgia enjoys some natural advantages over California as regards fire weather and climate that, combined with an outstanding prescribed burning record, have largely prevented increases in problem fire behavior.

Even with the best prescribed burning program, however, dangerous fire behavior can occur if air temperatures become hot enough and fuels become dry enough. Dangerous fire behavior often arises when unusual weather occurs against a background of ecosystems that are stressed by rising temperatures. My research on climate and tree growth in southwest Georgia shows that summer temperatures began to rise here in the late 20th century, and there is every reason to think that they will keep on increasing due to the known connection between fossil fuel burning, atmospheric carbon dioxide, and global air temperature. We cannot afford to be complacent about climate change impacts on wildfire risk in Georgia.

California leads the nation in dealing with human-caused climate change (this may be what columnist Randy Young means by ‘radical environmental regulations’) and Georgia’s actions in this area are lagging. Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions are dropping in both states, but as of 2022 Georgia’s annual carbon emission were 11.5 tons per person, compared to 8.3 for California. Regardless of the cause of the southern California fires, we in Georgia should be learning from California about ways to combat human-induced climate change, just like Californians should be learning from us about prescribed fire practices.

Seth W. Bigelow, Ph.D.

Thomasville, Ga.