A wet winter and spring and an ongoing bark beetle infestation in Southern California's pine forests mean additional fuel to burn and increased wildfire danger this summer and fall as development continues to push into the region's wildlands. University of California, Riverside faculty experts on these topics are able to add depth and meaning to journalists' stories about this summer and fall's wildfires in the West.
FIRE ECOLOGYRichard Minnich, professor of geography, Department of Earth Sciences. His specialty is fire ecology. He says the winds, the drought, the heat and the bark beetles have combined to create an unprecedented fire danger. Minnich can compare and contrast how fire suppression policy in Southern California and Baja California differ and how those differences affect the fire-health of wildlands in the two regions. Traditional fire suppression policy to put out the small fires that might clear away brush contribute to making the big fires, when they come along, worse than they might have otherwise been. "The danger of a half dead forest is absolutely phenomenal," he said of the conditions in the San Bernardino Mountains. For more than two years he has warned that the San Bernardino Mountains has become a tinderbox, which may touch off an inferno and that such fires would likely be unstoppable.
FIRE BEHAVIORShankar Mahalingam, professor and chair in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.Dr. Mahalingam's research focuses on the fluid dynamics of combustion, wildland fire modeling, and the chemical changes plants and other materials undergo during fires. He has written extensively about the behavior of fire as it burns Southern California's chaparral vegetation. His wildland fire modeling is funded through the U.S. Forest Service and is conducted at the Forest Fire Laboratory in Riverside.
BARK BEETLETimothy Paine, professor of entomology, Department of Entomology. Dr. Paine has studied the Western Bark Beetle and other pests that target trees. "The drought conditions that exist in the mountains mean that the trees have been stressed and are highly susceptible to bark beetles." It also means that the bark beetles themselves ran out of other sources of water and so targeted the trees. Bark Beetles, about the size of a grain of rice, lay their eggs inside trees and that eventually kills them. The dominant tree species in the San Bernardino Mountains is pine, and that is the prime target of the bark beetles.
LAND DEVELOPMENT AND WILDLIFETom Scott, adjunct assistant professor in the department of Earth Science. Professor Scott studies wildlife conservation and can speak to the effect wildfires have on animal habitat, and on the land that sits between the suburban developments of the cities and the tourist towns of the highlands. "We have 1,900 kilometers of houses that back up to wild lands in Riverside County alone," he said. "How could we not have problems with that kind of juxtaposition of people and brush fire territory? Along that margin, anything can happen. This area fell between the cracks for decades." Scott serves on the committee reviewing Riverside County's Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan.
CHILD PSYCHOLOGYBarbara Tinsley, professor of psychology, Department of Psychology. Professor Tinsley's expertise in child psychology is valuable in explaining how parents might help children understand and cope with the threat of fire, whether the threat is near or far. When schools close or classmates evacuate, even children who are not directly affected by the fires have questions and concerns about their safety. Also, the images they see on TV might make them think that all of Southern California is on fire.
AIR POLLUTIONRoger Atkinson, director of the Air Pollution Research Center. He specializes in the chemistry of organic compounds in the air. He said the smoke-filled skies downwind from wildfires pose a temporary health hazard. "The sensible thing to do right now is to stay inside, air condition and filter your air, and limit exposure to the smoke coming from the fires," he said. The Air Pollution Research Center (APRC) was established by the Regents of the University of California in 1961 to conduct basic and applied research into photochemical air pollution.
COMPUTER MODELINGPeter Sadler, professor of geology, Department of Earth Sciences. He gives presentations to explain the role of computer modeling in fire science. He has written graphical programs that model the long-term development of vegetation in response to wild fire, and allow scientists to study the role of nitrogen deposition on the Southern California landscape. His programs enable researchers to examine the long-term effects of changing the balance of wind, humidity, topography, vegetation age, and fire suppression efforts. However, the program does not model the short-term effects in a way that can guide firefighters at a particular fire. He cannot comment on an active fire, its suppression, or its ecological impact.
Related LinksThe Air Pollution Research Center at UC Riverside Web page: http://www.aprc.ucr.edu/aprc.html U.S.D.A. Forest Service Forest Fire Laboratory Web page: http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/rfl/ The National Interagency Fire Center Web page: http://www.nifc.gov/ San Bernardino County Department of Public Health Web page: http://www.sbcounty.gov/pubhlth/wildfire.htm U.S. EPA's Effects of Smoke from forest fires Web page: http://www.epa.gov/airnow/smoke2/smokecover.html
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