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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Global warming could be having an impact on wildfires in western states, a new report says.
The report from researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., and the University of Arizona in Tucson was released yesterday. It suggests that western states are in a cycle of more frequent, longer-burning and intense wildfires.
Researchers compiled a database of more than one thousand wildfires in the West between 1970 and 2000, comparing them to climate and other data. The findings show that large fires increased dramatically in the 1980s.
The greatest increases were in Rocky Mountain forests and were associated with increases in spring and summer temperatures and earlier snowmelts.
University of Montana professor of ecology Steven Running says the impact global warming on wildfires is the equivalent to its effect on hurricanes along the nation's southeast coast.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
