Wyoming has been no stranger to wildfires, however recent trends in fire dynamics has brought this issue to light and is an increasingly urgent issue for ecologists, land managers, and communities alike. With changing climate patterns, landscapes face the effects of increasing temperatures and drought. The recent Elk fire near Sheridan, WY is one of many that has devastated forests and rangeland with over 96,000 acres burned, with it only recently reaching 50% containment. Spreading in late October, it has become an example of how wildfire dynamics are changing.
“With increasing temperatures and prolonged drought, this can correlate to more frequent, severe fires in not only Wyoming but in the Western United States. While not all landscapes will be impacted by prolonged drought and warmer temperatures the same way, Wyoming historically is one of the most arid states and has had one of the worst droughts in the United States.” said Britt Hays, a PhD student researching fire ecology at the University of Wyoming. ”Frequent multi-year droughts can cause drier fuels, increased tree death via xylem embolism, cavitation, and carbon starvation but also facilitating type conversion of landscapes where dominant species say grasslands could be outcompeted and replaced by shrublands for example.”
Despite the recent increase in the large, intense fires, historical evidence reveals a surprising trend that there is actually less total burned area today than in the past. “As determined by pollen cores, indigenous records, dendrochronology tree cores and tree cookie fire scars, as well as historic records today in some biomes there is less total area burned today than in the last couple millenia.” said Hays, “Now, this is not all biomes, in fact Dr. Phillip Higuera and Dr. Kyra Clark-Wolf at the University of Montana along with Dr. Bryan Shuman in the Geology and Geophysics Department at the University of Wyoming have found that subalpine forests in the Rocky Mountains are burning more now than at any time in the last two millennia.” According to Game and Fish, Subalpine forests cover 22% of the state and are characterized by cool temperatures,
Fire management practices are an important part of mitigating these effects and planning for the future and restoring our subalpine forests. “Historically, there have been a lot of changes to wildfire management in the last couple of centuries in the Western United states as well as Wyoming,” said Hays, “From the use of wildfire by Indigenous peoples as a part of cultural burning…to suppression where wildland fires were put out quickly and not allowed to burn in the early 1900’s”. These suppression tactics, over time, have led to high fuel loads in many of Wyoming’s forests, which create conditions where fire’s can rapidly spread and lead to larger and intense fires.
As Wyoming faces more fires such as the Elk fire, it’s important to protect our most vulnerable areas in our subalpine forests using regenerative strategies such as prescribed burns, cultural burning, and fire suppression for out of control fires.
