Contemporary fires are less frequent but more severe in dry conifer forests of the southwestern United States
A fire-scarred southwestern white pine in the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico. The tree survived and recorded multiple low-severity fires, the last of which burned over 140 years ago in 1880. How do you study forest fire history? After a forest fire, surviving trees will continue to grow new layers of wood to heal fire injuries. As tree rings provide information about the growth history and age of trees, scientists can use tree-ring fire scars to obtain information about the year, season, severity, frequency, size, and fire-climate relationships of fires that occurred centuries to millennia prior to modern records. In this study
New USGS-FEMA study highlights economic earthquake risk in the United States
The new estimate is twice that of previous annual estimates due to increased building value and the fact that the report incorporates the latest hazards as well as improvements to building inventories. Earthquake losses from the last few decades in the U.S. have ranged about $1.5 to 3 billion per year depending upon the timeframe. While less than the figures suggested by long-term loss estimates from this study, a single large earthquake impacting a populated urban area would quickly make up the difference in losses in one fell swoop. “It is fitting that this report was released on the same