A pile burn in lost Dutchman State Park.
The Buzz for March 7, 2025
Arizona's last two rainy seasons have been subpar. A dry monsoon followed by a dry winter has much of the wildland around the state looking dry.
Changing climate have exacerbated the problem to the point that some say Arizona no longer has a wildfire season, since fires can happen at any time of the year. Two recent examples are the Water Fire, which caused evacuations near St. Johns and the Brady Fire, which caused evacuations in Pine Flat, a community southeast of Prescott, last month.
In an effort to combat wildfires, state and federal crews continue to remove flammable fuels through processes such as prescribed fires. Crews recently did just that in Lost Dutchman State Park in the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix. That operation focused on clearing out materials gathered from over about 25 acres of park land.
"Arizona is prone to fire activity, and June is the most detrimental time to have that happen. So what we end up doing is we try to take opportunities to reduce that debris. And here's why, the lowest decay rate is in the desert. And in Arizona, we have a lot of desert. So as we look at these heritage landscapes in Arizona that evolved with fire because of lightning," said Roy Hall, a prescribed fire officer for the state.
Hall said that fires get exponentially worse in the summer as heat and reduced humidity further dries out dead plants. But heat is not the biggest issue in fire spread.
A pile burn in Lost Dutchman State Park shortly after ignition.
"Embers coming out of that pile can start spot fires most times. It's fairly short range, 100 yards or less. But then if the wind's blowing, it can send spot fires a quarter to a mile and a half in front of a fire."
And those embers are often more prevalent as a fire's fuel gets drier.
"If we can reduce the amount of vegetation within the park or in the forest itself, that is going to reduce the size and potential start of a wildfire within that area, and then with less vegetation, the rate of spread, or the growth of that fire is going to be reduced, therefore being a smaller fire and easier for folks to catch and suppress," said Bob Arthur, Division Chief for the Central District for the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management.
Arthur said that the life of fire crews can be made easier if people ensure their homes are as fire resistant as possible.
"If everybody can do a little fire-wise or some yard work around their homes and private property, that's going to make our jobs easier. If there's less fuel, whether it be, you know, still growing dead and down vegetation on the ground, if we can go in and clear that, that is going to make our jobs much easier to protect their homes and their private property going forward," he said.
Crew members watch as a pile burn gets rid or excess vegetation in Lost Dutchman State Park.
Projects such as prescribed burns are public lands managers equivalent of doing the same, according to Tiffany Davilla, Public Affairs Officer for the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management.
"We're doing these to clean up our areas, to remove the debris piles that were left over from fuels mitigation work, clean up our forests, improve the health of our forests, and so we want to make sure that we're crossing our T's, dotting our i's, before we do that first ignition. With that these projects can be planned well in advance, and I'm talking years in advance," she said.
While planning can occur far in advance, the weather-dependent nature of such burns can mean the public receives short notice.
"We want to make sure that the public is informed well ahead of the burn. Unfortunately, sometimes with unfavorable weather or lack of resources, we have to cancel or we have to start things within 24 hours, because we have a short burn window. So at the end of the day, we try and at least give the public 48 hours, 24 hours notification that we're going to burn, because there are a lot of people with smoke sensitivity, so we want to make sure that we are informing them in a timely manner," said Davila.
Attempts to clear out fuels to avoid fires that are catastrophic for humans and the environment did not used to be a concern prior to the intervention of civilization.
Tree-ring data shows wildfire activity has declined since around 1900, according to a study published in Nature Communications. A key reason is the low-intensity nature of those fires
"These fires were occurring at multiple sites all over the landscape, burning probably all summer, maybe until weather cooled off in the fall, or even until the winter rains. But they weren't the high severity, spectacular, catastrophic fires that we see in the news today. They were low severity ground fires, maybe flame lengths up to your knee or to your waist. Animals would just run away or burrow into the ground until the fire passed. These were covering very large areas as a consequence," said University of Arizona fire ecologist and professor Dr. Donald Falk, who co-authored the study.
The study examined tree ring data, and found fire scars on trees were present more frequently from 1600-1880.
"if you're having fires occurring in any given area, let's say every 10 to 20 years, in some areas, more frequently than that, what happens when you exclude fire from the landscape, which is pretty much what we've done for the last 120 years. What happens is that the fuels that would have been consumed in these spreading fires remain there, unburned, and they start to accumulate. So we now literally have 120 years of fuel accumulation in many of our forests. And as a result, when a fire does occur, you get these spectacular, catastrophic fire events," Falk said.
Work such as prescribed fire and removing of excess fuels can help return areas that historically burned to their natural state. Falk gave an example of one place where that has happened.
"We have a salient example of how we can keep fire in the ecosystem in a way that is sustainable right here in the southwest, in the Gila Wilderness in western New Mexico. In the Gila, for the last 50 years, land managers have allowed fire to stay in the system, and to be part of how that system works, this includes both ignitions from lightning, but also prescribed fires that they introduce. And the result is that when a large fire occurs, we don't get the kind of catastrophic burning down of the house that we've seen in recent fires in Los Angeles and Hawaii and so many other places. For example, in 2011 the same year when we had the gigantic Las Conches Fire in New Mexico, which was the largest fire in the state. Up until that time, there was a 90,000 acre fire burning in the Gila, but nobody knew about it, because it was not making news. It was just doing what fire does, which is creeping over the landscape for weeks and weeks at a time, thinning out fuels, but not causing any real damage."
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