Wildland fires expected to get worse, costlier

COEUR d’ALENE — Wildland fires are rampant this year in North Idaho, and if two University of Idaho professors are right, things are only going to get worse and more expensive.

Renaud Barbero, a postdoctoral researcher, and John Abatzoglou, an associate professor at U of I, just published a paper in the International Journal of Wildland Fires claiming climate change is going to lead to longer, hotter and drier fire seasons and an increase in “megafires” over the next 50 years.

The professors studied 30 years of historic megafires, consisting of 12,000-acres or more, that produced serious air quality issues and other ecosystem damage that could be quantified.

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