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More than 130 people have died in Chile’s wildfires this year, the deadliest in the country’s history. In Colombia, smoke from wildfires filled the outskirts of Bogotá last month, belying the city’s cold and wet reputation. And in Argentina, wildfires destroyed forests that are listed as World Heritage Sites by the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO.
These wildfires will add to the devastation caused by record fires in the Amazon in October 2023. This is not a normal pattern. In many parts of the region, “wildfires are not part of the natural history of the landscape, except for occasional lightning-induced fires,” said Francisco de la Barrera, an environmental scientist at Chile’s University of Concepción. To tell.
But scientists say a combination of strong El Niño weather patterns, large numbers of invasive trees and climate change fanned the flames. Researchers warn that the same factors could put other cities on the continent at risk.
“We are very concerned because each new fire is getting bigger, more threatening and more impactful,” de la Barrera said.
The fiery legacy of climate change
The devastating fires have multiple causes, but climate change is one of the main ones, said Maisa Rojas Corradi, a climatologist who serves as Chile’s environment minister. Rojas said the country has seen 16 major fires in the past 10 years, which coincided with “the highest temperatures ever recorded in central Chile.” The megadrought that hit the region in 2010 was one of the longest in 1,000 years, said Wenju Kai, a climate scientist at Australia’s national science agency CSIRO in Melbourne.
Climate change is also reducing cloud cover and shrinking glaciers in the Chilean Andes, Cai said. This means less sunlight is reflected, resulting in higher temperatures.
This year, Cai said, the effects of climate change have been amplified by the strong El Niño weather pattern. Warmer sea surface temperatures off the coast of Chile are raising temperatures inland, encouraging “warm easterly winds that blow across the Andes from Argentina toward Chile,” fueling the fires, he said.
Where the forest and city meet
Humans have also provided sufficient fuel for local wildfires through benevolent tree planting. In the 20th century, eucalyptus trees, native to Australia, were planted in the hills around Bogota to prevent severe erosion, said Droz Armenteras, a biologist at the National University of Colombia in Bogotá. Eucalyptus was chosen because it grows quickly and adapts well to a variety of conditions.
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Trent Penman, a bushfire scientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said the planting had a “noble goal”, but the large number of eucalyptus trees provided a wealth of flammable material in the form of shed bark. He says he is doing it. These easily ignite, creating large numbers of embers that can be blown onto roads, rivers, and other fuel breaks, causing fires to spread rapidly.
De la Barrera said non-native trees were involved in Chile’s wildfires. The area of forest plantations in the Valparaíso region, where the January fires broke out, doubled between 2006 and 2021 to more than 41,000 hectares, according to the country’s agriculture ministry. Eucalyptus accounts for almost 40% of the area covered by plantations in Chile.
“Over the past 20 to 30 years, cities have become much more like plantations,” de la Barrera said, adding that people living in the rural-urban interface of cities will be at greater risk of fires in the future. .
fire warning
“When I saw the fires in Bogotá, it was like watching a fire. record of a foretold death” says Tania Marisol González, a conservation ecologist at the Pontifical University of Javeriana in Bogota. She is referring to a novel by Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez about a small town in which no one can stop a murder, despite having many opportunities. , This is the same as not being able to stop a wildfire.
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Gonzalez said Latin America needs to take further precautions, such as reducing fuel loads and building firebreaks. Armenteras said replacing non-native trees in these transition zones on the edges of Latin American cities with native species that are less susceptible to fire could reduce fire risk. However, more research is needed before starting such a program. “We don’t know enough about the flammability of this species in Latin America. We don’t know which species we can use,” she says.
Chile’s Environment Minister Rojas says the government’s job is to make the country more resilient to fires. One of the possibilities, she says, is to “promote biodiverse landscapes with protected water sources and fire protection areas, especially at the urban-rural interface.” This reduces risks to people and nature. ”
However, there is a long road ahead. De La Valera warned that the measures proposed by Rojas would require significant legislative and regulatory changes.
Colombia’s Ministry of the Environment did not respond. NatureThis is a comment request from .
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