Between 2001 and 2021, up to 25 million hectares of forest burned worldwide; this is an area comparable to the size of the United Kingdom. This conclusion was reached by a group of British and Australian scientists from Cambridge and Australian National Universities. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Natural Geology (NatGeo).
According to the report, the number of annual forest fires has tripled in the last decade. The most affected regions were Brazil, Australia, Canada, the USA and Siberia in Russia.
One possible reason for the worsening fire danger in the world’s forests is that timber harvesting is making forests more vulnerable to fire. This has been documented in parts of southeastern Australia, where intact forests always burn at lower intensity than felled ones.
Researchers say the wildfire situation could lead to wood and paper shortages for the foreseeable future.
One way to solve the problem is to grow more wood in the fields. Such plantations currently produce a third of the major tree species for commercial use. However, forest plantations cover only 3% of the natural forest area.
Another important strategy to protect forest resources will be to implement new technologies that will detect fires, such as lightning strikes, more quickly and then quickly suppress them.
New technologies and better planned and managed plantations will be critical not only to preserve forests, but also to protect the flow of commercial timber and its dependent industries, the report says.
Earlier Chinese scientists I learnedSmoke from the record number of forest fires in Canada in the summer of 2023 reached Europe and Asia.