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As climate change dries out high-elevation forests, they become more flammable and are burning with increasing frequency. Depicted is the Druid Complex, which included six lightning-sparked fires that started inside Yellowstone National Park in 2013. Credit: Mike Lewelling / National Park Service
As climate change drives up temperatures and creates longer, more expansive droughts, the typically cool, moist high-elevation forests of the central Rockies are burning with greater frequency than any time in the past 2,000 years, according to a study in the upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Lead author Philip Higuera, a fire ecologist at the University of Montana, examined paleofire records - data from tree rings and lake sediment - across a broad swath of the central Rockies of Colorado and Wyoming to understand how frequently subalpine forests burned...