Droughts across the West are getting worse - and scientists warn it’s not going to get any better

Currently, mitigation strategies largely consider droughts as yearly or seasonal events, which stands in stark contrast to the longer and more severe megadroughts we will face in the future,

Pellicciotti said

There are more extreme winds on the horizons ... next week and our community needs to remain ready,

Los Angeles City Fire Chief Kristin Crowley warned at a press briefing on Thursday

Each year since 1980, drought-stricken areas have spread by an additional fifty thousand square kilometers on average — that’s roughly the area of Slovakia, or the U.S. states of Vermont and New Hampshire put together — causing enormous damage to ecosystems, agriculture, and energy production,

Institute of Science and Technology Austria Professor Francesca Pellicciotti said in a statement

But in the event of long-term extreme water shortages, trees in tropical and boreal regions can die, leading to long-lasting damage to these ecosystems. Especially, the boreal vegetation will likely take the longest to recover from such a climate disaster,

Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research’s Dirk Karger, a study author, explained

The whole ecosystem is going to change,

Marjan Khonsari said

In general, this is more similar to burn pit exposures than it is to forest fires,

environmental toxicologist Luke Montrose told the outlet

The moisture from the rain can reduce the intensity of the fire by wetting any existing fire fuel, such as trees and plants,

the Western Fire Chiefs Association said in an explainer article

So much of the forest and the wildlife has been burnt down,

community volunteer Seth Monk told USA Today

Residents should not, not, not, go home and sift through the debris,

Katie Arrington, an environmental cleanup expert, told USA Today

Horrific fires always impact the shoreline habitat and water quality, as detritus and runoff from the destruction inevitably flow to the Bay. But rarely have we seen environmental devastation like this,

the group said in an Instagram post

The combination of intense wildfires followed by rainfall can increase the risks of flash floods, mudslides, and erosion in fire-affected areas,

they said

Our task force has been involved with far too many cases of utility companies not using good judgment and failing to comply with the laws, policies, and ordinances that are in place to protect and preserve our finite natural resources."

Eric Edmunds, Chair of the Santa Monica Mountains Task Force in a 2020 letter

[This ... This project is] essential in regards to our wildfire mitigation plan."

The LADWP in 2020

This is one of the most flammable ecosystems on the planet. This may sound very strange, but from a longer-term ecological perspective, as such, these fires may not be particularly damaging,

Doerr says

The chaparral ecosystem in California is actually a fire-adapted ecosystem, thus burning maintains its biodiversity,

says Doerr

This has actually degraded this ecosystem in something that is untypical,

says Doerr

Areas that did provide food, shelter, habitat, are being taken out of commission,

says Pratt

It looks like Armageddon now,

says Prof Stefan Doerr from Swansea University, who is co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Wildland Fire

The main danger is that the intensity of the fires has killed the below-ground organs of the plants and thus killed them. Another plausible scenario is that the intensity of the fires has caused severe damage to the soil structure,

she says

The habitat will come back, of course, but it may come back differently,

she says