The Exploring the Past to Understand the Future website has not been significantly updated since 2014. We are preserving the web pages here because they still contain useful ideas and content. But be aware that the site may have out of date information.

Climate Change and Fire in the Western United States

Authors: Amy Sadosky and Ellsbeth Schmachtenberger

This case study is part of a collection of pages developed by students in the 2012 course, "Megafires: rare events or the new norm," in the Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University. Learn more about this project.

Fires are becoming more prominent in the Western United States due to climate change. A temperature increase of 1