This easily discovered, resilient and seemingly harmless plant is the source of an increasing number of large, fast-spreading and destructive wildfires in the United States. Grass is as omnipresent as the sun and, under the right meteorological conditions, can start forest fires with just a single spark.
Pollution is warming the globe, increasing temperatures and precipitation, which increases the size and frequency of fires. Grass becomes king as fires worsen environmental damage. As U.S. Department of Agriculture research ecologist Adam Mahood once said, “Name a place and there is a grass that can live there.” “Every 10-foot area that is not gravel becomes a species Give grass.”
According to CNN’s fire specialists, grass fires often develop more slowly and do not last as long as wildfires. However, they can spread much more quickly, evading firefighters and burning into newly constructed homes in wild areas that are prone to fire.
The number of homes destroyed by wildfires in the U.S. in the last 30 years has more than doubled as they got bigger and worse, according to a recent study. Most fires started by humans started in grass and bushes rather than in forests.
This is because more than two-thirds of all residential buildings in the West have burned down in the last 30 years. Almost 80% of these were damaged by grass and turf fires.
Construction activity is increasing at the so-called “wildland-urban interface,” which borders fire-prone wild areas. The number of land burnings in this vulnerable area has increased significantly since the 1990s. There are also more houses now. According to the same estimate, there will be over 44 million homes at the interface by 2020, an increase of 46% over the last 30 years.
While it is obvious that building in high-risk areas increases the risk of fire, it also increases the likelihood of a fire occurring in the first place, since most fires are started by individuals.
There are more than 80,000 homes in the sparsely populated areas of Bill King’s holdings in Kansas and Colorado, on the border between wilderness and cities. According to the US Forest Service official, residents who live near the environment need to take precautions to prevent damage.
Despite a significant fuel disruption, King said property owners “need to do their part as well” because these fires can spread for miles. This is because the fires become so large and intense and are occasionally driven by wind.
Excellent wildfire potential
Fires caused by climate change are attacking the western United States from all directions. According to Merced climate expert John Abatzoglou of the University of California, “The places that burn the most are the ones that get average rainfall.” “It’s a bit like Goldilocks.” “Just right, not too wet or too dry, with lots of sparks.”
Perennial plants are ideal for starting a fire because the American plains experience a variety of seasonal extremes that are typically windy and dry. This area of the US has more grass than other areas, so fires can still occur here. There are other major fires in the region, such as the megafire Smokehouse Creek Fire in Texas, as well as deadlier fires, such as the Colorado Marshall Fire in 2021, which destroyed over 1,000 homes.
In spring, when it rains, more grass grows. This winter it is sleeping or “playing dead,” as the saying goes. Because there is less snow in the northern plains and winters are warmer elsewhere, late winter and early spring become warmer and drier. That’s what both Todd Lindley, a fire weather specialist with the National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma, and King say.
Lindley said grass poses a particular risk because its condition varies depending on the season. Grass can catch fire for short periods of time more quickly than wooded areas. Plants can lose water in as little as an hour or even a day after a rain shower. Invasive plants that burn hotter and longer than native plants, strong winds and a spark can make a grass fire extremely deadly.
“If you find the right sequence of these different extremes occurring one after the other, this kind of wildfire can happen,” Abatzoglou explained. “Essentially you’re encouraging the fire to spread there.”
Development of grass
According to King, years of forest neglect and severe drought are causing fires in western forests to become larger and more intense. “When I started, a big fire was 30,000 acres, and now it’s just small things,” King said. “I would have a fire this big maybe once or twice a year, but now we’re hearing about 100,000 hectares of forest fires.”
Forests also contain grass that acts as a kind of fuse, connecting easier-to-ignite, finer fuels with larger tree systems suffering from drought to ignite and spread stronger flames. Where trees once stood, grass now sprouts. After a fire, grass grows back much faster than other plants and occasionally sprouts again after a few months. King has first-hand experience with this.
“It grows back so quickly that in just a day or two you could see green grass growing in burned patches of grass,” King said. “Forests could take years or generations to recover, or they might not recover at all in our lifetimes or our children’s and grandchildren’s lives.”
In the West, more burned plants are giving way to native and non-native grasses. According to the USDA’s Mahood, fires are starting in the desert where none existed before. The same drought-related fires that are becoming larger in desert regions occur because annual grasses do not thrive year-round like perennial grasses in the plains.
These plants develop quickly after rain and die, leaving a carpet of fire fuel on the desert floor. Mahood cited two recent fires in the Mojave National Preserve in California as excellent examples. Because blackberry grass spreads quickly, these flames destroyed over a million iconic Joshua trees and hundreds of thousands of acres of the Mojave Desert.
Then native plants cannot revive as the weather becomes hotter and drier. The grass has grown significantly. The largest ecosystem in the Lower 48 States is the famous western sagebrush. But half of them have been lost or destroyed in the last 20 years. A sagebrush area the size of Delaware is destroyed each year by fire, grass and other causes, according to a USGS study.
The risk of fire is higher today and in the future due to increased grass cover and various climate-related causes. Mahood continued: “It may seem bad right now, but in ten years it won’t be nearly as bad.” “The fire season twenty years ago was terrible. That seems insignificant now.”