Valles Caldera wildfires

Friday, June 28, 2013

An interview with Tree-Ring Lab Director Tom Swetnam makes up most of a recent Albuquerque Journal article on forest fires in New Mexico, with the 2013 Thompson Ridge fire in the Valles Caldera National Preserve as the literal backdrop to the story. It covers the history of fire in the region, from the tree-ring evidence of past low-intensity fire regimes, through the vigorous supression efforts of the earlier twentieth century, to the changing attitudes of more recent decades, and the problems of restoring past conditions now that huge high-intensity fires are commonplace.