How can we adapt to a warmer world?
Researchers around the world agree that the planet is getting warmer and extreme weather such as heat waves and prolonged droughts will increase the risk of wildfires. Wildfires from the Anthropocene group of the Pufendorf Institute brings together researchers from across Lund University who study fire from different perspectives, including climate change, health, environmental safety, fire safety and biodiversity.
Every year California’s wildfire season gets longer, fires in the Amazon and Australia grow dramatically, and this summer’s massive fires hit southern Europe. These more extreme and unpredictable fires are more common and harder to fight.
Wildfires in the Anthropocene group of the Pufendorf Institute brings together researchers from all over Lund University. Together they want to investigate the causes and effects of forest fires.
Wildfires: A Spectacular?
“We cannot ignore wildfires,” says Lina Eklund, a researcher at the Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Sciences and the Center for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies.
“We can see how the damage is affecting us so badly. increase. How do we learn to live with it and what must we do to reduce the number of fires?
Debates about the causes of forest fires are ongoing on several levels. Should researchers rely on hard environmental data, or should they study how political and economic systems control and influence climate?
Pinard Dink, a political scientist at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Middle East, studies the relationship between conflict and fire in the Middle East. Can we establish a relationship between different levels of conflict and an increase in fires? In recent years, much attention has been paid to a deeper analysis of the causes of conflict and climate change. “But it’s not easy. Who or what is actually causing the fires? Is it the state, marginalized groups of people, drought? The political issues that have been dealt with cause forest fires.”
political pressure
Lina Eklund specializes in remote analytics, examining satellite imagery and data to see what happened over time across vast lands. It is this work that she applies to conflict zones in the Middle East, where political and religious factors are usually analyzed. “The emphasis is on looking at how landscapes such as farmland change over time. My research shows that as the conflict escalates and more people die, so does the number of fires. It has been shown to
Both Lina Eklund and Pinar Dinc say that deforestation after the great fires forces society to find new ways of life and puts pressure on the political level to bring about change.
“The more we work in this field, the more we think about how groups, especially marginalized groups, need to resist what is happening on their land,” says Pinard Dinc.
Using satellite imagery, Lina Eklund was able to identify fires in the Chernobyl area. Fire believed to be caused by conflict in the area. These fires can result in the release of radioactive particles that have been underground since the 1986 nuclear accident.
“What do these fires mean in terms of these potentially harmful substances being released into the atmosphere? No previous fires around Chernobyl have released dangerous levels of particles. But the possibility of a fire in such an important area is terrifying.”
fire without limits
Fire does not respect borders. Wildfires can spread from one country to another. Buildings can be destroyed, farmlands devastated, and forced relocations can occur. How to deal with it, and what strategies are needed nationally and internationally? About 50 fires broke out and the EU assisted firefighters with resources from Italy, France and others to control the situation. That’s the collaboration Pinar Dinc and Lina Eklund want. “It is also important to broaden our research horizons and consider the political and economic factors that can cause fires. is irritating.
Lina Eklund and Pinar Dinc envision a future where we learn more about what causes wildfires and how to combat them, and find ways to live with them to better adapt society to a hotter world.
“In the end it is not nature that is destroyed, it is mankind. Nature always wins,” says Pinar Dinc.
Quotation: https://phys.org/news/2022-11-world-hotter-planet.html
