Since the mid-1980s, when accurate satellite records of burned areas begin, the annual area burned by wildfire in the western US has increased nearly fourfold. This increase has been most heavily concentrated in forests, which experienced an increase of approximately 1300%. In this talk I will diagnose this rapid increase in western US wildfire activity, shedding data- and logic-informed light on a topic that has been unnecessarily politicized. I will then explore how wildfires have affected western US streamflow to date and whether continued rapid increases in wildfire activity are likely to meaningfully affect western US water resources across large spatial scales in the coming decades.

Park Williams

Park Williams is an associate professor in UCLA’s Geography Department whose research aims to understand the causes and consequences of hydrological extremes such as drought. Much of his research focuses on climate science in its own right, and much also aims to improve understanding of how hydrological extremes affect life on earth. Questions that he finds especially interesting involve the effects of human-caused climate change on the hydrological cycle, ecological systems, and humanity through extreme events such as heat waves, wildfires, and flooding.