More high-elevation wildfire is sapping Western snowpack, study finds
Researchers from Colorado State University focused on areas they call “late snow zones” – regions in the Western mountains where snow doesn’t typically melt until May or later. They found that between 1984 and 2020, wildfire activity increased in 70% of these zones throughout the West. The mountain ranges studied included the Sierra Nevada, Cascades, Basin and Range, and Northern and Southern Rockies. In the Southern Rockies, specifically, more forest burned in late-melt snow zones in 2020 than in the previous 36 years combined. These burn scars at higher elevations, the researchers discovered, affect how much snow the mountains can hold, and for how long.