“The forests we see today look nothing like the forests of 100 to 150 years ago.”
Today’s highlight of Dr. Paul Hessburg’s TED talk “Why wildfires have gotten worse-and what we can do about it”, demonstrates how drastically our forests have changed over the past decade. Where once open and patchy forests covered our western landscapes, we now find a blanket of trees. Photos taken from fire lookouts in the 1930’s across the west compared to recent photos taken from those same spots demonstrate the noticeable difference in the structure of forests 100 years ago compared to today. See these photos and watch Dr. Hessburg’s complete talk linked here.