Naomi Osaka and Rafael Nadal are sitting out Wimbledon, leaving the oldest Grand Slam tennis tournament without two of the sport’s biggest stars as it returns after being canceled last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.Osaka’s agent, Stuart Duguid, wrote Thursday in an email that the four-time Grand Slam champion does plan to head to the Summer Games after skipping Wimbledon.”She is taking some personal time with friends and family,” Duguid wrote. “She will be ready for the Olympics and is excited to play in front of her home fans.”Osaka, 23, was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a Haitian father. The family moved to the United States when she was 3 and she is still based there.Osaka has been ranked No. 1 and is currently No. 2. She is the highest-earning female athlete and was the 2020 AP Female Athlete of the Year. She is 14-3 this season, including a title at the Australian Open in February.Last month, Osaka was fined $15,000 when she didn’t speak to reporters after her first-round victory at the French Open. The next day, she pulled out of the tournament entirely, saying she experiences “huge waves of anxiety” before meeting with the media and revealing she has “suffered long bouts of depression.”In a statement posted on Twitter at the time, she said she would “take some time away from the court now, but when the time is right, I really want to work with the Tour to discuss ways we can make things better for the players, press and fans.”Osaka has played at Wimbledon three times, twice exiting in the third round and losing in the first round in 2019.FILE – Spain’s Rafael Nadal waves to the crowd after losing to Serbia’s Novak Djokovic in their semifinal match of the French Open tennis tournament at the Roland Garros stadium in Paris, June 11, 2021.Wimbledon, which was called off in 2020 for the first time since World War II because of COVID-19 concerns, begins main-draw play on June 28. The Olympic tennis competition opens on July 24.Nadal, a two-time champion at the All England Club, announced via a series of social media posts Thursday that he would also miss the Tokyo Olympics to rest and recover “after listening to my body.””The goal,” the 35-year-old Spaniard said, “is to prolong my career and continue to do what makes me happy.”Nadal lost to Novak Djokovic in four grueling sets that lasted more than four hours in the semifinals of the French Open last week — just the third loss for Nadal in 108 career matches at Roland Garros, where he has won a record 13 championships.That defeat ended Nadal’s 35-match winning streak at the clay-court major tournament and his bid for a fifth consecutive title there.After the loss to Djokovic at Roland Garros, Nadal pointed to fatigue as an issue for him in the later stages of that match.On Thursday, he explained in one his tweets that avoiding “any kind of excess” wear and tear on his body “is a very important factor at this stage of my career in order to try to keep fighting for the highest level of competition and titles.”A former No. 1-ranked player who currently is No. 3, Nadal is 23-4, with two titles this season in Barcelona and Rome, both on clay courts.
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Day: June 17, 2021
The United States is investing $3.2 billion in the development of antiviral pills for COVID-19 and other viruses that could spark new pandemics.
The top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, made the announcement Thursday at a White House briefing as part of a new initiative called the Antiviral Program for Pandemics.
The program will support research into the development of new drugs to address symptoms caused by the coronavirus and other potentially dangerous viruses.
Pills for COVID-19 are already in the developmental stage and could begin to be available by the end of 2021 if clinical trials are successful.
The funding will expedite the trials and bolster support for private sector research, development, and manufacturing.
The U.S. previously approved the antiviral drug remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19. It has also authorized for emergency use three antibody combinations that help fight the virus. But the drugs must be infused at hospitals or other medical facilities, a logistical issue that has resulted in weak demand.
Pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Roche have begun testing antiviral medications in pill form.
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Even as big tech companies such as Amazon limit their sale of facial recognition software to law enforcement, one company has not: Clearview AI, a facial recognition search engine that contains three billion images scraped from the internet. More than 3,000 U.S. law enforcement agencies employ the software, which uses an advanced algorithm to identify and match faces, the company says. “The way it works is very similar to Google, but instead of putting in words, you’re putting in photos of faces, and it will find anything publicly available on the internet that looks like that face,” said Hoan Ton-That, chief executive and co-founder of the company. Police argue that facial recognition software is an important tool in fighting and solving crimes. But its increasing use has raised concerns that there are too few rules in place for when and how police can use it. Limiting the scope of software Police typically have image search engines at their disposal that pull drivers’ license pictures or other photos among police records. Clearview AI, in contrast, has gathered billions of images from social media sites and other websites, which internet firms say were obtained by breaking their rules. Clearview AI’s Ton-That says that the company only pulls publicly available information. In one case, federal agents were able to identify a man suspected of sexual abuse of a girl using a single image from the “dark web,” an area of the internet only accessible by special software and matching it through Clearview AI. “He was in the background of someone else’s photo at the gym, in the mirror,” said Ton-That. “They were able to identify where the gym was, identify the person, he ended up doing 35 years in jail and they saved a seven-year-old.” A tool for law enforcement The software was also instrumental in helping federal as well as state and local law enforcement identify suspects that stormed the U.S. Capitol in January, according to Ton-That. In one way, Clearview AI, which has created its database from people’s social media accounts and other public parts of the internet, was well suited to help with this massive investigation of people whose mugshots wouldn’t necessarily be in police databases, he said. Police were able to use Clearview AI, which runs about a second per search, he said, and find matching photos online of some suspects. “So they were able to quickly identify them, and reduce a lot of false-positives, and also speed up the investigative process,” he said. What about privacy? When police violence protests swept the U.S. last year, Amazon and other tech firms suspended sales of their facial recognition technology to law enforcement, a suspension they have said is indefinite. Clearview AI continues to sell to law enforcement, and internet firms such as Facebook, Google and Twitter as well as civil rights advocates are raising the alarm about its power and potential abuse of people’s privacy. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has sued the company in Chicago and California. Kate Ruane, senior legislative counsel for the ACLU, said that facial recognition technology raises the specter of the government “being able to surveil us throughout every single aspect of our lives.” Federal, state and local governments, she says, “do admit that they use it, but they don’t tell us how, when or how often.” There needs to be oversight and regulation, she said, but until then, she is calling for a total moratorium on law enforcement use of facial recognition technology. Legislation & regulation In recent months, congressional leaders have introduced bills that would limit police use of purchased data that was “illegally obtained” via deception or breach of contract. Clearview’s Ton-That agrees that there needs to be more transparency and even regulation around the technology’s use. But as for banning police use of Clearview? “Given the success of our technology in solving crimes, especially crimes against children, it would be counterproductive and inappropriate to enact a moratorium or ban of facial recognition or Clearview AI’s product,” he said. Ton-That has a code of conduct for customers and has built-in prompts in its software to help law enforcement customers prevent the software’s misuse. Repressive governments’ use of facial recognition tech The ACLU and other civil rights groups are also concerned about the implications of this technology in the hands of repressive governments like China. “Because the implications are terrifying,” said the ACLU’s Kate Ruane, “especially what is going on in China, where it is trying to track citizens across every single aspect of their lives.” Ton-That says his company does not sell its software to foreign governments and is focusing for now on law enforcement in the U.S. “We’ve worked occasionally with some other private entities for investigative purposes, but we’ve decided just to focus on law enforcement,” he said. “It’s the easiest, most explainable and best use case of our technology.”
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The U.S. Supreme Court for the third time on Thursday upheld the legality of the country’s chief health insurance law that provides millions of Americans with coverage to help pay their medical costs.
The court, in a 7-to-2 decision, rejected a bid by 18 Republican-led states and the administration of former President Donald Trump to upend the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
It was the signature legislative achievement of former President Barack Obama, Trump’s immediate predecessor, and is popularly known in the U.S. as Obamacare.
The country’s highest court had also rejected legal challenges in 2012 and 2015, with all three decisions keeping in place such politically popular provisions as allowing young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance policies until they turn 26 and ensuring coverage for patients with preexisting health conditions.
As originally approved by Congress, the law required people to pay a penalty if they chose to not buy health insurance. But Congress in 2017 set that penalty — the so-called individual mandate — at zero.
Republican state attorneys general, and the Trump administration, contended that removing the penalty provision made the whole law unconstitutional.
The court did not consider the validity of the claims made against the law but ruled that the states opposed to it did not have legal standing to make the challenge.
The majority decision was written by liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, and joined by two of the three conservative justices appointed to the court by Trump, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
The third Trump appointee, Neil Gorsuch, joined Justice Samuel Alito in dissent.
President Joe Biden has said he will attempt to add on provisions to the Affordable Care Act, which was approved when he was Obama’s vice president.
Biden called the decision “a victory for more than 130 million Americans with pre-existing conditions and millions more who were in immediate danger of losing their health care in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra praised the Supreme Court decision, saying it was “a victory for all Americans, especially people with a preexisting condition or anyone who was worried they could be forced to choose between their health and making ends meet. Health care should be a right — not a privilege — just for the healthy and wealthy.”
In a separate decision Thursday on religious rights, the court ruled that the eastern city of Philadelphia was wrong to terminate a foster care services contract with Catholic Social Services, which refuses to work with same-sex couples because of its religious beliefs.
All nine justices agreed with the outcome, but Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a majority of six that Philadelphia violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise of religion in ending the contract with the Catholic organization.
Roberts said the organization only sought “an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else.”
“The refusal of Philadelphia to contract with [Catholic Social Services] for the provision of foster care services unless it agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents cannot survive strict scrutiny, and violates the First Amendment to the Constitution,” Roberts wrote.
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Facial recognition technology is playing an increasingly important role in helping law enforcement with criminal investigations, police say. But civil rights advocates are raising the alarm about its power and potential abuse of people’s privacy. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more
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The United Nations warns accelerating climate change is causing a dramatic intensification of global drought disasters, which are threatening agricultural production, the world’s safe water supply and other essential aspects of human development. The U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has launched a “Special Report on Drought 2021.” U.N. researchers say drought has affected more people around the world in the past four decades than any other natural disaster. The U.N. report warns the impact of the climate-driven drought emergency on the lives and livelihoods of people across the planet will worsen in the coming years. The U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction Mami Mizutori says drought has directly affected 1.5 billion people so far this century. She says most of the world will be living with water stress in the next few years as drought disasters grow. She says drought is a major factor in land degradation and is responsible for declining yields of major crops. She adds shifting rainfall patterns and variability pose a risk to the 70 percent of global agriculture that is rainfall-dependent.”A warming planet threatens to multiply the number of people without access to safe water and sanitation, thereby seriously increasing the spread of diseases, the risk of displacement and the potential even for conflict over scarce water resources,” Mizutori said. G-7 Ministers Discuss COVID Vaccines, Climate ChangeForeign ministers of world’s wealthiest democracies are meeting ahead of a summit of the group’s heads of state next month While droughts always have been part of the human experience, the damage and costs resulting from them are seriously underestimated. The report estimates the global economic costs arising from drought from 1998 to 2017 of at least $124 billion.The World Health Organization considers drought to be the most serious hazard to livestock and crops in nearly every part of the world. It says water scarcity impacts 40 percent of the world’s population. WHO projects as many as 700 million people are at risk of being displaced by 2030 because of drought.Leading co-author of the report Roger Pulwarty agrees the data contained within the report is grim but does not see an apocalyptic picture ahead. “I do not think that there is in fact this issue surrounding the collapse of civilizations…We are not seeing truly an increase in the frequency of drought,” Pulwarty said. “But we are seeing that where they occur in the different regions in which they do exist, an increase in intensification when they occur and the rapid onset of drought.” Over the millennia, Pulwarty notes people have found ways to adapt to risks from drought and other natural disasters. He says lessons learned from over 20 cases around the world – including the Horn of Africa and the Euphrates and Tigris River system in Western Asia – have been incorporated in the report. However, he says tried and true drought management measures taken in the past must be adapted to meet the challenges of today’s changing nature of drought risk.
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Spain’s Rafael Nadal will not play at Wimbledon or at the Tokyo Olympics, saying Thursday he has decided to skip the two tournaments after “listening” to his body.Nadal, who reached the French Open semifinals this month but lost to Novak Djokovic, won the title at Wimbledon twice. He also won the Olympic gold medal in singles at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.”The goal is to prolong my career and continue to do what makes me happy, that is to compete at the highest level and keep fighting for those professional and personal goals at the maximum level of competition,” Nadal said.He said the fact there was only two weeks between Roland Garros and Wimbledon “didn’t make it easier” on his body to recover from “the always demanding” clay-court season.
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Japan unveiled plans Thursday to slowly ease the coronavirus state of emergency in Tokyo and several other prefectures in time for next month’s opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that the government will switch to “quasi-emergency” measures once the state of emergency expires Sunday. The looser restrictions would remain in place until July 11, just 12 days before the start of the Olympic Games. In addition to looser restrictions, the government is expected to announce a plan to allow up to 10,000 spectators to enter venues holding Olympic events. FILE – Workers install additional security fence outside Olympic Stadium (National Stadium) for the Tokyo Olympic Games, June 10, 2021.The initial one-month state of emergency was first declared in April due to a surge in new COVID-19 infections in the Japanese capital and beyond, and was extended in late May. The surge prompted staunch public opposition against staging the Olympics, especially among a prominent group of medical professionals that urged Suga to call off the games. The Tokyo Olympics are set to take place after a one-year postponement as the novel coronavirus pandemic began spreading across the globe. Foreign spectators have been banned from witnessing the event. Disappointing results for CureVac vaccine Late-stage testing of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine has revealed some disappointing results. Preliminary findings show the vaccine developed by German biophaaceutical company CureVac is just 47% effective against the virus — below the 50% threshold set by the World Health Organization. FILE – A volunteer receives a dose of CureVac vaccine or a placebo during a study by the German biotech firm CureVac as part of a testing for a new vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Brussels, Belgium, March 2, 2021.The vaccine has been given to 40,000 volunteers in Latin America and Europe. Franz-Werner Haas, CureVac’s chief executive, has blamed the disappointing results on the huge number of COVID-19 variants that have emerged since the start of the pandemic.
The European Union had reached an agreement with CureVac to purchase at least 225 million doses of the vaccine. The company says the Phase 3 trial will continue, with final results expected within a few weeks. Growing concern in Africa A report by the Associated Press Thursday reveals that public health officials on the African continent are alarmed over the slow rate of vaccinations and a surge in new COVID-19 infections. The AP says the continent has received only 2% of all vaccine doses administered globally, despite its 1.3 billion people accounting for 18% of the world’s population. Some countries have yet to inoculate a single person. The World Health Organization says nearly 90% of African countries are set to miss the global target of vaccinating 10% of their people by September.
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A wave of brief internet outages hit the websites and apps of dozens of financial institutions, airlines and other companies across the globe Thursday.The Hong Kong Stock Exchange said in a tweet Thursday afternoon Hong Kong time that its site was facing technical issues and that it was investigating. It said in another post 17 minutes later that its websites were back to normal.Internet monitoring websites including ThousandEyes, Downdetector.com and fing.com showed dozens of disruptions, including to U.S.-based airlines.Many of the outages were reported by people in Australia trying to do banking, book flights and access postal services.Australia Post, the country’s postal service, said on Twitter that an “external outage” had impacted a number of its services, and that while most services had come back online, they are continuing to monitor and investigate.Many services were up and running after an hour or so, but the affected companies said they were working overtime to prevent further problems.Banking services were severely disrupted, with Westpac, the Commonwealth, ANZ and St George all down, along with the website of the Reserve Bank of Australia.Services have mostly been restored.Virgin Australia said flights were largely operating as scheduled after it restored access to its website and guest contact center.“Virgin Australia was one of many organizations to experience an outage with the Akamai content delivery system today,” it said. “We are working with them to ensure that necessary measures are taken to prevent these outages from reoccurring.”Akamai counts some of the world’s biggest companies and banks as customers.Calls to Akamai, which is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but has global services, went unanswered.The disruptions came just days after many of the world’s top websites went offline briefly due to a problem with software at Fastly, another major web services company. The company blamed the problem on a software bug that was triggered when a customer changed a setting.Brief internet service outages are not uncommon and are only rarely the result of hacking or other mischief. But the outages have underscored how vital a small number of behind-the-scenes companies have become to running the internet.
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The first manned crew of China’s new permanent space station docked with the outpost Thursday evening.The Shenzhou-12 spacecraft carrying veteran space travelers Nie Haisheng and Liu Boming and rookie Tang Hongbo rendezvoused with the Tianhe module six hours after blasting off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China.The trio will spend the next three months aboard the module, whose name translates to “Heavenly Harmony,” outfitting it with equipment and testing its various components.This mission is China’s first manned space flight in five years, and the third of 11 needed to add more elements to the space station before it becomes fully operational next year. The new station is expected to remain operational for 10 years.The station could outlast the U.S.-led International Space Station, which may be decommissioned after its funding expires in 2024. China has never sent astronauts to the ISS due to a U.S. law that effectively bars the space agency NASA from collaborating with China.China is aggressively building up its space program as an example of its rising global stature and technological might. It became the third country to send a human into space in 2003, behind the United States and Russia, and has already operated two temporary experimental space stations with manned crews.Just this year, it sent an unmanned probe into orbit around Mars, while another probe brought back the first samples from the moon in more than 40 years.
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U.S. President Joe Biden’s unexpected decision to name a staunch antitrust advocate to lead the Federal Trade Commission has thrilled supporters of stronger regulation of the tech industry and has prompted predictions of regulatory overreach from representatives of some of the country’s largest internet companies.Lina Khan, 32, a professor at Columbia Law School prior to her nomination, is known for advocating a hard-nosed approach to the regulation of large technology firms like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple. She was nominated to fill an open seat on the FTC in March, and on Tuesday she was confirmed in a bipartisan 69-28 vote in the Senate.Shortly afterward, the news that she would be not just a commission member but its leader was announced by Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar at a Senate hearing.Her confirmation may signal an unexpectedly aggressive stance toward big tech firms from a presidential administration that had not seemed to make reining in the giants of Silicon Valley a major priority.Early run-in with big techKhan was born in London to Pakistani immigrant parents. The family moved to the United States when she was 11 and settled in New York City. Khan went to Williams College in Massachusetts, where she edited the school newspaper and completed her thesis on the political theorist Hannah Arendt.Khan’s first run-in with the might of big tech firms came when she was barely out of college and working for the Open Markets Program at the New America Foundation, a left-of-center think tank. The program’s focus was on the anti-competitive behavior of big businesses, such as Google, which happened to be a major financial supporter of the New America Foundation.FILE – This March 19, 2018, photo shows a Google app.In 2017, after the Open Markets Program expressed its approval of the European Union’s decision to slap Google with a $2.7 billion fine for the way it ranked its own shopping services in internet search results, the company’s chief executive reached out to the head of New America to express his displeasure.What happened afterward is disputed by the various parties involved, but within about two months, the Open Markets team was formally separated from the foundation.Going after big tech companiesKhan made a name for herself in the world of antitrust law with a 2017 article in The Yale Law Journal called “Amazon’s Anti-Trust Paradox.” The piece argued that typical antitrust doctrine in the U.S., which considers “consumer welfare” when determining whether a company is engaging in anti-competitive behavior, is inadequate in today’s world. A consumer products giant like Amazon can keep prices low — the biggest determinant of consumer welfare — even as it uses its dominance of a technology platform to disadvantage its competitors.Two years later, Khan followed up with an article in the Columbia Law Review advocating the application of “structural separations” to tech firms. The idea is that a system in which a company operates a platform on which goods and services are sold while simultaneously selling goods and services on that platform creates “a conflict of interest that platforms can exploit to further entrench their dominance, thwart competition and stifle innovation.”A prime example, offered in the paper, was Apple’s decision to block the popular music streaming service Spotify from its app store at the same time that it was trying to roll out a competing service called Apple Music.House reportKhan went on to help lead a major investigation into competition in digital markets by the majority staff of the House Judiciary Committee, which was issued in October of last year. The report included sweeping proposals for the application of antitrust law to the tech industry — including Khan’s favored concept of structural separation — and infuriated advocates for the tech industry.FILE – This combination of photos shows logos for social media platforms Facebook and Twitter.Khan’s participation in the House Judiciary report figured strongly in the negative reaction that news of her appointment as FTC chair generated from the industry. NetChoice, a group that represents giant companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and more, quickly released a statement indicating its dismay with the decision.”Lina Khan’s antitrust activism detracts from the Federal Trade Commission’s reputation as an impartial body that enforces the law in a nondiscriminatory fashion,” said Carl Szabo, the group’s vice president and general counsel.Khan’s work on the House Judiciary report “casts doubt on her ability to fairly and neutrally apply our antitrust laws as they stand today,” Szabo said.Cheers from the leftDuring his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Biden competed against other candidates, like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who specifically called on the government to “break up” large technology firms. During the campaign, Biden never went as far as Warren, which made the elevation of Khan to lead the FTC all the more surprising.”Lina brings deep knowledge and expertise to this role and will be a fearless champion for consumers,” Warren said in a statement Tuesday. “Giant tech companies like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon deserve the growing scrutiny they are facing, and consolidation is choking off competition across American industries. With Chair Khan at the helm, we have a huge opportunity to make big, structural change by reviving antitrust enforcement and fighting monopolies that threaten our economy, our society and our democracy.”Even the New America Foundation — now New America — which separated with Khan and the Open Markets team under questionable circumstances in 2017, applauded her nomination to run the FTC.In a statement Tuesday, Joshua Stager, deputy director of broadband and competition policy at the foundation’s Open Technology Institute, called Khan a “proven thought leader who has helped jolt antitrust enforcement out of stagnant 1970s thinking. After years of sluggish enforcement — particularly in digital markets — the FTC needs a fresh perspective. We look forward to working with Commissioner Khan.”
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For some people, COVID has led to changes in lifestyle, or even a new job. That’s the case of a cyclist in Los Angeles, California, who ended up opening several bicycle shops to meet a growing demand by people wanting to get exercise while exploring their city. Mike O’Sullivan has more.
Camera: Mike O’Sullivan and Roy Kim
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China launched the first crew of its new permanent space station into orbit Thursday morning.Veteran astronauts Nie Haisheng and Liu Boming and rookie Tang Hongbo blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China aboard the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft.A crowd of well-wishers bid the three astronauts farewell in an elaborate ceremony before they boarded a van to take them to the launch pad to board their spacecraft. The mission is China’s first manned space flight in five years.The trio is expected to reach the first module of the station, dubbed Tianhe, or “Heavenly Harmony,” by Thursday evening, where they will spend the next three months outfitting the module with equipment and testing its various components.This mission is the third of 11 needed to add more elements to the space station before it becomes fully operational next year. The new station is expected to remain operational for 10 years.The station could outlast the U.S.-led International Space Station, which may be decommissioned after its funding expires in 2024. China has never sent astronauts to the ISS due to a U.S. law that effectively bars the space agency NASA from collaborating with China.China is aggressively building up its space program as an example of its rising global stature and technological might. It became the third country to send a human into space in 2003, behind the United States and Russia, and has already operated two temporary experimental space stations with manned crews.Just this year, it sent an unmanned probe into orbit around Mars, while another probe brought back the first samples from the moon in more than 40 years.
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The current rate of forest fires burning through the Rocky Mountains in the United States is the highest it’s been in the past 2,000 years, University of Montana professor Philip Higuera, right, and his team collect lake sediment from Chickaree Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, used to reconstruct fire and vegetation history. (Grace Carter photo; image courtesy of Philip Higuera)“The 2020 fire season was record-setting across the West [of the United States],” said Philip Higuera, a fire ecologist at the University of Montana and lead author of the study. “Colorado broke the previous record for largest fires in the state three times last year.”At the forest’s high elevations, the environment normally keeps the trees cool and wet relative to forests at lower elevations. Naturally occurring forest fires may burn every few hundred years, but even then, fires need unusually warm, dry weather to first dry out the vegetation to serve as fuel.’Sentinels’ of climate changeThe areas known as subalpine forests are also less sensitive to fire suppression and less impacted by past land management than lower-elevation forests, Higuera said. “They’re better sentinels of climate change.”Ecologists wondered if the fires of 2020 were unprecedented, even relative to the forests’ history of fires stretching back over millennia. They studied historical records to understand if the recent fires were an anomaly and published their results June 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Modern human records of forest fires go back only a few decades. The study authors used government satellite records to track fires and how far they spread from 1984 to 2020. For fires before 1984, they relied on records of fires that had been preserved by nature.Tree rings and their fire scars or charcoal deposited and preserved in lake sediments, for example, are like signatures left by past fires. Each layer of lake sediment, deposited at a certain time in history, provides information about conditions during that time. Similarly, a tree’s rings, which correspond to its age in years, can retain marks that act as a time stamp for past fires.The Calwood Fire erupts west of Boulder Colo., Oct. 17, 2020, contributing to a record-setting fire season in the central Rocky Mountains. (Bryan Shuman)To see if the pace of forest fires had recently changed, the authors estimated how long it would take to burn all of Colorado’s subalpine forests at the rate they burned in a given era. Accounting for fires over the past two millennia, that number was about 204 years or more. Fires from 2000 to 2020 cut that time almost in half, to 117 years.“It puts into perspective how far of an anomaly the 2020 fire season was,” said Julie Korb, a forest and fire ecologist at Fort Lewis College in Colorado, who was not involved in the study. “In these high-elevation forests, up until this point, we thought they were kind of protected from the changes that we’ve been seeing in the climate.”Weather heightened dangerAccording to the study, warmer, drier weather made the trees more prone to burning.Although the results showed that climate change has pushed the Rocky Mountain forest systems into uncharted territory with respect to historical wildfires, Higuera said it was important to keep in mind that the specific conditions of these high-elevation forests shouldn’t be generalized across all forests.“Forest fires are not necessarily all negative,” said Larissa Yocom, a fire ecologist at Utah State University, who also was not involved in the study.University of Montana researchers examine lake sediment cores from subalpine forests in the Rocky Mountains. Each core is sliced into sections, and variation in charcoal within the core is used to reconstruct past wildfires. (University of Montana)Wildfires, which burn outside human control, are often naturally part of the long-term life cycle of environments such as forests or grasslands.Studies have shown that many lower-elevation forests on the West Coast of the United States were experiencing a “deficit” in fire activity compared with historical patterns, partly because of the suppression of fires through human intervention. At the same time, those land management practices likely helped accumulate fuel for even more intense wildfires, such as the ones that occurred in 2020.When fires occur repeatedly or too severely, forests can have trouble recovering to healthy states, Yocom said. The resulting smoke can also impact human communities and cause health issues like lung damage.“This really emphasizes that we can’t rely on what we’ve seen in the past as a good strategy for what to expect and what to plan for,” said Kyra Wolf, a fire ecologist at the University of Montana and co-author of the study. “We need to rethink or reimagine what it looks like to live in these fire-prone areas in the West.”Scientists expect more extreme weather and human intervention will continue to change the planet’s environment.“It’s no longer a projection. It shows that change is already occurring. We’re living in the middle of it,” Yocom said of the study.
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