Canadian authorities on Friday ordered the evacuation of thousands of people in several cities in the west of the country due to the rapid progression of one of the more than 1,000 forest fires raging in Canada. Photo: EFE.

For Victor Resco de Dios, University of Lerida

The fire occupies each time more space in the news. In recent years, many fires have taken over, each time, around the world.

Today’s fires are not like those before. They have become more aggressive and are profoundly altering the planet, leaving us at the dawn of what might be called the pyrocene. A world where fires replace man in his role as landscape sculptor.

Below we will explain what has changed, how the current fires are affecting the Earth and how to reverse the situation. But first, we must remember that this has not always been the case. Until not so long ago, we were able to control fire. In reality, fire had been our great ally.

tame the fire

There tame the fire assumed a pivotal event for our speciesboth at the evolutionary level and for the development of modern societies.

In fact, one of the first technologies developed was the pyric, with the conquest of fire. With fire control came the landscape management, and we also learned to cook. And with cooking, the nutritional value of food increased, while digestion time and health problems decreased. Cooking food has increased the size of our brain and, therefore, our ability to reason.

If we fast forward the clock of history, we find an industrial revolution which was, in reality, a pyric revolution. We have learned to control flames in order to obtain energy by burning and all sorts of machines, engines, instruments and gadgets have been invented to facilitate our existence.

Pyrocene: loss of control over the fire

But during the industrial revolution, we switched fuels. Industrial fires were not fueled by living, vegetable fuels, but by fossil, lithic fuels.

There burning fossil landscapes It changed the atmosphere and we started warming the climate. The abandonment of the mountains has changed the physiognomy of the land, and now the biomass is accumulating. More heat and more fuel: more wood for the fires.

And the fires of now escape us. We can no longer control them. We have kept the flames at bay for decades. The area burned in forests had decreased due to the development of new extinguishing strategies, improved training, as well as the disproportionate increase in expenditure on extinguishing media. But that has now been truncated.

Everything indicates that we are facing a turning point. A moment when, perhaps for the first time since conquering fire, we lose control of it. Forest fires are escaping more and more frequently, we are retreating into their domain. Now it is the fire that conquers us.

The mastery of fire made possible the Anthropocene, the Age of Man. And the loss of its control takes us to the Pyrocene, the Age of Fire. A time when the flame, not the hoe, is the main shaper of our landscapes.

World-changing fires

The power of the new lights is enormous. The gigafires of three years ago in southeastern Australia, for example, engulfed 21% of its foreststhey enlarged the hole ozone layer And cooled the weather locally. This happened because the particles suspended in the column of smoke, the aerosols, blocked the entry of the sun’s rays and the destruction of the ozone layer modified the atmospheric currents. Although these effects were transient and only lasted a few months.

When the aerosols finally succumbed to gravity, much of it settled in the Southern Ocean, promoting a exorbitant algae growth. Aerosols contain micronutrients which, like iron or nitrogen, are essential for phytoplankton. Thus, the fires in Australia have greened the Antarctic Ocean.

Besides the effects on the planet, gigafires like those in Australia have a noticeable impact on infinity of social aspects such as health, economy and education.

But this is not just the case in Australia. In many parts of the world, on the shores of Atlantic and Pacific, we find similar processes. And if it is true that there have always been catastrophic and out of control fires, it is now that we are constantly experiencing them.

Taming the new fires

It is still possible to abandon the Pyrocene path. He European Green Deal and the imperative of the energy and ecological transition offers us a framework for the development of effective policies to stop the Pyrocene. And the science and engineering They provide us with detailed suggestions and instructions on how to achieve this:

• Promote extensive breeding. In particular the promotion, support and advice to shepherds in their traditional pascicultural burns. Grazing is a formidable ally in breaking the continuity of fuel, reducing the intensity of the fire and providing an opportunity for extinction.

• Recreate the natural dynamics of fire. It is a question of introducing the technical fire, by a controlled burning of weak intensity. We are talking about harmless burning, engineering works based on ecological principles.

• Develop green firewalls. The periphery of urban environments must include wide strips, of great extension, devoid of vegetation. But trees can also be maintained, if preferred, by setting up prescribed risks. These are sprinklers mounted on cranes, which sprinkle the vegetation with reclaimed water and thus slow the progression of the fire.

• Decrease the thickness of forests. It’s about chopping down trees and improving your health. Cutting trees is not deforestation. On the contrary, felling trees in a sustainable way, by reducing the amount of fuel, is an excellent shield to protect the mountains from a deforestation fire.

• Strengthen agricultural activity. The most effective brake against fires is in crops. Rural abandonment is not a thing of the past, but continues to increase at a breakneck pace. It is paradoxical, since we continue to eat every day. Therefore, we need the primary sector.

We need living and inhabited landscapes. This is the way to prevent the fire from continuing to occupy the ecological space that man left free when leaving the forest.

Victor Resco de DiosProfessor of Forest Engineering and Global Change, University of Lerida

This article was originally published on The conversation. read it original.