🔥 Why Are Wildfires Important?
Ecological Benefits:
- Fires prevent the overgrowth of vegetation, maintaining balance in ecosystems.
- They create diverse habitats, benefiting plants and animals that thrive in burned areas.
Some ecosystems like pine forests and savannas depend on low‑intensity fire for regeneration and biodiversity.
Destructive Potential:
- When fires become uncontrolled, they can cause severe damage to environment, human life, and the economy.
Environmental: Habitat loss, soil erosion, and carbon emissions.
Human: Property loss, smoke-related illness, and evacuations.
Economic: Firefighting costs, agricultural/tourism disruption.
They can begin through natural events like lightning strikes or volcanic eruptions — but globally, over 90% of wildfires are triggered by humans: unattended campfires, cigarette butts, machinery sparks, or failing power lines.
Once a wildfire starts, it feeds on dry vegetation and accelerates with wind — transforming a small flame into a vast wall of destruction.
Then, the heat from a flame may provide enough energy to make both pyrolysis and combustion the reaction self-sustaining.
