Conditions have been good for fires in the lower elevations in Colorado. The wind has been pretty strong along the Front Range and the temperatures warm. We haven't had much precipitation lately to boot. No surprise we're seeing a lot of fires.
I made a quick map to show some of the fire activity for this year. I added a layer to show drought conditions to see if they are making fire conditions worse.
The drought data is current to March 15 and the fire data is current to this morning. The fire data comes from satellites and remote sensing processing at RSAC. The satellite made a pass over Colorado just before 6 yesterday and around 10 this morning, the 22nd.
 |
| (click to enlarge) |
The fire near Golden is the only one of these displayed that seems to be larger than 300 acres (still looking for the data on size). It is the only fire to show up on the Forest Service's large fire incident map,and it blew up last night to more than 1200 acres, according to the Denver Post.
As expected, most of the fires are in the driest areas of the region. What surprised me is that most of the fires are along the river corridors. My hunch is that these fires might be caused by farmers burning their fields. I thought it was more common to do this in the fall, but something is going on, especially along the Arkansas, but also along the South Platte, Gunnison and San Juan rivers.
I've been wondering about the seasonality of the fire regime where the shortgrass prairie meets Gambel oak and Ponderosa pine along the mountain front. Most of the research on fire regimes has been done, for obvious reasons, on higher elevation, forested areas. Big forest fires often happen in Colorado during the summer and early fall after the snow melts. Most of the fires this year to date, into the spring, have been small grassland fires. This seemed to be true last year as well. Is the early spring always a busy time for grassland fires around the Southern Rockies?
