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One of the largest wildfires in Arizona history, the Wallow Fire, has already swallowed up nearly 400,000 acres of forest, including areas in the Apache National Forest, due east of Phoenix. This image, taken by the Landsat-7 satellite on June 7, reveals actively burning areas (bright red), freshly burned ground (darker red), unburned forest and grassland (green), sparsely planted earth or bare ground (pale pink).
(Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory)
The Wallow Fire in eastern Arizona is now the second-largest fire in Arizona history, engulfing nearly 400,000 acres in flames. Some forest experts warn that an overly dense, unnatural forest structure is fueling the fire and putting millions more acres of trees at risk.
"Decades of scientific research reveal that the West is suffocating under too many trees," Wally Covington, a professor of forest ecology at Northern Arizona University and executive director of NAU's Ecological Restoration Institute, said in a statement. "Where we once had 10 to 25 trees per acre, we now have hundreds."
