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How Invasive Plants Are Fueling California’s Wildfire Crisis
Non-native grasses and eucalyptus trees brought to California centuries ago for agriculture and landscaping have reshaped the state’s fire dynamics.
But today it burns hotter, more frequently, and spreads further than ever before—a shift driven by human development, climate change, and the prevalence of invasive species, which are non-native plants that have negative effects on local ecosystems. “They have such a high surface area to volume and are very flat and thin, so they maintain a lot of dead standing material, almost all year round,” says Carla D’Antonio, a plant community researcher and professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Some areas in Southern California are even testing a “BurnBot”, a machine that travels over the ground, performing controlled burns by torching anything directly underneath it—clearing both existing vegetation and plant seeds.
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