Goosebumps spread across my skin as I breathed in a frighteningly thick smoke. I looked at the ablaze canyon behind me one last time before clutching my suitcase and leaving with my family. As terrifying as the wildfires were, I—and many other Californians—were sadly used to this. Following a week-long evacuation, I returned to my home, which felt more empty than ever. But, countless neighbors could not even find solace in this, as their houses had been decimated by the fires.

The frequency of the California wildfires resulted in my story being a shared narrative with those around me. According to the Transportation Sustainability Research Center, over half a million Californians are forced to quickly evacuate their homes due to wildfires each year. Furthermore, more than eight million acres of land in California have been charred as a result of fires, killing millions of animals and displacing plenty of others.

These numbers continue to grow as time goes on. The primary cause of the wildfires is climate change. Climate change occurs when greenhouse gases get trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere. These gases then absorb more of the Sun’s heat, making temperatures increase. This widespread global warming not only causes hotter weather but also alters the natural environmental patterns that are essential to sustaining ecosystems.

In July, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) found that global warming makes the air as well as fire fuel—such as plant materials—warmer and drier. As such, the fires have optimal conditions to spread further and faster, making them more severe and challenging to extinguish. In addition, climate change is worsening as a consequence of rising greenhouse gas emissions from humans; the Los Angeles Times reported that California's wildfire potential accordingly increased by 25 percent.

However, there seems to be hope for containing and preventing future wildfires in California. UCLA wildfire experts analyzed previous containment methods to remove possible barriers in dousing conflagrations. Their conclusion was that wildfires must be combated with environmental complexity in mind.

One example of a strategy under the environmental complexity framework is prescribed burning. The United States National Park Service describes prescribed burns as planned fires to decrease the existing wildfire fuel in an area. Prescribed burning decreases the amount of wildfires and reduces their intensity by considering the role of environmental fuel.

Another example of UCLA’s recommended wildfire approach is vegetation thinning. Vegetation thinning refers to removing small plants and trees that would probably fuel blazes. When prescribed burns and vegetation thinning are combined, the UCLA researchers hope that wildfires will be better prevented in a way that utilizes as few resources as possible.

Glen MacDonald, the primary UCLA researcher and the UCLA John Muir Memorial Chair of Geography, addressed the significance of using techniques like prescribed burning and vegetation thinning to get rid of fire fuel and deter wildfires.

“So when the fire goes through, there are really high levels of vegetation destruction or destruction of standing timber and trees. The lower components of the vegetation, the herbs, and the shrubs, as well as the tree canopy, [are] destroyed. That's a high-severity fire,” MacDonald said.

The last thing that UCLA advised was cooperation between organizations such as local and federal agencies along with firefighters. Better communication regarding wildfire suppression and policies will strengthen future approaches to containing fires by applying the expertise of multiple specialized groups.

Carolyn Enquist, a UCLA collaborator and federal director of the United States Geological Survey’s Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, highlighted the importance of working together to fight wildfires as climate change worsens.

“Wildfires are a natural part of our ecosystems. It’s all these things working together to create one giant, synergistic, complex problem. No one agency, entity, or government level is going to be able to tackle this on its own,” Enquist said.

As wildfires and climate change continue to exacerbate, it is becoming increasingly urgent to find a solution to these issues before more land and lives get destroyed. The UCLA wildfire approach could be an innovative answer to the problem of wildfires, but this will only be revealed with time.