Out This Week: "Firestorm" by Edward Struzik

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Today's headlines reveal a new reality of devastating megafires in places including Greenland, which has never burned before; Central Africa; Siberia; Indonesia; and California, which is preparing for another above-normal fire season. Now, award-winning journalist and explorer Edward Struzik delivers an updated Firestorm: How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future. In the book, he argues that massive wildfires loom as costly, deadly threats?and demand radical new approaches to forests, wildfires, and our relationship with the natural world.

Struzik travels the United States and Canada's northern forests to deliver a, "deft account [about wildfires in the age of climate change that] interweaves reportage, science and policy to show how fires that are normally key to ecological resilience are growing bigger and faster, thawing permafrost, degrading watersheds and disrupting habitats of species from grizzly bears to fungi." (Nature) 

Struzik examines how decades of fire suppression make managing future fires harder, and introduces the scientists, firefighters, and resource managers developing new approaches to wildfire management. His gripping prose is enhanced by powerful photos of wildfires and their aftermath.

While wildfire is an integral part of a healthy forest, these new fires interact with the landscape in ways we don't fully understand: compromising water and air quality, reshaping forests and tundra, and attracting invasive species into weakened ecosystems. Wildfires can benefit forest health and biodiversity, but scientific research and holistic management plans need significant investment.

Firestorm is hopeful about our ability to overcome these challenges and shows how we, and the wilder inhabitants of our forests, might yet flourish in an age of megafires.

Edward Struzik is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is a fellow at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.

Founded in 1984, Island Press works to stimulate, shape, and communicate the information that is essential for solving environmental problems. Today, with more than 1,000 titles in print and some 30 new releases each year, it is the nation's leading publisher of books on environmental issues. For more information, visit www.islandpress.org or @IslandPress.

Purchase Firestorm now at major retailers. Contact Jaime Jennings for media copies [email protected], 202-232-7933 x44, @jaimejennings76.

SOURCE Island Press