Setting fire to a million acres of California could cut smoke by half

You can fight fire with fire, even in the flammable forests of the western US.

According to an analysis of California’s record-breaking 2020 fire season, intentionally burning land can reduce the severity and amount of smoke from wildfires that burn those areas later on, even when accounting for smoke from the intentional fires themselves. “We show that there is a net benefit,” says Makoto Kelp at Stanford University in California.

The idea of “prescribed burning” is…