More wildfires, drought and climate change bring devastating changes to California wildlands
LOS ANGELES - Summer had not yet arrived, but already the hillside on the edge of Los Padres National Forest was the color of toast.
Even a brilliantly sunny day couldn't dress up the dull palette of invasive grasses that had transformed the slope into a dried-up weed patch.
Only a sprinkling of young shrubs provided a hint of what the spot looked like before it had burned - again and again and again.
In the last 22 years, three wildfires have swept across the area, all but erasing the cover of gray-green sage scrub documented in 1930s aerial photographs.
Southern California's native shrublands are famously tough. Conservationist John Muir celebrated them as Mother Nature at her "most ruggedly, thornily savage."
They evolved along with long, hot summers, at least six rainless months a year and intense wildfires.
But not this much fire, this often.
The combination of too-frequent wildfires and drought amplified by climate change poses a growing threat to wildlands that deliver drinking water to millions, provide refuge from Southland sprawl and - 142 years after Muir penned his mash note - are still home to mountain lions, bears and big-eared woodrats.
Burn maps show the astonishing extent of the wildfires that have seared the southern portion of the Los Padres forest and adjacent lands.
The border of the 2007 Zaca fire bleeds into the even bigger 2017 Thomas fire, which in turn runs into the footprint of the 2006 Day fire. Together they incinerated an area roughly twice the combined size
