Sudden oak death likely exacerbated deadly Northern California wildfires

A dramatic increase this year in the number of oaks, manzanita and native plants infected by the tree-killing disease known as sudden oak death likely helped spread the massive fires that raged through the North Bay, a UC Berkeley forest ecologist said Thursday.

Dead and dying oak trees make wildfires hotter and cause them to spread more quickly, said Matteo Garbelotto, the director of the UC Berkeley Forest Pathology and Mycology Laboratory.

In a study released Friday, Garbelotto’s laboratory found that 37 percent of the trees sampled in fire-ravaged eastern Sonoma County — prior to the fires — were infected by sudden oak death, a ten-fold increase compared with two years ago.