In the age of global climate change, forests have never been so important. However, due to increasingly dry summers and people's lack of caution, the world's forests remain extremely vulnerable to fires.
To put an end of massive wildfires, scientists at Stanford University have developed a liquid that sticks to trees and plants and prevents forest fires regardless of weather conditions. On the university's website, the scientists said the sticky liquid has the ability to "prevent fires throughout the peak fire season, even after weathering that would sweep away conventional fire retardants."
They added that by preventing fires from starting this treatment would be more effective and less expensive than current firefighting methods. The liquid is sprayed through the forests before the fire season and it sticks to the trees and plants. Since the liquid is weather-resistant, it does not go away when it rains or the wind is strong. After the fire season ends, the liquid degrades into the soil. The new formulation was tested on plots of grass and chamise, a Californian shrub, which are types of vegetation where wildfires commonly ignite in the region. The tests showed that applying about 1 liter of fluid per square meter of land is enough to completely prevent ignitions.
