Kneeling in the underbrush of the Witherle Woods in Castine, Cooper Stanley took a handsaw to the base of a young spruce tree and starts sawing away.
He was among dozens of uniformed Maine Maritime students making a fire break on either side of an old road that runs through the woods parallel to nearby homes.
"We were told any trees with needles and to clear the limbs on hardwoods," Stanley said.
Over 250 wildfires burned across Maine in August, more than twice the average number for the month.
Forestry officials say drought conditions helped to ignite and spread those fires. But climate change could escalate the fire threat, and some communities are preparing for a future clouded by flames, smoke and ash.
Witherle Woods abuts historic Castine village, and there's a fire ban in the 190-acre preserve. But fires have still broken out there before, said Mike Kersula a regional stewardship manager for Maine Coast Heritage Trust, which owns the property.
To reduce the risk, the trust enlisted the academy's help to build a shaded fire break, Kersula said.
Working in teams, students drag out dead wood, brush and spindly fir and spruce and pile it at the side of the road. The debris is destined to be ground into wood chips.
"We're removing fuels, removing fire prone trees, and creating this break that would help to stop a fire that was being pushed towards the village of Castine from actually being able to spread close to houses," he said.
The project has been in the works for a while, but it took on new urgency this summer after a wildfire broke out elsewhere in Castine, he added.
"Having a four-acre wildfire that has a many town fire department response and Maine Forest Service response in your town is is going to make you aware and awake to the fact that these woods are capable of burning," Kersula said.
In the last decade, Maine wildfires burned about 500 acres a year on average. But eighty years ago, fires burned thousands of acres annually.
Dry conditions like the drought that settled into Maine this summer increase the chances that wildfires will start, spread and be more severe, said Andrew Barton, a forest ecologist at University of Maine Farmington.
But a warmer atmosphere has an effect too, he added.
"What happens with warmer temperatures is that air has, for the lack of a better term, sucking capacity," Barton said.
Warm air can pull moisture out of plants, trees and dead vegetation. Barton said that can happen even if there’s enough rainfall.
"There’s evidence in some places that the precipitation is fine, but it is so hot that it is drying things out and increasing fire risk," he added.
Dry conditions this year, mixed with a couple of heat waves produced ideal fire conditions. Barton said with higher temperatures and more variable precipitation in the future, Maine could expect more of the same.
"That all suggests that we’re going to have more flash droughts. And flash droughts especially in a place like Maine, are the conditions that give rise to large wildfires," he said.
Wildland fires are natural to Maine's environment, said Robby Gross, chief ranger for the Maine Forest Service.
But the difference now compared to a century ago is that development and housing has edged into forests. That interaction is known as the "wildland-urban interface" and it can make planning for and combatting fires more challenging, Gross said.
"We're not just dealing with the forest now and putting containment line in to deal with a wild land fire in the forest," he said. "We're dealing with structures. We're dealing with a number of people who live in those structures."
Still, Gross said Maine has the lowest acreage of land burned per fire in the U.S. The forest service has better tactics, equipment and preparedness than it did decades ago. And it has tools to prevent fires, such as turning off online burn permits when the fire risk gets too high. More than 90% of wildfires in Maine are caused by humans.
But Gross doesn't rule out a repeat of the 1947 fires that destroyed huge sections of Acadia National Park, Western Maine and York County.
"The thing about the '47 fires is, if we don’t recognize that it could happen, we’re not as prepared as we could be," Gross said.
Back in Castine, Allen Kratz observed the fire break taking shape in Witherle Woods. Krtaz is leading an 18-month wildfire planning project across nine towns on the Blue Hill peninsula.
"We have higher winds, drier summers, more drought, and as those climate conditions continue, we're going to have to be more and more aware of how to protect our properties, protect our individuals from that increased risk," Kratz said.
The planning project hopes to map out vulnerable areas, better prepare fire departments to combat wildfires and spread awareness in schools.
And it even goes to the household level, Kratz said.
"We're doing many proof of concept projects showing people how to reduce the ignition zone around their homes and create more defensible space," he said.
Terms like ignition zones, firebreaks and wildland-urban interface seem more familiar in the western U.S., which is accustomed to large scale fires.
But Kratz said that's changing, as people across the northeast see devastating blazes on the news and breathe in smoke from Canadian wildfires.
"We don't think of it typically in New England, but climate change is creating adverse conditions," Kratz said.
"Extreme temperatures, weather patterns that are changing, flash droughts, all of the insects that are damaging trees, all of these things create a greater fuel load, and we need to be available and ready to mitigate that risk."
