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Climate change is related to the number and severity of forest fires in the West, and more funding is needed to study the interaction, a UA scientist told a Senate committee Monday.

"Warming temperatures have clearly begun to influence fire activity in the Southwest," said Thomas W. Swetnam, director of the University of Arizona's Tree Ring Laboratory, in his introductory comments to the committee members in Washington, D.C.

Swetnam mentioned Oregon's massive Biscuit Fire and Arizona's devastating Rodeo-Chediski Fire, both in 2002.

And although he said studies of tree-growth rings showed climatic changes are cyclical, and temperature and precipitation swings were historically related to fires before Europeans settled the area, he said, "they don't explain the large fires we've had."

Swetnam spoke of the need for managing forests to prevent massive "crown fires," but he didn't allow himself to get pinned down in the long-running battle between advocates and opponents of logging in the name of lowering forest fire potential.

"I honestly don't think we can thin our way out of this problem," Swetnam said, referring to questions from some members of the committee about the practice of cutting smaller trees to prevent or diminish the severity of forest fires.

The senators of the Committee on Energy & Natural Resources who spoke and questioned the witnesses were from New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho and Montana.

And, although no specific mention was made of environmental groups' legal intervention to stop logging small trees in federal forests, some of the questions were clearly loaded with implications.

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, tried to get Swetnam to give a specific size of tree that he thought should be thinned to prevent or minimize the severity of forest fires.

Swetnam — who had just said the government needed to "focus on smaller diameter trees" in some forests — replied that there was no specific size that needed to be cut and that thinning small trees wasn't the answer for all forests.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, spoke at length about the severity of recent forest fires in his state and said "we here in Washington" had "tied the hands" of Forest Service officials. He said the justification for limits on clearing fuel in forests was "more political than scientific."

There was also discussion of using small trees and undergrowth from federal lands for energy through biomass conversion.

During the hearing, which was broadcast live on the Internet, the senators also questioned experts from the U.S. Forest Service and the University of California-Berkeley about forest health, including bark-beetle infestations, invasive grass species and management techniques on wildfires.