Cheminformatics could help save forests from the damage caused by runaway widlfires. As long as there have been forests, there have been forest fires, from the bushfires of the Australian outback, across Africa, Asia, and Europe, to the Americas. Such fires often thought of has having a regenerative effect on old woodland, but predictions of an increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires because of climate change could lead to loss of forest and soil erosion rather than dendritic rebirth. Spanish researchers have now used near infrared spectroscopy, a simple calibration technique and cheminformatics analysis of their spectra to determine a key parameter of soil damage – the MTR, or maximum temperature reached. You can read the full story in the latest issue of SpectroscopyNOW.