We saw in Exercise 57 that the number of fires was nearly constant. But has the damage they cause remained constant as well? Here's a regression that examines the trend in Acres per Fire, (in hundreds of thousands of acres) together with some supporting plots:

Dependent variable is Acres/fire
R-squared = 46.25% s = 20.08
Variable Coefficient
Intercept …………………. 19.62
Years since 1985 ………… 2.22

a) Is the regression model appropriate for these data? Explain.
b) What interpretation (if any) can you give for the R2 in the regression table?