Canadian forests becoming more prone to severe wildfires: study

The treacherous combination of rising temperatures and drying fuels has made Canadian forests much more prone to severe wildfires in recent decades, a new study has found.

Driving these dangerous circumstances are the impacts of climate change, which is wreaking havoc on Canada’s northern forests, among the most forested and fire-prone regions in the northern hemisphere, according to the study, published Thursday inscience.

“Canada is facing longer fire seasons with more extreme and complex fire behavior driven by changing climate conditions,” wrote the authors, led by Weiwei Wang of the University of British Columbia and the Service Forestry of Canada.

During a record fire season in 2023, flames burned about 37 million acres, more than seven times the historical average from 1986 to 2022, the scientists noted.

To assess burn severity and its key drivers, the researchers combined 50 years of wildfire data to build a model that allowed them to analyze 10 Canadian ecological zones.

They found that fuel aridity, both the amount and dryness of flammable vegetation, was the main factor in wildfire severity. They also observed that summer months were more prone to severe burns.

Northern Canada in particular, the researchers determined, experienced a dramatic increase in burn severity caused by climate change. Meanwhile, in southern Canada, fuel aridity and vegetation variations played a more instrumental role, the study found.

In evaluating their results, the researchers emphasized the importance of considering burn severity maps in fire preparedness and management plans, including prescribed burn regimes. Some severe fire-prone areas in Canada, they continued, also “overlap with higher population densities,” indicating “an elevated threat to local communities, warranting increased attention and concern.”

Jianbang Gan, a conservation expert at Texas A&M University who was not affiliated with the study, emphasized the urgency of the findings in an accompanying perspective paper, also published inscience.

“From an ecological perspective, increased fire activity in boreal forests, particularly in northern regions of the world, has raised major concerns about the health and function of biomes that act as important carbon sinks Gan wrote.

Boreal forests, also known as taiga, are the largest biome in the world and cover subarctic regions of the northern hemisphere. Canada has almost 700 million acres boreal forestwhich is about 28 percent of the world’s boreal zone, stores carbon, purifies air and water, and acts as a climate regulator.

Emphasizing the critical nature of protecting the boreal from the flames, Gan emphasized the need for cooperation on this issue between the US, Canada and Russia, which collectively hold about 93 percent of this biome .

This partnership, Gan added, is necessary “to effectively manage fire while preserving this valuable northern hemisphere ecosystem.”

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