Large forest fires in Canada, 1959–1997

Abstract

A Large Fire Database (LFDB), which includes information on fire location, start date, final size, cause, and suppression action, has been developed for all fires larger than 200 ha in area for Canada for the 1959–1997 period. The LFDB represents only 3.1% of the total number of Canadian fires during this period, the remaining 96.9% of fires being suppressed while <200 ha in size, yet accounts for ∼97% of the total area burned, allowing a spatial and temporal analysis of recent Canadian landscape‐scale fire impacts. On average ∼2 million ha burned annually in these large fires, although more than 7 million ha burned in some years. Ecozones in the boreal and taiga regions experienced the greatest areas burned, with an average of 0.7% of the forested land burning annually. Lightning fires predominate in northern Canada, accounting for 80% of the total LFDB area burned. Large fires, although small in number, contribute substantially to area burned, most particularly in the boreal and taiga regions. The Canadian fire season runs from late April through August, with most of the area burned occurring in June and July due primarily to lightning fire activity in northern Canada. Close to 50% of the area burned in Canada is the result of fires that are not actioned due to their remote location, low values‐at‐risk, and efforts to accommodate the natural role of fire in these ecosystems. The LFDB is updated annually and is being expanded back in time to permit a more thorough analysis of long‐term trends in Canadian fire activity.

Negligent and intentional fires in Portugal: Spatial distribution characterization

“…In fact, on a global scale, humans cause most of the wildfires, except in the boreal areas of North America and Eurasia, where a significant number of natural wildfires occurs and are responsible for a large part of the TBA (Le Page et al, 2015;Rowe and Scotter, 1973;Stocks et al, 2002;Veraverbeke et al, 2017). In Mediterranean-type ecosystems, wildfires are mostly caused (intentionally or negligently) by human activities which vary spatially and temporally in ways that could affect their size and destructiveness (Curt et al, 2016;Pereira et al, 2017;Syphard and Keeley, 2015).…”

Could increased boreal forest ecosystem productivity offset carbon losses from increased disturbances?

“…This is equivalent to a 100-year fire return interval, common for many regions in the Canadian boreal forest (Stocks et al 2002). This base disturbance rate was used during model initialization for all scenarios.…”

“…Increases in the area annually burned would also have a strong impact on future forest succession (de Groot et al 2003) and age-class distributions (Kurz et al 1998;Kurz & Apps 1999), thereby influencing the capacity of the forest landscape to sequester and store C (Thornley & Cannell 2004). Already in the latter half of the twentieth century, the area burned annually by wildfire in Canada has increased (Stocks et al 2002), with consequent negative implications for C dynamics (Kurz & Apps 1999;Kang et al 2006).…”

Climate and wildfires in the North American boreal forest

“…Large fires account for over 85% of the total area burned but less than 5% of the fires. The landscape of the boreal forest is thus determined not by the numerous small fires but by the infrequent large fires Stocks et al 2003). The frequency of large fire years, and thus area burned, in Canada has increased in the last four decades of the twentieth century (figure 1).…”