Seasonality and trends in human- and lightning-caused wildfires ≥ 2 ha in Canada, 1959–2018

Coogan, Sean C. P.; Cai, Xinli; Jain, Piyush; Flannigan, Mike D.

doi:10.1071/wf19129

Cited by 44 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Increasingly frequent re-burning of forested areas in southeast Australia also has the potential to irreversibly alter ecosystem composition and biodiversity 12,111 . Around the world, an increasing number of studies are documenting climate-related changes in fire activity 38,112,113 , including quantification of the increased fire risk that is attributable to human-caused climate change 80 .…”

Section: Broader Context and Response Optionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Connections of climate change and variability to large and extreme forest fires in southeast Australia

Abram

Henley

Gupta

et al. 2021

Commun Earth Environ

509

291

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The 2019/20 Black Summer bushfire disaster in southeast Australia was unprecedented: the extensive area of forest burnt, the radiative power of the fires, and the extraordinary number of fires that developed into extreme pyroconvective events were all unmatched in the historical record. Australia’s hottest and driest year on record, 2019, was characterised by exceptionally dry fuel loads that primed the landscape to burn when exposed to dangerous fire weather and ignition. The combination of climate variability and long-term climate trends generated the climate extremes experienced in 2019, and the compounding effects of two or more modes of climate variability in their fire-promoting phases (as occurred in 2019) has historically increased the chances of large forest fires occurring in southeast Australia. Palaeoclimate evidence also demonstrates that fire-promoting phases of tropical Pacific and Indian ocean variability are now unusually frequent compared with natural variability in pre-industrial times. Indicators of forest fire danger in southeast Australia have already emerged outside of the range of historical experience, suggesting that projections made more than a decade ago that increases in climate-driven fire risk would be detectable by 2020, have indeed eventuated. The multiple climate change contributors to fire risk in southeast Australia, as well as the observed non-linear escalation of fire extent and intensity, raise the likelihood that fire events may continue to rapidly intensify in the future. Improving local and national adaptation measures while also pursuing ambitious global climate change mitigation efforts would provide the best strategy for limiting further increases in fire risk in southeast Australia.

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Section: Broader Context and Response Optionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Connections of climate change and variability to large and extreme forest fires in southeast Australia

Abram

Henley

Gupta

et al. 2021

Commun Earth Environ

509

291

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Additionally, lightning-caused fires can occur in large numbers over a short period of time which can overwhelm a fire management agency's capacity to respond. Recent research suggests that the number of lightning-caused fires have increased in some regions of northern and western Canada over the last 50 years (Hanes et al 2019;Coogan et al 2020).…”

Section: Understanding the Role Of Weather In Wildland Firementioning

confidence: 99%

“…There have been increases in area burned and fire season lengths in western and northern Canada (Coogan et al 2020;Hanes et al 2019) where warming has been the greatest. For example, interior BC, Alberta, and northern Ontario have longer fire seasons today as compared to 1959-2000(Albert-Green et al 2013Hanes et al 2019).…”

Section: Wildland Fire and Climate Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Fifty years of wildland fire science in Canada

et al. 2021

Self Cite

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We celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Canadian Journal of Forest Research by reflecting on the considerable progress accomplished in select areas of Canadian wildfire science over the past half century. Specifically, we discuss key developments and contributions in the creation of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System; the relationships between wildland fire and weather, climate, and climate change; fire ecology; operational decision support; and wildland fire management. We also discuss the evolution of wildland fire management in Banff National Park as a case study. We conclude by discussing some possible directions in future Canadian wildland fire research including the further evaluation of fire severity measurements and effects; the efficacy of fuel management treatments; climate change effects and mitigation; further refinement of models pertaining to fire risk analysis, fire behaviour, and fire weather; and the integration of forest management and ecological restoration with wildfire risk reduction. Throughout the paper we reference many contributions published in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research, which has been at the forefront of international wildland fire science.

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“…Wildfire activity has increased in the western North America since the mid-20 th century (Hagmann et al 2021), with increases in fire frequency, burned area, number and size of large fires, fire severity, frequency of lightning-caused fires, and length of the fire season (Dennison et al 2014;Coops et al 2018;Hanes et al 2019;Coogan et al 2020;Parks and Abatzoglou 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although recent research has improved the accuracy of historical area burned estimates (Skakun et al 2021) and the number of fire attributes considered (Meyn, Schmidtlein, et al 2010;, analyses generally focus on datasets beginning in the mid-to late-20 th century at regional (Burton et al 2008;Albert-Green et al 2013;Veraverbeke et al 2017;Campos-Ruiz 2018) and national (Coogan et al, 2020;Coops et al, 2018;Hanes et al, 2019) scales. Further, these studies generally investigate fire regimes changes after a single impress of fire, despite multiple lines of evidence that fire regimes through the 20 th century have been spatially and temporally dynamic (Naficy et al 2015;Naficy 2016;Hessburg et al 2019;Greene 2021;Hagmann et al 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A century of transformation: Fire regime transitions from 1919 to 2019 in southeastern British Columbia, Canada

Baron¹,

Gergel²,

Hessburg³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The past 100 years marks a transition between pre-colonial and modern era fire regimes, which provides crucial context for understanding future wildfire behavior. Using the greatest depth of digitized fire events in Canada, we identify distinct phases of wildfire regimes from 1919 to 2019 by evaluating changes in mapped fire perimeters (>20-ha) across the East Kootenay forest region (including the southern Rocky Mountain Trench), British Columbia (BC). We detect transitions in annual number of fires, burned area, and fire size; explore the roles of lightning- and human-caused fires in driving these transitions; and quantify departures from historical fire frequency at the regional level. We found that, relative to historical fire frequency, fire exclusion created a significant fire deficit across 89% of the flammable landscape. Fire was active from 1919 to 1940 with frequent and large fire events, but the regime was already altered by a century of colonization. Fire activity decreased after 1940, coinciding with effective fire suppression influenced by a mild climatic period. After 2003, the combined effects of fire exclusion and accelerated climate change fueled a shift in fire regimes of various forest types, with increases in area burned and mean fire size driven by lightning.

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Seasonality and trends in human- and lightning-caused wildfires ≥ 2 ha in Canada, 1959–2018

Cited by 44 publications

References 40 publications

Connections of climate change and variability to large and extreme forest fires in southeast Australia

Connections of climate change and variability to large and extreme forest fires in southeast Australia

Fifty years of wildland fire science in Canada

A century of transformation: Fire regime transitions from 1919 to 2019 in southeastern British Columbia, Canada

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