Fire deficit increases wildfire risk for many communities in the Canadian boreal forest

The top priority of fire management agencies in Canada is to protect human life and property. Here we investigate if decades of aggressive fire suppression in the boreal biome of Canada has reduced the proportion of recently burned forests (RBF; <30 years) near human communities, and thereby inad...

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Published in:Nature communications Vol. 11; no. 1; pp. 2121 - 9
Main Authors: Parisien, Marc-André, Barber, Quinn E., Hirsch, Kelvin G., Stockdale, Christopher A., Erni, Sandy, Wang, Xianli, Arseneault, Dominique, Parks, Sean A.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.05.2020
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Portfolio
Subjects:
704/158/2449
704/158/2465
704/172
704/4111
Boreal forests
Environmental risk
Flammability
Forests
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
open climate campaign
Risk
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Taiga
Wildfires
Wildland-urban interface
Canada
ISSN:2041-1723, 2041-1723
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The top priority of fire management agencies in Canada is to protect human life and property. Here we investigate if decades of aggressive fire suppression in the boreal biome of Canada has reduced the proportion of recently burned forests (RBF; <30 years) near human communities, and thereby inadvertently increased the risk of wildfire. We measured the percentage of RBF, which are usually less flammable than older forests, up to a 25-km radius around communities compared to that in the surrounding regional fire regime zone. Our analysis of 160 communities across boreal Canada shows that 54.4% exhibited a deficit or lack of RBF, whereas only 15.0% showed a surplus. Overall, a majority (74.4%) of communities are surrounded by a low (≤10%) proportion of RBF, indicating a higher vulnerability of those communities to wildfire. These findings suggest that suppression policies are increasing flammability in the wildland–urban interface of boreal Canada. A primary element of modern wildfire management is to aggressively suppress small fires before they become large, but benefits can be offset by the fact that these practices promote older forests that are more ‘flammable’. Here the authors show that this downside puts numerous human communities at elevated risk of fires in boreal Canada.
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ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-020-15961-y