Research Database
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5
Forest thinning and prescribed burning treatments reduce wildfire severity and buffer the impacts of severe fire weather
Year: 2024
BackgroundThe capacity of forest fuel treatments to moderate the behavior and severity of subsequent wildfires depends on weather and fuel conditions at the time of burning. However, in-depth evaluations of how treatments perform are limited because encounters between wildfires and areas with extensive pre-fire data are rare. Here, we took advantage of a 1200-ha randomized and replicated experiment that burned almost entirely in a subsequent wildfire under a wide range of weather conditions. We compared the impacts of four fuel treatments on fire severity, including two thin-only, a thin-burn…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Drought triggers and sustains overnight fires in North America
Year: 2024
Overnight fires are emerging in North America with previously unknown drivers and implications. This notable phenomenon challenges the traditional understanding of the ‘active day, quiet night’ model of the diurnal fire cycle1,2,3 and current fire management practices4,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Canada Under Fire – Drivers and Impacts of the Record-Breaking 2023 Wildfire Season
Year: 2024
The 2023 wildfire season in Canada was unprecedented in its scale and intensity. Spanning from late April to early November and extending across much of the forested regions of Canada, the season resulted in a record-breaking total area burned of approximately 15 million hectares, over seven times the historic national annual average. The impacts were profound with more than 200 communities evacuated (approximately 232,000 people), periods of dense smoke that caused significant public health concerns, and unprecedented demands on fire-fighting resources. The exceptional area burned can be…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Record-breaking fire weather in North America in 2021 was initiated by the Pacific northwest heat dome
Year: 2024
The 2021 North American wildfire season was marked by record breaking fire-conducive weather and widespread synchronous burning, extreme fire behaviour, smoke and evacuations. Relative to 1979–2021, the greatest number of temperature and vapor pressure deficit records were broken in 2021, and in July alone, 3.2 million hectares burned in Canada and the United States. These events were catalyzed by an intense heat dome that formed in late June over western North America that synchronized fire danger, challenging fire suppression efforts. Based on analysis of persistent positive anomalies of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Near-term fire weather forecasting in the Pacific Northwest using 500-hPa map types
Year: 2024
BackgroundNear-term forecasts of fire danger based on predicted surface weather and fuel dryness are widely used to support the decisions of wildfire managers. The incorporation of synoptic-scale upper-air patterns into predictive models may provide additional value in operational forecasting.AimsIn this study, we assess the impact of synoptic-scale upper-air patterns on the occurrence of large wildfires and widespread fire outbreaks in the US Pacific Northwest. Additionally, we examine how discrete upper-air map types can augment subregional models of…
Publication Type: Journal Article