Researchers had projected higher-intensity blazes — just not this soon

This article was written by Brenna Owen and Darryl Dyck, and was published in the Toronto Star on September 11, 2023.

The onset of large, severe wildfires that threaten communities year after year has occurred earlier in British Columbia than previous research projected, and experts say the record-shattering 2023 season must serve as a springboard for action.

The surge stems from a combination of climate change and entrenched forest management practices, which have together created a landscape more conducive to large, high-intensity blazes, says Lori Daniels, a professor in the department of forest and conservation sciences at the University of B.C.

“Society is already paying a huge cost for these climate change-fuelled fires,” she says. “The thing we can control in the short term is the vulnerability of the landscape.”

Reducing that vulnerability means transforming how B.C.’s diverse landscape is managed. Shifting away from a timber-focused approach that prioritizes conifers over less-flammable broadleaf trees and ramping up prescribed burning are key steps toward protecting communities by supporting healthy, resilient forests, she says.

“The sooner we do it, the better,” she adds.

Daniels is the co-author of a paper published by the peer-reviewed journal Nature that examined data from the past century and found an “abrupt” uptick in wildfire activity in B.C. corresponding with a warming and drying trend that began in the mid-2000s.

The province has experienced its four most severe wildfire seasons on record during the past seven years, in 2017, 2018, 2021 and 2023.

This season has smashed records for area burned in B.C. and Canada, with wildfires scorching more than 165,000 square kilometres across the country.

The paper published last week notes wildfires scorched more than 10,000 square kilometres of land in B.C. during three of the past seven seasons. Between 1919 and 2016, just three years saw more than 5,000 square kilometres.

The surge in intense wildfires is not surprising given climate projections for the province over the coming decades, says Marc-André Parisien, a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service based in Edmonton who led the study.

However, both researchers say it came sooner than expected.

“According to a lot of projections, in 20, 30 years is where you would have seen a real amplification of these fire regimes, but (it happened) around the turn of the millennium, so a fair bit earlier,” Parisien said.

Daniels says she previously thought the next generation of fire ecologists, not hers, would have to contend with the “new reality” of high-intensity wildfires.

“To have four of these seasons out of the last seven is shocking,” she says.

The researchers say climate change is not the only culprit, though. The warming and drying trend that began in the mid-2000s coincided with pine beetle outbreaks that left swaths of B.C.’s forests dead, dry, brittle and ripe for wildfire.

The outbreaks also prompted the B.C. government to approve extensive clear-cut harvesting to salvage the economic value of the beetlekilled timber.

After logging, Daniels says the predominant approach in B.C. is to replant coniferous trees intended to feed the forest industry.