'This is classic climate change': Sask. faces worst wildfire season in decades

CBC

6 days ago

There have been 207 wildfires this year as of Friday — 40 more than the same period last year
Image | Fire at Besnard Lake
Caption: Fire travels towards a treeline at Besnard Lake in La Ronge, Sask., on Wednesday. The Canadian military has been called in to help fight wildfires in northern Saskatchewan. (Submitted by Trevor Phenix)
Saskatchewan is battling the worst wildfire it's seen in decades — including the 300,000-hectare Shoe Fire in northern Saskatchewan — and experts say it's largely caused by climate change.
"This is classic climate change," said Colin Laroque, head of soil science and professor at the University of Saskatchewan.
Laroque said climatology is studied using 30-year timeframes of weather patterns, which "weren't that different" until recently.
"If you're that 20, to 25, to 30 year [age], you're experiencing something that we've never really experienced before."
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Laroque said the question of whether this year is abnormal is relative.
"It's in the more recent past, this is normal," Laroque said. "This is our new normal."
He said if he were to ask someone his grandfather's age, or his father's age, they would find it "very unusual" to have forest fires this early.
"These are things that we traditionally saw more in June, July and later summer, when everything dried out and then the fires took off," Laroque said.
Saskatchewan is making its way out of a relatively dry period. Few places had snow for long periods of time over winter.
In the past, "snowpacks" would take time to fully melt and trickle into the ground as it warmed up. This would recharge the moisture of the soil.
"What's happening the last few years is that we go from a relatively cold period of time and one or two days later it's plus 22 [C]," Laroque explained.
The extreme back-and-forth causes the snow to melt rapidly while the ground stays frozen, not allowing the snow to fully sink into the soil.
Laroque said most of the snow ends up evaporating, causing "instant drought," similar to what the province experienced in spring 2024.
"Then the trees rehydrated, sucked up a lot of the ground moisture and then everything is just ready to be burned," he said.
He also noted Saskatchewan's forest and grasses were mainly brown from the dry weather and made great fuel for grass fires.
Lori Daniels, professor and researcher at the University of British Columbia's department of forest and conservation sciences, said the emergency wildfire situation in the province is the result of an emergency global climate situation.
"The further we are from the equator, we're seeing that those changes are amplified," Daniels said.
"In Northern Canada and the northern parts of our provinces and up into the territories … we're experiencing more than three times what the global average is in terms of temperature change."
Daniels said climate change is "the new reality" and it's unclear how long the province will be dealing with these fires.
"We need substantial rain to wet down our ecosystems, dampen these fires, and make our ecosystems more resistant to fire for the rest of the summer," she said.
"But there is a chance if we don't get the weather patterns that bring that rain, some of these fires may persist for a very long period of time."
Not all is lost. Many ecosystems in Canada have adapted to large fires, Daniels said.
"They are tremendously resilient natural systems," she said.
"The seed banks that are sitting, you know, deep in the soil, the roots that kind of persist in the soil underneath, will re-sprout and begin to regrow even after fairly intense fires."
There are also many shifts in tree species that surround the areas of a fire. Daniels said trees like broadleaf, conifer and needleleaf tend to grow in quickly.
"Fire can also be a rejuvenating force," she said.
Daniels said some Indigenous communities have used fire as a part of their land stewardship.
"We are now learning in Western Canada from our Indigenous collaborators and Indigenous knowledge holders that there was tremendous value in using fire, 'low intensity fire' or 'good fire'," Daniels said.
In the spring and fall, a specific type of fire would be used by some Indigenous communities to burn off fuels that have accumulated over a couple of seasons to stimulate understory plants and to remove the density of trees.
"You're still maintaining a forest ecosystem around you, but you're changing the amount of fuel."