Latest news with #CentreforWildfireCoexistence
21-07-2025
- Science
Inside the inferno: Researchers search for answers within Jasper's charred landscape
Lori Daniels and a team of researchers plan to let a hand-held GPS guide them in a few weeks to more than 100 spots in the charred forest around Jasper, Alta. At each location, they'll plunge a stake into the ground and take notes. Are there needles left on the trees? The branches? How far up is the tree charred? Are roots exposed? In fewer words, they'll be asking: how bad was the fire? Daniels, who has been back to Jasper several times since last summer's destructive fire, says she has partly observed the answer to that question. There are parts of the Jasper fire that were absolutely shocking. Lori Daniels I've seen a lot of devastating fires across British Columbia in the last decade. I've spent a lot of time in burnt forest, said Daniels, a professor and co-director at the University of British Columbia's Centre for Wildfire Coexistence. And I have to say, there are parts of the Jasper fire that were absolutely shocking. It has been nearly a year since wind-whipped wildfires burned a third of Jasper's structures to the ground. Outside the town's limits, what happened in the nearly 330 square kilometres of singed forest has interested researchers. They want to know whether more than 20 years of forest management affected the fire's behaviour as it barrelled toward the townsite — and whether there was a fire tornado during the blaze. Parks Canada had done extensive work to thin the overgrown forest surrounding the town during that two-decade period, said Daniels, who had several research plots in the area years before the fire. She said she believes much of Jasper is still standing because of Parks Canada's efforts, including prescribed burns and trimming trees. Canadian forest agencies are still trying to figure out the best ways to treat their forests so that a wildfire can be slowed down before it reaches a community, Daniels said. The upcoming research could help Parks Canada and provincial wildfire agencies figure out whether treated parts of the forest helped firefighters protect neighbourhoods. [It's] a really critical question. The treatments cost thousands of dollars per hectare, tens of thousands in some environments, she said. Insured damages from the fire have been estimated at about $880 million. Parks Canada is supporting Daniels's research. It's also undertaking a series of investigations and reviews related to the fire, it said in a June statement. Changing forests Laura Chasmer, an assistant professor at the University of Lethbridge, had 34 research plots in Jasper before last summer, 19 of which were burned in the fire. She and a group of students are continuing previous research on the type of fuels that build up in forests and can make wildfires more vicious. Part of that research has sought to understand how peatlands and trees killed by pine beetle can contribute to the spread of wildfire. Climate change is changing forests in ways that we really don't understand, Chasmer said. One of Chasmer's students will be joining Daniels this month when the research begins around Jasper. It was really hard for us to go back there, Chasmer said of Jasper, where she has conducted field research since 2021. But I think that we can learn so much from this fire. Fire tornadoes Whether there was a tornado during the fire has also intrigued researchers from around the country. Mike Flannigan, research chair at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C., has publicly suspected a fire-induced tornado happened during the Jasper blaze. It sure sounds and looks like it was a tornado, he said. Researchers from Western University's Northern Tornadoes Project in London, Ont., are trying to confirm precisely what happened in the Jasper inferno. Aaron Lawrence Jaffe said there are suspicions of the rare phenomenon. Huge swaths of thousands of trees were uprooted or snapped, said the engineering researcher for the project. And debris, including a shipping container, several heavy-duty metal garbage bins and heavy campfire pits, were flung hundreds of metres from their original spots. It was unlike any wind-damage survey I've done before, Jaffe said. There's evidence that there was some kind of vortex. The kind of damage witnessed could have only been created by winds of about 180 kilometres per hour, he said. His team also took drone photos and videos of the damage to help find potential patterns that could have been caused by a twister. WATCH | Report suggests Alberta hampered Jasper wildfire response: However, he said, fire tornadoes are a nascent field of research as very few have been recorded worldwide. The lack of radar coverage in Jasper is also a complicating factor for researchers, making it difficult to determine whether there was a tornado. They're also awaiting data from federal researchers, which would help determine if there was fire-induced weather that could generate a tornado. Jaffe said he hopes his lab will have an official answer in the coming months. Matthew Scace (new window) · The Canadian Press
National Observer
21-07-2025
- Science
- National Observer
Wildfire, tornado researchers search for answers in Jasper's charred forest
Lori Daniels and a team of researchers plan to let a hand-held GPS guide them in a few weeks to more than 100 spots in the charred forest around Jasper, Alta. At each location, they'll plunge a stake into the ground and take notes. Are there needles left on the trees? The branches? How far up is the tree charred? Are roots exposed? In fewer words, they'll be asking: how bad was the fire? Daniels, who has been back to Jasper several times since last summer's destructive fire, says she has partly observed the answer to that question. "I've seen a lot of devastating fires across British Columbia in the last decade. I've spent a lot of time in burnt forest," said Daniels, a professor and co-director at the University of British Columbia's Centre for Wildfire Coexistence. "And I have to say, there are parts of the Jasper fire that were absolutely shocking." It has been nearly a year since wind-whipped wildfires burned a third of Jasper's structures to the ground. Outside the town's limits, what happened in the nearly 330 square kilometres of singed forest has interested researchers. They want to know whether more than 20 years of forest management affected the fire's behaviour as it barrelled toward the townsite — and whether there was a fire tornado during the blaze. Parks Canada had done extensive work to thin the overgrown forest surrounding the town during that two-decade period, said Daniels, who had several research plots in the area years before the fire. She said she believes much of Jasper is still standing because of Parks Canada's efforts, including prescribed burns and trimming trees. Canadian forest agencies are still trying to figure out the best ways to treat their forests so that a wildfire can be slowed down before it reaches a community, Daniels said. The upcoming research could help Parks Canada and provincial wildfire agencies figure out whether treated parts of the forest helped firefighters protect neighbourhoods. "(It's) a really critical question. The treatments cost thousands of dollars per hectare, tens of thousands in some environments," she said. Insured damages from the fire have been estimated at about $880 million. Parks Canada is supporting Daniels' research. It's also undertaking a "series of investigations and reviews related to the fire," it said in a June statement. Laura Chasmer, an assistant professor at the University of Lethbridge, had 34 research plots in Jasper before last summer, 19 of which were burned in the fire. She and a group of students are continuing previous research on the type of fuels that build up in forests and can make wildfires more vicious. Part of that research has sought to understand how peatlands and trees killed by pine beetle can contribute to the spread of wildfire. "Climate change is changing forests in ways that we really don't understand," Chasmer said. One of Chasmer's students will be joining Daniels this month when the research begins around Jasper. "It was really hard for us to go back there," Chasmer said of Jasper, where she has conducted field research since 2021. "But I think that we can learn so much from this fire." Whether there was a tornado during the fire has also intrigued researchers from around the country. Mike Flannigan, research chair at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC, has publicly suspected a fire-induced tornado happened during the Jasper blaze. "It sure sounds and looks like it was a tornado," he said. Researchers from Western University's Northern Tornadoes Project in London, Ont., are trying to confirm precisely what happened in the Jasper inferno. Aaron Lawrence Jaffe said there are suspicions of the rare phenomenon. Huge swaths of thousands of trees were uprooted or snapped, said the engineering researcher for the project. And debris, including a shipping container, several heavy-duty metal garbage bins and heavy campfire pits, were flung hundreds of metres from their original spots. "It was unlike any wind-damage survey I've done before," Jaffe said. "There's evidence that there was some kind of vortex." The kind of damage witnessed could have only been created by winds of about 180 kilometres per hour, he said. His team also took drone photos and videos of the damage to help find potential patterns that could have been caused by a twister. However, he said, fire tornadoes are a nascent field of research as very few have been recorded worldwide. The lack of radar coverage in Jasper is also a complicating factor for researchers, making it difficult to determine whether there was a tornado. They're also awaiting data from federal researchers, which would help determine if there was fire-induced weather that could generate a tornado. Jaffe said he hopes his lab will have an official answer in the coming months.
Winnipeg Free Press
21-07-2025
- Science
- Winnipeg Free Press
Wildfire, tornado researchers look for answers in Jasper's charred forest
Lori Daniels and a team of researchers plan to let a hand-held GPS guide them in a few weeks to more than 100 spots in the charred forest around Jasper, Alta. At each location, they'll plunge a stake into the ground and take notes. Are there needles left on the trees? The branches? How far up is the tree charred? Are roots exposed? In fewer words, they'll be asking: how bad was the fire? Daniels, who has been back to Jasper several times since last summer's destructive fire, says she has partly observed the answer to that question. 'I've seen a lot of devastating fires across British Columbia in the last decade. I've spent a lot of time in burnt forest,' said Daniels, a professor and co-director at the University of British Columbia's Centre for Wildfire Coexistence. 'And I have to say, there are parts of the Jasper fire that were absolutely shocking.' It has been nearly a year since wind-whipped wildfires burned a third of Jasper's structures to the ground. Outside the town's limits, what happened in the nearly 330 square kilometres of singed forest has interested researchers. They want to know whether more than 20 years of forest management affected the fire's behaviour as it barrelled toward the townsite — and whether there was a fire tornado during the blaze. Parks Canada had done extensive work to thin the overgrown forest surrounding the town during that two-decade period, said Daniels, who had several research plots in the area years before the fire. She said she believes much of Jasper is still standing because of Parks Canada's efforts, including prescribed burns and trimming trees. Canadian forest agencies are still trying to figure out the best ways to treat their forests so that a wildfire can be slowed down before it reaches a community, Daniels said. The upcoming research could help Parks Canada and provincial wildfire agencies figure out whether treated parts of the forest helped firefighters protect neighbourhoods. '(It's) a really critical question. The treatments cost thousands of dollars per hectare, tens of thousands in some environments,' she said. Insured damages from the fire have been estimated at about $880 million. Parks Canada is supporting Daniels' research. It's also undertaking a 'series of investigations and reviews related to the fire,' it said in a June statement. Laura Chasmer, an assistant professor at the University of Lethbridge, had 34 research plots in Jasper before last summer, 19 of which were burned in the fire. She and a group of students are continuing previous research on the type of fuels that build up in forests and can make wildfires more vicious. Part of that research has sought to understand how peatlands and trees killed by pine beetle can contribute to the spread of wildfire. 'Climate change is changing forests in ways that we really don't understand,' Chasmer said. One of Chasmer's students will be joining Daniels this month when the research begins around Jasper. 'It was really hard for us to go back there,' Chasmer said of Jasper, where she has conducted field research since 2021. 'But I think that we can learn so much from this fire.' Whether there was a tornado during the fire has also intrigued researchers from around the country. Mike Flannigan, research chair at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C., has publicly suspected a fire-induced tornado happened during the Jasper blaze. 'It sure sounds and looks like it was a tornado,' he said. Researchers from Western University's Northern Tornadoes Project in London, Ont., are trying to confirm precisely what happened in the Jasper inferno. Aaron Lawrence Jaffe said there are suspicions of the rare phenomenon. Huge swaths of thousands of trees were uprooted or snapped, said the engineering researcher for the project. And debris, including a shipping container, several heavy-duty metal garbage bins and heavy campfire pits, were flung hundreds of metres from their original spots. 'It was unlike any wind-damage survey I've done before,' Jaffe said. 'There's evidence that there was some kind of vortex.' The kind of damage witnessed could have only been created by winds of about 180 kilometres per hour, he said. His team also took drone photos and videos of the damage to help find potential patterns that could have been caused by a twister. However, he said, fire tornadoes are a nascent field of research as very few have been recorded worldwide. The lack of radar coverage in Jasper is also a complicating factor for researchers, making it difficult to determine whether there was a tornado. They're also awaiting data from federal researchers, which would help determine if there was fire-induced weather that could generate a tornado. Jaffe said he hopes his lab will have an official answer in the coming months. This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 21, 2025.
Time Magazine
02-07-2025
- General
- Time Magazine
We're Living in the Age of Fire. It Will Only Get Worse
The hills of Louis Creek Valley are covered in lovely, towering Douglas fir, healthy evergreens climbing from the grassy meadow at the valley floor up to the ridges where the mountains meet the sky. It's lush, like much of interior British Columbia, where densely packed conifers line the innumerable wooded valleys, the heavy cone-laden branches reaching down to the ground. Joe Gilchrist, a fire steward of Secwepemc people, and a firefighter for more than 30 years, stands on the valley floor and looks at the beautiful trees. But what he sees first is danger. 'It's been over 100 years since it's been illegal for Indigenous people to use fire on the land, and so in that time, the trees have overgrown the area, and some of the trees have got diseased,' he says. 'It's just gotten thicker, and the trees that have died have fallen to the ground, and branches and the needles that fall every year go onto the ground and just add to the fuel. It's just a major fire waiting to happen.' Until the 1860s, the Secwepemc were regularly setting this valley ablaze in the spring and fall, when the undergrowth can safely be burned off without the fire climbing the trunks where they could cause a crown fire, where flames leap quickly from treetop to treetop. The valley then was a patchwork of ecosystems, with grazing land for game, berry and mushroom patches, and healthy, diverse stands of trees. It provided food resources, and, crucially, it was not vulnerable to megafires. 'Megafires just weren't possible, because the forest itself was bio diverse,' says Gilchrist. 'It wasn't one monoculture of trees that are too close together and too over-aged and with lots of fuel on the ground.' It was similar throughout the continent. The forest in the pre-Columbian Americas was not primaeval, in a wild state, as is normally imagined, but carefully managed by Indigenous peoples, who were constantly burning. European settlers always remarked on the burning in their diaries and letters, finding it wasteful. Now, experts see that they knew what they were doing. Professor Lori Daniels, director of the University of British Columbia's Centre for Wildfire Coexistence, has been matching fire scars on tree rings with Indigenous oral history, and finding evidence of the repeated low scale burning before the Colonial era. One tree, in Tobacco Plains, near the Montana border, had survived 52 fires. The tree rings showing scars from low-intensity fires stopped in the 19th Century, when settlers took over and banned traditional burns. After the Second World War, when fire towers and water bombers increased the effectiveness of fire suppression, the forests became both safer from fire, and yet ever more vulnerable as the fuel load built up. 'Between 65% and 85% of the trees that we see in the forest today came in when Indigenous fire stewardship stopped,' says Daniels. 'So beautiful, green, forested British Columbia, the dense forest that we see as blankets across the hill slopes, by far the majority of those trees are on those mountains because they have not burned with a surface fire for decades to a century.' The gorgeous wooded slopes, in British Columbia and much of North America, exist because we romantically yearned for edenic wildlands. What that thinking produced is dangerous fuel loads. Because of the effectiveness of modern fire suppression, the amount of fuel has been steadily increasing for decades. And because of climate change, it is much drier. The result is a terrible new normal, with immense out-of-control wildfires now regularly turning massive swaths of the boreal belt around the top of the world to charcoal. The boreal ecosystem—the wilderness areas of evergreens between the deciduous woodlands to the south and the tundra to the north—makes up almost a third of the planet's forest land. It is a vital economic and ecological zone, and a crucial storehouse of carbon—or, it used to be. In 2023, more than 6,000 fires ravaged 37 million acres of land in Canada alone, scorching a land mass the size of Montana and poisoning the air as far away as Atlanta. Last year was not as bad, but it was still terrible, and worse in Russia, where almost 22 million acres were burnt. This season started badly in Canada. Many 'zombie fires' had overwintered, smoldering beneath the snow. One fire overwintered for two years in a row, a grim new first. They broke out early in a hot, dry spring, forcing the evacuation of towns and villages across the country, leaving a pall of smoke across the land. By the end of May, there were hundreds. More than 90 were out of control, meaning firefighters had decided they were too big to fight. About 40,000 people, mostly indigenous, were ordered out of their homes, some flown south, others making long, harrowing car journeys through smoky woods. On June 2, residents fled the northern Saskatchewan town of La Ronge after a fire breached the airport where crews were working. The next day much of the town of Denare Beach burned, while heartbroken residents watched remotely on doorbell cams. Natural variations in weather mean some years are worse than others, but the trend line is clear. Because the climate is warming, the fire season starts sooner and ends later. There is more fuel, and it is drier. Lightning, which starts many fires, is now striking further north than the past. Some forests have been made doubly vulnerable by climate-change-induced pest infestations. The fires are more dangerous and more damaging than they used to be. They burn hotter, creating their own weather, towering pyrocumulonimbus storms: massive, hellish fire tornadoes that throw flaming trees through the air and generate thousands of lightning strikes in their vicinity, sparking more fires. The fires now grow so quickly that veteran firefighters are often shocked by their behavior. They jump lakes and rivers, sending burning embers up to three miles through the air. So far, there have been few casualties, but veteran firefighters think it is just a matter of time. In 2016, a fire near Fort McMurray, a city of 100,000 people in northern Alberta, moved so fast that officials were forced to order an emergency evacuation, and surrender much of the town to the blaze. It was only because so many of the young and hardy residents had safety training from the oil industry that there were not mass casualties. The fire at Fort McMurray was a bitterly ironic wakeup call. It highlighted the new danger of the fast-moving megafires to northern towns, and put a spotlight on the underlying reason for the new danger: Fort McMurray is a bustling city only because of the vast bitumen-mining operations there, where the world's most carbon intensive oil is boiled out of tarry sand. Mike Flannigan, who has been studying wildfires as long as Joe Gilchrist has been fighting them, is scared. In 1985, Flannigan gave his first talk predicting that climate change would lead to bigger fires. Audiences were skeptical, but he was confident that he was right. In 1991, he published a paper in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research predicting a 46% increase in annual area burned when the amount of carbon in the atmosphere doubled from pre-industrial levels, which measured 280 parts per million (ppm). In 1991, when the atmospheric carbon levels measured 355 ppm , 2.5 million acres burned in Canada. This year, the level of C02 is 427 ppm ten million acres burnt by July 1. Flannigan's models were far too conservative. 'We—the modelers—have done pretty well with getting the temperature increases, but the impacts from those temperature increases has been grossly underestimated,' he says He finds that disquieting. 'It's happening faster than I would have thought, and there may be surprises coming—not just for fire—but for climate change, surprises that catch us all off guard.' 'Fire is always where people are,' Flannigan continues. 'It goes with us wherever we go. But the genie is out of the bottle. Fire is now uncontrollable, and we're going to see more and more fire and more and more catastrophic fire.' Flannigan thinks we are living in the pyrocene, the age of fire, an idea from Arizona environmental historian Stephen J. Pyne. By burning so much coal and oil, we have changed the climate and can no longer control the processes. Canada's forests—which make up 8.5%of all global forest area—were once a crucial storehouse of carbon, but because of the fires they have been a net carbon emitter since 2001. The fires of 2023 released 647 million metric tons of carbon, more than the total annual emissions of South Korea that year. The fires are so hot that they are burning off the top soil in some places, which means some land that was treed will come back as savannah—grasslands which do not store as much carbon. And the news may get much worse. Many of the trees in northern Canada spring from permanently frozen peat bogs, which contain enormous quantities of carbon. As the climate warms, and that permafrost melts, it becomes susceptible to fire, posing a horrifying climate risk: massive, unfightable northern fires spewing huge quantities of carbon into the atmosphere, which could push Earth past a climate tipping point that once crossed will cause a spiral-effect of endless warming. 'It's not a steady state,' says Flannigan. 'It's not normal. We're on a downward trajectory. Sometimes I say we're in Dante's circle of hell. I don't know which circle we're on, but I know which way we're going.' Only one thing might stop the terrifying processes that humans have set in motion. 'The bottom line, until we deal with greenhouse gasses, fossil-fuel burning, we're going to continue to warm and we're going to continue to see more fire.' Stephen Maher is the author of The Prince, The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau.
CBC
17-04-2025
- Climate
- CBC
B.C. ministers urge residents to have go-bags, insurance before floods and wildfires
Social Sharing The B.C. government says residents should start preparing for wildfire and flood season with go-bags and insurance, as emergency response officials watch the snowpack and drought levels across the province. The coming spring runoff and the prospect of extreme heat or rain events could lead to flooding in some regions, though officials also say the snowpack is lower than average and there is "potential for prolonged drought this year." The B.C. Wildfire Service says the province could see an active spring wildfire season due to drought conditions and warns of higher fire risk unless there's "significant and sustained" rainfall in the near future. Forests Minister Ravi Parmar says the severity of the upcoming wildfire season is unknown, but agreed it will likely be affected by ongoing drought conditions. He says the wildfires in California earlier this year were a "stark reminder" of fire's destructive powers, and that B.C. residents should "do their part to help protect their homes and communities." WATCH | More British Columbians taking steps to protect homes: B.C. homeowners taking steps to improve fire resiliency 11 months ago Duration 2:13 As B.C.'s summer fire season gets underway, more and more homeowners are taking preventative steps to protect their properties. In the Okanagan there has been a marked increase in people doing the FireSmart B.C. program. As Brady Strachan reports, firefighters say prevention and mitigation can make all the difference. Emergency Management Minister Kelly Greene says the impacts of climate change have been "devastating," pointing to the 2023 wildfire season — the most destructive on record — and the 2021 atmospheric river and heat dome events. "When wildfires are burning nearby, it can become too late to obtain insurance, and that's why now is the time to get insured," Greene said Wednesday. "We are approaching the time of year when seasonal hazards increase and it's important that we all stay alert, stay informed and stay prepared. While we're always hoping for the best, we prepare for the worst." The province says it has outlined expanded prevention efforts, including 88 planned cultural and prescribed burns and $90 million allocated to wildfire prevention initiatives. According to some experts, the wildfire season is already underway in parts of the province. "Some of the fires that ignited in May 2023 are still burning in the northeast," said Lori Daniels, co-director of the Centre for Wildfire Coexistence at the University of B.C. "They went underground through the winter and have now resurfaced, with smoke already affecting communities like Fort Nelson." Daniels emphasized that effective prevention requires both government action and individual responsibility. "Each of us taking the time and effort to clean out the gutters ... to make sure that we're cleaning up our yards and doing the yard maintenance, especially in the most fire-prone parts of the province," Daniels told CBC News. "There are things we can do to help ourselves." With the Easter long weekend ahead, Daniels says it's the perfect time to act. WATCH | How FireSmart principles can save homes: Watch as a wildfire overtakes this fire-smart B.C. property 2 years ago Duration 1:30 Video from the front porch of a cabin near Cathedral Provincial Park shows the Crater Creek advancing and overtaking the property. "It only takes a day or two for each of us to get prepared." She says roofs are especially vulnerable to wildfire as debris and embers accumulate over time. FireSmart B.C. recommends regularly clearing leaves and branches and using fire-resistant roofing materials such as metal, asphalt, clay or composite tiles. Daniels says FireSmart initiatives can make a significant difference in protecting communities. As an example, she pointed to last year's wildfire in Jasper, where more than 30 per cent of the community was damaged. But she noted the situation could have been much worse without years of preventative work — including prescribed burns, thinning diseased forests and installing sprinkler systems. "Let's flip that on its head … we saved 70 per cent of that community, its critical infrastructure," she said. "That's a win." B.C. says it has issued roughly $500 million since 2017 to support over 2,600 local disaster-preparedness and mitigation projects through Emergency Management and Climate Readiness funding programs.
