UBCO wildfire research monitoring fuel load on Okanagan landscape

As we head into another fire season, research is underway at UBC Okanagan to better understand our risks and how to mitigate them.

Local researchers in B.C.’s Interior are using technology to monitor Okanagan Valley landscapes and hopefully get a better handle on how the area can live with wildfires.

UBC Okanagan assistant professor Mathieu Bourbonnais is among a group of researchers using 3D images of the Okanagan landscape to learn more about the wildfire fuel loads in the area’s forests.

The researchers are developing models to pull information from the 3D images about the configuration of forests and fuel systems — factors that, Bourbonnais explained, have a major impact on how wildfires spread.

The research will also include placing small weather sensors in forested areas. The sensors will be connected to the cellphone network and send weather data back almost in real-time.

“When you start combing those two things we get a really high resolution or really detailed view of our forests around our communities which gives us a better idea of what kind of risk there might be during a fire season,” Bourbonnais said.

Among other things, the researchers intend to look at areas before and after mitigation treatments have been done and get a better sense at how much the fuel loads have been reduced and how long the fire risk reduction lasts for.

So far, the work is validating what researchers suspected: many areas have really high fuel densities.

“Which historically wouldn’t probably have been there because of more frequent fires that would have occurred that would have thinned out those kinds of fuels,” Bourbonnais said.

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Bourbonnais expects the research will reinforce the need for more fire mitigation, like prescribed burns and thinning of vegetation, in wildfire interface zones.

“One of the things that we are finding is that the scale of our response really isn’t matching the scale of the problem in terms of the resources that are available to do mitigation work,” said Bourbonnais.

“Hopefully as we can generate more information and more knowledge working with communities, we can start tailoring solutions or gathering more resources to do this work.”

Bourbonnais pointed out that the province has spent large sums of money responding to three major fire seasons in the last five years.

“There is always going to be a need for fire suppression but it is very reactive in that we are always kind of chasing the problem,” he said.

The hope is that the detailed information created by the UBC Okanagan research will help communities better prioritize the mitigation resources they do have as fire seasons trend towards being more severe.

Bourbonnais said what researchers have found, but weren’t necessarily expecting is that recent fires have been particularly severe.

“Some of the more recent fires that we are having, they are having a real impact on ecosystems. We are seeing more severe fires than we have seen kind of historically. Those are kind of things that lead to more questions about what should we expect in the future if this kind of fire is going to be happening more often,” he said.

Bourbonnais expects the research will also help increase scientists’ understanding of how our ecosystems are responding to fire and how high severity fires are going to impact things like water quality, and wildlife habitat.

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