2023 could be one of Canada’s worst wildfire seasons

Canada could be on track to have the worst wildfire years in recorded history.

That’s according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, which noted that as of June 18 there are 422 fires across Canada, with 2,697 total fires for the year burning roughly 5.8 million hectares of land.

Data only goes back to 1983, but 2023 has the third highest number for area burned so far, with 1995 having the most amount of area burned with over 7.1 million hectares.

Comparatively, 2023 has had much fewer fires than 1995, which had 8,106.

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Daniel Perrakis is a fire research scientist with Natural Resource Canada’s Canadian Forest Service, and said the largest Canadian wildfire was back in 1950 in B.C., but said looking at the area burned is a different matter.

“We’re having a big fire year this year, and maybe we will break the all-time record for area burned in Canada,” Perrakis said.

He spoke about fire ecology, and how it looks at how fire interacts with natural vegetation, noting it is a critical ecosystem element across forests.

He said some forests out in Eastern Canada have white pine forests that would have trees that could survive a fire.

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“Similarly in the west, Douglas fir in B.C. or southwestern Alberta.”

He said conifer trees like spruce trees would get killed off by fire.

“These are trees that have a different strategy, so the trees are killed by fire but can reseed on the burned landscape very readily.”

Perrakis said in the 1990s’ wildfire fighting was very effective, noting the hectares of the areas burned were low.

He said wildfires aren’t a normally distributed variable, however, he noted we have a large range between slow fire years and big fire years.

“We also know climate change is very influential.”

Perrakis spoke about ground fires versus crown fires, or fires that manage to reach up to the tops of trees.

He said crown fires are much quicker, being assisted by the wind.

“Crown fire behaviour is really quite different than surface fire behaviour. This is where we see flames tens to hundreds of metres above the tops of forest canopies, and the huge energy releases.”

He said crown fires used to be much less common and have become a problem for maintaining natural forest structures.