7th Workshop on Forest Fire Management - EARSeL, European ...

Fire and climate change in Boreal Forests 29
demographics might occur over the next century that will have a direct
impact on the number of human ignition sources on the landscape. What
does seem clear is that in areas where fuel is available, environmental conditions
(i.e. fuel moisture) will be more conducive to ignition in the future.
Without major changes in patterns of human activity or fuels, the number
of fires occurring from human causes will likely increase and thus the presence
of fire in high value areas, and the consequent pressure on fire management
agencies to deal with this fire, will likely increase. Through most
of the 20 th century in most of the world, ‘fire management’ organizations
tended to be fire suppression organizations, focused on fire exclusion.
Today there is a recognition of the need to balance fire suppression to protect
values (e.g., in the wildland-urban interface, or in high value timber
production areas) with the need to let fire in wilderness areas burn.
Increased fire activity due to climate change, and increased awareness of
carbon emission from wildfire as well as potential newly available sources
of carbon emissions, such as boreal peatlands (Flannigan et al., 2009), are
added pressures that will make achieving a balance between value protection
and the ecological needs for fire even more difficult for fire management
agencies.
3 - Summary
A great deal of research has been completed on wildland fire and we are
beginning to understand the relationships between various aspects of fire
activity and the key factors such as weather/climate, fuels, and people,
along with their interactions. These factors are dynamic and will continue
to change as the climate, fuels, and people respond to global change and
other influences. Overall, we expect that fire activity will continue to
increase due to climate change. It appears that fire weather, area burned,
and fire occurrence are generally increasing, but there will be regions with
no change and regions with decreases in the circumboreal forest. This spatial
variation highlights the need to view the impact of climate change on
fire activity in a spatially-dependent context. The length of the fire season
appears to be increasing already and should continue to lengthen in the
future. Fire intensity and severity are more difficult to summarize and this
is an area in need of further research. There could be surprises in the future,
perhaps even the near future, with respect to fire activity and this is due
to our limited understanding of the interactions between weather/climate,
fuels, and people.
The role of people in global fire regimes needs much more work as policy,
practices, and behaviour vary across the circumboreal and with time. The
more physical aspects of wildland fire have received greater attention by
the research community but there are still areas that need further work
including global studies that dynamically model weather, vegetation, people,
fire, and other disturbances. Lastly, we require accurate data sets of fire