Inter- and intra-annual profiles of fire regimes in the managed forests of Canada and implications for resource sharing

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Contents Vol 21(4)

doi:10.1071/WF11026

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Inter- and intra-annual profiles of fire regimes in the managed forests of Canada and implications for resource sharing

Steen Magnussen ^A ^B and Stephen W. Taylor ^A

^A Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, 506 West Burnside Road, Victoria, BC V8Z 1M5, Canada.
^B Corresponding author. Email: steen.magnussen@nrcan.gc.ca

International Journal of Wildland Fire 21(4) 328-341 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/WF11026
Submitted: 17 February 2011 Accepted: 25 July 2011 Published: 8 February 2012





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Abstract

Year-to-year variation in fire activity in Canada constitutes a key challenge for fire management agencies. Interagency sharing of fire management resources has been ongoing on regional, national and international scales in Canada for several decades to better cope with peaks in resource demand. Inherent stressors on these schemes determined by the fire regimes in constituent jurisdictions are not well known, nor described by averages. We developed a statistical framework to examine the likelihood of regional synchrony of peaks in fire activity at a timescale of 1 week. Year-to-year variations in important fire regime variables and 48 regions in Canada are quantified by a joint distribution and profiled at the Provincial or Territorial level. The fire regime variables capture the timing of the fire season, the average number of fires, area burned, and the timing and extent of annual maxima. The onset of the fire season was strongly correlated with latitude and longitude. Regional synchrony in the timing of the maximum burned area within fire seasons delineates opportunities for and limitations to sharing of fire suppression resources during periods of stress that were quantified in Monte Carlo simulations from the joint distribution.

Additional keywords: annual maxima, fire season, joint distribution, regional correlation, variable transformation.

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