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Journal of the International Association of Wildland Fire
RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

Converging and diverging burn rates in North American boreal forests from the Little Ice Age to the present

Raphaël D. Chavardès A B C # , Victor Danneyrolles D # * , Jeanne Portier E , Martin P. Girardin B , Dorian M. Gaboriau A , Sylvie Gauthier B , Igor Drobyshev https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5980-4316 F , Dominic Cyr G , Tuomo Wallenius H and Yves Bergeron A I
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Institut de recherche sur les forêts, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, 445 boulevard de l’Université, Rouyn-Noranda, QC J9X 5E4, Canada.

B Laurentian Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada, 1055 du P.E.P.S., P.O. Box 10380, Stn. Sainte-Foy, QC G1V 4C7, Canada.

C Atlantic Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada, 1350 Regent Street, P.O. Box 4000, Fredericton, NB E3B 5P7, Canada.

D Département de Géomatique Appliquée, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500 boulevard de l’Université, Sherbrooke, J1K 2R1, Canada.

E Forest Resources and Management, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, 111 Zürcherstrasse, Birmensdorf, 8903, Switzerland.

F Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Box 49, Alnarp, 230 53, Sweden.

G Environment and Climate Change Canada, Science and Technology Branch, 351 Saint-Joseph Boulevard, Gatineau, J8Y 3Z5, Canada.

H Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 27, Helsinki, FI-00014, Finland.

I Centre d’étude de la forêt, Université du Québec à Montréal, Case postale 8888, Succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, QC H3C 3P8, Canada.

# These authors contributed equally to this paper

International Journal of Wildland Fire 31(12) 1184-1193 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF22090
Submitted: 4 June 2022  Accepted: 16 October 2022   Published: 8 November 2022

© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of IAWF. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Warning: This article contains terms, descriptions, and opinions used for historical context that may be culturally sensitive for some readers.

Background: Understanding drivers of boreal forest dynamics supports adaptation strategies in the context of climate change.

Aims: We aimed to understand how burn rates varied since the early 1700s in North American boreal forests.

Methods: We used 16 fire-history study sites distributed across such forests and investigated variation in burn rates for the historical period spanning 1700–1990. These were benchmarked against recent burn rates estimated for the modern period spanning 1980–2020 using various data sources.

Key results: Burn rates during the historical period for most sites showed a declining trend, particularly during the early to mid 1900s. Compared to the historical period, the modern period showed less variable and lower burn rates across sites. Mean burn rates during the modern period presented divergent trends among eastern versus northwestern sites, with increasing trends in mean burn rates in most northwestern North American sites.

Conclusions: The synchronicity of trends suggests that large spatial patterns of atmospheric conditions drove burn rates in addition to regional changes in land use like fire exclusion and suppression.

Implications: Low burn rates in eastern Canadian boreal forests may continue unless climate change overrides the capacity to suppress fire.

Keywords: boreal forests, breakpoints, burn rates, Cox models, fire-history study sites, meta-analysis, survival analysis, tree cohort records.


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