Reversing the encroachment of the coniferous forest that happened in the southern Rockies during the last century would significantly lower the probability of high-intensity wildfires in the region, according to new University of Alberta research.
Reversing the encroachment of the coniferous forest that happened in the southern Rockies during the last century would significantly lower the probability of high-intensity wildfires in the region, according to new University of Alberta research.
Chris Stockdale, a former PhD student supervised by U of A wildfire researcher Mike Flannigan who led the study, explained that the common assumption that suppression efforts over the last 100 years, and the resulting forest encroachment, has elevated wildfire risk and the likelihood of high-severity wildfires, appears to be true, but “the devil is in the details.”
The first step was to find out how large the influx of coniferous forest into the grassland has been. He used historical photographs from the Mountain Legacy Project—the world’s largest collection of systematic historical mountain photographs—to compare the Bob Creek Wildland protected area (50 kilometres west of Claresholm) as it was before fire suppression measures were undertaken in 1909 to how it was in 2014.
Stockdale, who is now a fire research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service, found that Bob Creek Wildland lost 50 per cent of its grassland over the last 100 years, and gained coniferous forest.
Continue reading at University of Alberta.
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