A century of transformation: fire regime transitions from 1919 to 2019 in southeastern British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

ContextIn fire-excluded forests across western North America, recent intense wildfire seasons starkly contrast with fire regimes of the past. The last 100 years mark a transition between pre-colonial and modern era fire regimes, providing crucial context for understanding future wildfire behavior.ObjectivesUsing the greatest time depth of digitized fire events in Canada, we identify distinct phases of wildfire regimes from 1919 to 2019 by evaluating changes in mapped fire perimeters (> 20-ha) across the East Kootenay region (including the southern Rocky Mountain Trench), British Columbia.MethodsWe detect transitions in annual number of fires, burned area, and fire size; explore the role of lightning- and human-caused fires in driving these transitions; and quantify departures from historical fire frequency at the regional level.ResultsRelative to historical fire frequency, fire exclusion has created a significant fire deficit in active fire regimes, with a minimum of 1–10 fires missed across 46.4-percent of the landscape. Fire was active from 1919 to 1939 with frequent and large fire events, but the regime was already altered by a century of colonization. Fire activity decreased in 1940, coinciding with effective fire suppression influenced by a mild climatic period. In 2003, the combined effects of fire exclusion and accelerated climate change fueled a shift in fire regimes of various forest types, with increases in area burned and mean fire size driven by lightning.ConclusionsThe extent of fire regime disruption warrants significant management and policy attention to alter the current trajectory and facilitate better co-existence with wildfire throughout this century.Graphical abstract