Global warming portends increase in forest-fire risk, researcher warns

With the major fire that devastated the forests around Fort McMurray a year ago still fresh in our memory, Quebec researchers warn that our province is not immune to such a cataclysmic event.

It’s a risk that will have an increased impact on the amount of wood available for logging.

With global warming, drought in Quebec will increase in the next few years as well as forest fires, professor and researcher Yves Bergeron said Wednesday.

Bergeron is affiliated with the Department of Biological Sciences at l’Université du Québec à Montréal, the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue Forest Research Institute, and is also Canada Research Chair in Ecology and Sustainable Forest Management. Bergeron presented research results in the wake of the Centre d’étude de la Forêt seminar this week, and at the Ouranos research consortium on regional climatology and climate change adaptation.

An increase in the number of forest fires in Quebec would be a disaster from an economic point of view, said Bergeron.

A total of 10 to 20 per cent of the lumber available for cutting in the province burns before being collected, he said. “It’s worrying now.”

The proportion is likely to increase if nothing is done. The target of one per cent cutting comes from the natural regeneration time of the forest. Bergeron points out that there are fewer fires now than before. The climate may have warmed, but rainfall has also increased, says Bergeron.

This will not always be the case: according to the simulations carried out, precipitation will not increase sufficiently to compensate for the warming. This will create a dry climate, much more sensitive to forest fires.

“The fires will become more and more severe,” Bergeron said.

In the worst-case scenario, Quebec will be at a level in 2100 where there will be one per cent cutting and one per cent of trees that will be destroyed by forest fires.