Registration is open for the 2024 Wildland Fire Canada Conference, a biennial conference scheduled for October 28 to November 1 in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. It will bring together wildland fire management agencies, indigenous fire experts, scientists, and collaborators from across Canada and other countries.
The theme of this year’s conference is Transforming Wildland Fire Management, i.e. taking a collective and inclusive approach to wildland fire management in which Canadians at all levels of government work together to co-exist with wildland fire — including prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery.
In-person registration: This includes access to all sessions and social activities. Registrants can access to the virtual conference platform to watch recorded presentations and network with remote attendees.
Virtual registration: This includes access to all sessions and online networking activities. Sessions will be recorded and made available for at least 6 months after the conference. You will receive access details about a week before the conference.
Join us in late October either in New Brunswick or online — or both — for this exciting collaboration with Canadian professionals and other international wildland fire experts!
A team from Japan’s Hokkaido University’s research study recently uncovered worrying findings for residents across East Asia. The team looked into the increasing frequency of wildfires in Siberia, and the growing threat of smoke that Japan and other areas downwind of Siberia are forced to breathe.
Previous studies have confirmed wildfires are becoming more common in Arctic biomes across the globe, including Siberia. A 2022 USFS study found wildfires in Siberia tripled from the 2001 – 2010 period to the 2011 – 2020 period. The area burned by wildfires in Siberia also increased by a factor of 2.6 during the same period.
“We found that annual fire frequency and the extent of burnt areas were related to various combinations of seasonal air temperature, precipitation, ground moisture, and lightning frequency,” the 2022 study said. “Increased wildfire and loss of permafrost may threaten ongoing settlement and industrialization, particularly for western Siberia.”
But the wildfires have implications for residents in numerous areas other than Siberia. The Hokkaido University researchers used global climate simulation models to evaluate how the expected increase in wildfires, and wildfire smoke, will affect people downwind of Siberia.
The researchers found smoke from Siberia’s wildfires releases aerosols, or air pollution particles that reflect sunlight away from the earth’s surface, which greatly degrades air quality, leading to a drastic increase in air pollution, possibly thousands of deaths, and billions of dollars in economic losses, including upwards of:
70,000 deaths and $80 billion in losses across China
32,000 deaths and $100 billion in losses in Japan
4,000 deaths and $20 billion in losses in South Korea
“Despite the limitations of our study, our findings provide readers with a critical message on the effect of increased particulate matter caused by Siberian wildfires on climate and air quality as well as mortality and the economy under present and future atmospheric conditions,” the researchers said. “Future studies must aim to prevent air pollution emissions from Siberian wildfires and take further preventive measures in the future under ongoing and future climate changes.”
A team from Japan’s Hokkaido University’s research study recently uncovered worrying findings for residents across East Asia. The team looked into the increasing frequency of wildfires in Siberia, and the growing threat of smoke that Japan and other areas downwind of Siberia are forced to breathe.
As wildfire activity and severity increase globally, so too does the pervasiveness of wildfire smoke.
Researchers in the U.S. are working to find out how growing amounts of wildfire smoke nationwide affect ecosystems including aquatic habitats. A recent study published in the Global Change Biology research journal found that even smoke impacts lake ecology.
“An incredible 98.9 percent of lakes experienced at least 10 smoke-days a year, with 89.6 percent of lakes receiving over 30 lake smoke-days, and lakes in some regions experiencing up to 4 months of cumulative smoke-days,” the study said.
The term “smoke-days” describes the number of days on which any portion of a lake’s boundary intersected with smoke as defined by NOAA’s hazard mapping system daily smoke product. The smoke-days concept has been used previously to demonstrate smoke exposure by ecoregion, but was used specifically for lakes for the first time in this study.
Smoke and ash from wildfires lower the solar radiation that enters lake habitats, affecting organisms in numerous ways from physiology to behavior, according to the research. Particles from the smoke deposited within lake ecosystems can also affect several biological and geological processes, including the availability and cycling of various nutrients.
Less than 0.01 percent of land in North America burned between 2019 and 2021, but the area covered in smoke was 75 percent of the continent’s total land. The year 2021 marked the largest number of high-density lake smoke-days and is the year with the largest portion of the country burned and largest area covered with smoke, while 2020 had the lowest number of high-density smoke-days and the smallest area burned and smallest area covered with smoke.
“Large knowledge gaps impede our ability to predict and manage the responses of lakes to smoke and ash,” the researchers concluded. “Measuring the extent and effects of smoke and ash deposition remains challenging. Larger-scale studies are necessary to disentangle the mediating effects of scale and watershed context on the responses of lakes to smoke and ash deposition.”
A new study report from the University of Oregon suggests that public warnings on wildfire smoke air quality often aren’t issued till after smoke has already swept into the area. The report details recommendations on better communications by public institutions about wildfire smoke and health risks — so that local residents have more time to prepare. More than half of wildfire-related tweets by 32 institutional accounts in 2022 were posted at peak levels of smoke when exposure risk was highest.
“On the one side, these institutions are doing a great job of highlighting the risks when the risks are present,” said Catherine Slavik, a postdoctoral researcher at the U of O Center for Science Communication Research. She said she hopes more of these conversations will occur before it’s too late for affected residents to prepare.
KEZI reported that of 1287 analyzed tweets, only one in seven instructed and encouraged preparation such as wearing respirators, staying indoors, or using air purifiers. Only 213 of all the tweets used AQI labels to report on the smoky air and only 64 described risks with numeric data — such as percentage likelihood of a fire spreading or the number of acres burning.
Recommendations for smoke communications include expressing hazard severity, risk, likelihood, and mitigation, including numeric information and AQI levels when describing risks, practicing community engagement, and discussing risks outside of the fire season.
Most of Washington State’s hazardous air pollution comes from wildfire smoke, burdening already over-burdened populations in the state and lowering the average number of years people in those communities are expected to live.
A new report from the state’s Department of Ecology looked into air pollution across Washington and found that the largest contributor to air pollution in over-burdened communities was from wildfire smoke. The DOE is working to improve air quality in 16 places, representing numerous communities, neighborhoods, and towns across Washington that are overburdened and highly impacted by criteria air pollution.
The federal Clean Air Act requires the EPA to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for six common air pollutants. The DOE monitors these pollutants and acts if levels become unhealthy. These pollutants are:
During the cold season, the largest contributor to air pollution was usually smoke from wood-burning stoves or furnaces.
Residents of the studied overburdened communities, on average, live 2.4 years shorter lives than the state average and also have higher numbers of deaths from cardiovascular disease.
Satellite photo, Bolt Creek (north) and Cedar Creek fires Sept. 2022. Processed by Pierre Markuse.
“Long-term exposure to air pollution may contribute to development of disease — for example, asthma development in children or chronic cardiovascular conditions in adults,” the department’s report says. “Further, short-term exposure to air pollution is associated with exacerbations in existing conditions such as asthma or COPD.”
The overburdened communities included:
Spokane and Spokane Valley
Tri-Cities to Wallula
East Yakima
Lower Yakima Valley
Moxee Valley
George and West Grant County
Mattawa
Ellensburg
Wenatchee and East Wenatchee
Everett
North Seattle and Shoreline
South Seattle
South King County
Northeast Puyallup
South and East Tacoma
Vancouver
The report also warns that life expectancies in these communities may drop even further as the frequency of wildfire smoke events has been rising. The worry is in line with USDA research that points to wildfire seasons in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho that are projected to last longer with increased wildfire frequency, size, and total acres burned as a result of climate change.
“In Northwest forests, a warming climate coupled with more frequent wildfires will lead to a shift away from shade-tolerant, thin-barked, or fire-intolerant species such as western hemlock, subalpine fir, and Engelmann spruce,” the report said. “With warmer and drier conditions and more frequent disturbance, some locations will likely shift from forest to shrubland or grassland.”
After a Lane County Circuit Court judge in Oregon denied PacifiCorp’s motion to dismiss the negligence claims back in December, KOIN-TV reports that a Willamette Valley winery is wanting accountability from utility companies after the devastating 2020 Labor Day fires.
Brigadoon Vineyards filed in June 2023 with negligence charges against Pacific Power — and its parent company PacifiCorp. KGW-TV reported last week that several vineyards in the Pacific Northwest have sued the utility company, claiming that the utility company’s powerlines started some of the 2020 Labor Day fires, which tainted grape crops at numerous wineries with smoke wafting over Northwest vineyards during and after the 2020 firestorm.
“It boggles the mind that they had an opportunity to turn off the power and they didn’t do it.”
Brigadoon argues in court that the Labor Day fires — the Santiam, Echo Mountain, Archie Creek Complex, 242, and South Obenchain fires in western Oregon in 2020 — resulted from PacifiCorp’s electrical system failures and the utility’s decisons to not de-energize its powerlines — caused smoke to taint the winery’s grapes, which crippled wine production and the winery’s sales. Multiple lawsuits filed by Willamette Valley vineyards and wineries against PacifiCorp, the parent company of electric utility Pacific Power, will proceed in court after several recent rulings. Attorneys for the winemakers plan to get other affected businesses on board with the legal action.
Elk Cove Vineyards, Willamette Valley Vineyards, and Brigadoon Winery thus far are just three of the affected winemakers to sue PacifiCorp individually. The complaints were filed separately but are all substantively similar — they each allege that PacifiCorp equipment failures ignited several of the Labor Day fires of 2020, and that the smoke from those fires then damaged grapes, the grape harvest, and wine sales for the wineries. Complainants are seeking almost $16 million in damages.
KOBI5 recently reported that Elk Cove Vineyards, Willamette Valley Vineyards, and Brigadoon Winery are just three of the winemakers to sue PacifiCorp so far, alleging that the power company’s lines, which they chose to not de-energize, started some of the 2020 fires that tainted or ruined the vineyards’ grape crops with heavy and longterm smoke.
Lawsuits from the 2020 Labor Day weekend fires have already cost PacifiCorp more than $73 million. Brigadoon Vineyards says PacifiCorp decided to not shut off power despite warnings from the National Weather Service and Oregon officials that a “historic red-flag-warning weather event would occur, producing catastrophic winds in excess of 50 mph, and hot dry air that was likely to cause electrical system failures that would cause dangerous fires.”
Brigadoon Vineyards says they were unable to sell wines to the public at their regular price — if at all –and the winery claims that it lost retail shelf spaces and also suffered reputational damage, which may take 5 to 7 years to recoup after the fires. Brigadoon is just one of several wineries, including Willamette Valley Vineyards, suing PacifiCorp for damages from the 2020 Labor Day fires.
Willamette Valley Vineyards
“Our grapes were just in the process of ripening at that time. And so many of the growers in the wineries were not able to use significant amounts of fruit they had grown,” said Jim Bernau, the founder of Willamette Valley Vineyards.
