Grounded in the boreal forest

Alarming increase of uncontrolled wildfires

Like many people, Kristyn Mayner, a wetland stewardship specialist with the Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC) boreal team, found this wildfire season alarming. “An unprecedented amount of our forest has burned this year alone,” she says. “Those fires are huge, affecting huge portions of the land —including communities like Enterprise that are being lost. It’s devastating.”

In the face of increased episodes of extreme weather and uncontrolled wildfires, the ability to predict and plan for natural disasters has taken on new urgency. Seventy per cent of Indigenous communities in Canada are in the boreal region, and the vast biome is essential to their well-being. The landscape is also crucial for the health of wildlife populations that rely on the habitats for survival.

In the boreal, and especially in the boreal plains, the landscape is up to 40 per cent wetlands — many of which are peatlands. These ecosystems — which contain 10 per cent of the world’s freshwater — are needed more than ever as a buffer against frequent, severe wildfires.

Researchers target the future of water

Peatlands provide water filtration, management and storage — plus singular carbon storage —and these values are being recognized with conservation measures like the Manitoba government’s designation of Moswa Meadows and Fish Lake Fen as the first provincially significant peatlands. When they’re degraded, however, peatlands can lose their storage capacity and instead foster hot, dangerous fires in the dried-out peat, releasing the carbon stored in their soils.

Peatlands are part of the forested boreal landscape which has historically burned approximately every 120 years in a predictable pattern of regeneration. But, Mayner explains, “we’re outside of natural patterns at this point and it’s just so hard to say what will happen in the future.”

In response to the pace of boreal change, an ambitious pan-Canadian program called Global Water Futures, directed by John Pomeroy at the University of Saskatchewan, is developing a leadership role for Canada in water science for cold regions. DUC scientists were tapped to provide wetland expertise to the Boreal Water Futures component, led by Mike Waddington of McMaster University’s School of Earth, Environment & Society. The research leverages pan-boreal collaboration to seek ways to empower boreal communities with tools for “climate change, extreme weather and fire regimes predictions,” a growing concern as more people live and work in the region.

Turning science into sustainable practice

Peatlands are surprisingly deep, with vegetation deposits that accumulate over hundreds and even thousands of years. Digging into the peat, Mayner says, will show you that it’s two or three or four metres deep. Because of their depth, intact peatlands are natural firebreaks — recently confirmed in a foundational study from the Northern Forest Centre and University of Alberta — holding water underground that hydrates forest vegetation and reduces fuel for wildfires.

“Their natural hydrology lets them act as ‘fire refugia’,” says Mayner. “They provide safe havens for wildlife to escape from approaching wildfires, and they also provide water and seed sources for regeneration after the fire. Healthy peatlands have so much water and carbon stored below the surface. That’s what makes them so important as a nature-based climate solution.”

Mayner likes to amaze groups with the depth of peat at hands-on workshops DUC delivers for the forestry industry. These field sessions, as well as mapping and other resources, help foresters identify and avoid or minimize impacts to wetlands. DUC is a partner in the Forest Management and Wetland Stewardship Initiative, which received the Canadian Institute of Forestry’s 2023 Canadian Forest Management Group Achievement Award. These collaborations help bring the science of wetlands into operational practice.

Sharing techniques is critical. For example, forest harvest can simulate the patterns of burning that have historically regulated forest growth and reduce the risk of more severe blazes. Similarly, a forest management technique that is drawing attention is controlled burning, which mimics natural fire cycles.

“That clearly brings Indigenous stewardship into the equation,” says Mayner. “Before Europeans settled North America, small-scale fires were set in a controlled manner by Indigenous communities rather than using fire suppression. Some of those mega-burns that we’re seeing right now are because we’ve been suppressing so aggressively. It can be a big part of the solution if those historical practices come back.”

Knowledge-sharing with boreal communities

The boreal team has built relationships with many Indigenous Peoples, and hopes to add to that reciprocity and knowledge-sharing with a multi-year mapping project for the Western Boreal Forest. First conducted in Prairie Canada, the mapping techniques are made possible through collaboration with the University of Saskatchewan.

DUC researchers Lauren Bortolotti and Vanessa Harriman are working with atmospheric scientist Yanping Li to model present and future interactions between land surfaces and the climate at a fine scale, allowing for planning at the community level for land uses such as wildlife management or wildfire preparedness. The study partners are holding their first set of meetings.

“This study will involve a large aspect of Indigenous community engagement,” says Mayner. “We’re trying to make sure that we’re addressing any questions that communities within the study region might have but also, just getting curious about how we can better collaborate. We want to know, what do we have to offer that might be of interest to different communities? It’s early stages and we’re just getting started.”