Discussion: Brush fire continues to burn in Harriman State Park

This is not on any of the the WOC maps yet but its looking to be a long dry summer. They do close the park if fire danger gets very high. I can't imagine we are far away from that...
read the article

Fire danger rating is extreme in many parts of Ontario's Golden Horseshoe at the moment as well.

There has also been a brush fire in Lynn Woods, site of last year's US Middle Champs. I don't know where in the park the fire is, but maybe it burned up some of the undergrowth and made more of the mapped area usable.

There's a fire in French Creek right now as well.

Some folks link the increase in forest fires to Global Warming...and likely to get worse.

2012! It's another sign of the end....

One of the guys who makes that link is Dr. Hammer.
http://www.science.mcmaster.ca/geo/faculty/wadding...

Yeah, he tends to harp on about that a lot... at some point he should change his user name to harper.

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There are plenty of maps that could use a good underbrush-only fire...

@chitownclark, the article you posted cites the research of a colleague I do a lot of research with - Dr. Mike Flannigan. The article discusses a lot of the research we are doing on peat wildfires. Peat fires can smoulder for a long period of time and can 'over winter' in extreme cases. As such they account for a lot of Canada's forest fire fighting budget (over $500M/year). Last summer over 800,000 ha burned in Alberta alone with the Slave Lake area fires getting the majority of the media attention as it was Canada's 2nd most costly natural disaster. That region of Alberta will be our focus this summer again.

I'm always looking for potential graduate students interested in wildfire research. http://ecohydrology.mcmaster.ca Orienteers always welcome so you can race in all those awesome Alberta O races and then do research with me too. I'd even consider maths pdf's. ;-)

A Ph.D., reduced to a PDF?

Yeah, PDF is a nice and handy, standardized format. Should work even for researchers...

Postdoctoral deerflies.

I thought the common denomination was FDF...

I prefer PDEs.

I wish I was PDQ....

What about an ABD? An ABDF?

But PDGs have the puissance.

WTF

...Peat fires can smoulder for a long period of time...

Just another benefit of A/P: Dr Flannigan's article was a lot of new information for me too. I guess he's describing another destructive cycle that is growing in strength as the world warms:

warmer atmosphere > greater energy; more drying > more lightning in Arctic > more fires > more carbon released > even warmer atmosphere

Interesting that you will be working in Alberta, a huge new source of atmospheric carbon from the rapidly growing shale oil industry. Do you agree with Dr Flannigan's grim long-term assessments?

I spent the winter of '73 in Ireland, ensconced next to a peat fire with a pint of Guinness in my hand. Over there they call it "turf" ...mine and burn it like coal. Any Irishman can go out to his back yard with a special "turf cutter" and provide fuel for his house all winter. I grew to enjoy the oily aroma of burning turf, accompanied by a pint of course!

Peat ecosystems are a lot more resilient than most researchers suggest. my research suggests they recover well post-fire and drying and I'd argue fire is necessary for these ecosystems to continue long-term carbon storage.

But the 2010 Russian Peat fires have demonstrated the loss of resilience with double disturbance. Fire AND drainage. drain these systems for forestry and agriculture and this makes them a persistent source of CO2. Smoke related deaths were in the 1000's. so this pattern of warming and burning will be a positive feedback. The drying of peatlands is increasing the 'fuel' available to burn which is allowing larger fire to persist on the landscape. So we are working with the Canadian Forest Service to develop a fire danger rating for peat soils.

Lots of Canada's resources (Oil Sands in AB, diamonds in ON, hydroelectric in QC, chromite ring of fire in ON) are in peat dominated landscapes and while one can finger point the companies that are doing the extraction they are also investing millions on essential basic peat research to develop more sustainable practices.


I think Canada should follow Ireland's (Bord na Mona) lead with some of our peat reserves. e.g., we can burn some peat mixed with other forms of biomass instead of coal and these reserves can be taken from areas slated for other resource extraction or hydro electric flooding (which is the biggest impact on Cdn peatlands). I've worked on a way to extract peat and restore the ecosystem afterwards. not a fossil fuel and not renewable. somewhere in between.

peaty scotch is nice too.