Friday, December 11, 2020

FOREST FIRE ACTIVITY SHOWS DOWNWARD TREND

 In recent years, media coverage and academic discussions of extreme fire activity have fostered the belief among some Canadians that the country is suffering from a rising trend of destruction from forest fires. During the period of reliable data from 1959 to 2019, it is true that there has been a rising trend in fire activity calculated over the entire six decades. However, a closer inspection of the data show that there was a sharp increase in destruction caused by forest fires in the first half of this period, and a general decline in the second half. The all-time peak of fire activity in 1989 involved some 7.6 million hectares burned, while the most recent national data show only 1.8 million hectares burned in 2019.

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