Marc-André Parisien, Research Scientist, Canadian Forest Service, Northern Forestry Centre, marc-andre.parisien@canada.ca 

Marc-André Parisien is a research scientist at the Canadian Forest Service, Northern Forestry Centre, where he has been working with the fire research group since 2000. He was trained as a forest ecologist and holds a BSc from McGill University, a MSc from l'Université du Québec à Rimouski, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His research on wildland fire is focused on understanding biophysical controls on fire regimes, mostly within the boreal biome of North America. He specializes in quantitative analysis methods, including process-based simulation modeling, a tool he uses for mapping wildfire risk. He has authored over 80peer-reviewed publications and his work has been featured in the scientific and popular media. 

ABSTRACT

Wildland fire is an important disturbance agent in much of western North America. However, the natural role of fire has been disrupted in many regions due to the influence of human activities, which have the potential to either exclude or promote fire, resulting in a “fire deficit” or “fire surplus”, respectively. We developed a model of expected area burned as a function of climate for the last 35 years. We then quantified departures from expected area burned to identify geographic regions with fire deficit or surplus. We developed our model of area burned as a function of several climatic variables from reference areas with low human influence; the relationship between climate and fire is strong in these areas. We then quantified the degree of fire deficit or surplus as the difference between expected (as predicted with the model). Results indicate that many forested areas in the West experienced a fire deficit over the past 30 years, likely due to fire exclusion by human activities. We also found that large expanses of non-forested regions experienced a fire surplus, presumably due to introduced annual grasses and the prevalence of anthropogenic ignitions. The heterogeneity in patterns of fire deficit and surplus among ecoregions emphasizes fundamentally different ecosystem sensitivities to human influences and suggests that large-scale adaptation and mitigation strategies will be necessary in order to restore and maintain resilient, healthy, and naturally functioning ecosystems.