Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Warming and drying trends in western Canada's Boreal region have increased due to climate warming. This has caused a marked shift in the area burned by wildfire over the last 10 years, doubling that of the 1970's. The area burned by wildfire is expected to increase over the next century due to continued warming and longer fire seasons. While fires are a natural part of ecosystem succession, they also pose significant threats to the economic and social stability of urban and industrial areas. Drying wetlands may provide additional fuel for wildfires, potentially having negative human health implications as a result of lingering air pollution. Yet the vulnerability of wetlands to wildfire is difficult to quantify, especially over broad and often remote regions, but is required for better understanding of the climatic, ecological and social consequences of wildfires now and in the future. My research program, FISIL, will improve understanding of vegetation structural, topographic and hydrological drivers of forest fire fuel consumption and post-fire vegetation regeneration trajectories within wetland to forest transitional zones that have undergone recent natural or anthropogenic change. Wetland ground cover and short vegetation canopies are of particular concern because their impacts on fire severity are not well understood, and are poorly parameterised in operational fire prediction models. My career-long research program will examine interactions between ecosystem change and environmental hazards associated with ecological and environmental change feedbacks. My short-term objective uses a multi-disciplinary approach to examine risks and effects from wildfire within drying ecosystems undergoing succession. My research program will use cutting-edge, rare pre- and post-fire 3D airborne Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) datasets, in situ field data collection/validation, and the integration of localised hydrological, meteorological and greenhouse gas instrumentation to examine the implications of fire on local ecosystems. Sites include a range of wetlands within sub-humid parts of the Boreal Plains ecoregion, previously disturbed oil sands regions south of Fort McMurray, and sensitive areas of thawing permafrost in north-western Canada. The results of this research will provide urgently needed quantification of the driving mechanisms associated with ground and short vegetation biomass fuel consumption, the potential for greenhouse gas emissions and changes in ecosystem regeneration. Further, what we learn here may also be used to improve pollution models, and is expected to have implications on human health and society for improved community fire mitigation strategies. Finally, students involved in my research program will be exposed to a broad range of learning, experimentation and outreach experiences that will make them highly valued leaders of tomorrow.