Fig 1.
Ecozones and Boulanger et al (2012) regionalization.
Ecozone names: Atlantic Maritime (AM), Pacific Maritime (AM), Boreal Shield East (BSE), Boreal Shield West (BSW), Taiga Shield East (TSE), Taiga Shield West (TSW), Boreal Cordillera (BC), Montane Cordillera (MC), Taiga Cordillera (TC), Boreal Plains (BP), Taiga Plains (TP), and Hudson Plains (HP). Fire regime names: Eastern Subarctic zone (ES), Great Slave Lake zone (GSL), Southern Cordillera zone (SC), Lake Winnipeg zone (LW), Eastern Temperate zone (ET), Lake Athabasca zone (LA), Eastern James Bay zone (EJB), Interior Cordillera zone (IC), Western Ontario zone (WO), Western Subarctic zone (WS), Great Bear Lake zone (GBL), Western James Bay zone (WJB), Southwestern Yukon zone (SY), North Atlantic zone (NAT), Southern Prairies zone (SP), and Pacific zone (P). Map generated in ArcGIS 10.1. (http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgis-for-desktop). Ecozone boundaries available via creative commons.
Fig 2.
Annual distribution of burned areas (1985–2015) in Canada’s forested ecosystems.
Insets show details of the fire events in three sub-areas (ordered west to east). Ecozone boundaries are also shown (as per Fig 1). Map generated in ArcGIS 10.1 (http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgis-for-desktop). Ecozone boundaries available via creative commons.
Fig 3.
Exponential fitting for fire return interval computation in the Taiga Shield West ecozone.
Fig 4.
Annual distribution of total area burned (1985–2015), by ecozone.
Table 1.
Average burned area, Theil Sen Test results, and estimated fire return intervals.
Slopes only displayed for significant trends (p < 0.05). Slope percentages are relative to average annual area burned.
Fig 5.
Histograms of percent annual area burned for each ecozone from 1985 to 2015.
Montane Cordillera and Atlantic Maritime (shaded red) were the only ecozones to display a significant trend in percent area burned from 1985 to 2015 using the Thiel Sen test (α = 0.05).
Fig 6.
Histograms of percent area burned for each fire regime area from 1985 to 2015.
GSL, SC and SP (shaded red) were the only fire regime areas to display a significant trend in percent area burned from 1985 to 2015 using the Thiel Sen test (α = 0.05).
Fig 7.
Burned area and number of burned patches, by patch size class.
Fig 8.
Estimated fire return interval within each ecoregion.
Map generated in ArcGIS 10.1 (http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgis-for-desktop). Ecozone boundaries available via creative commons.
Fig 9.
Percent area burned per 50 km × 50 km cell over the forested ecozones of Canada.
Map generated in ArcGIS 10.1 (http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgis-for-desktop). Ecozone boundaries available via creative commons.