Fire regime changes in Canada: an update

Abstract

Given the recent rise in extreme fires, we present an update to a previous Canadian wildfire trend analysis (1959–2015) with nine additional years of data (2016–2024), an improved area burned dataset, a refined trend analysis method, and a greater geographical coverage of the country. Overall, the big-picture trends remain consistent: annual area burned, the annual number and size of large fires are still increasing, while fires of all sizes continue to decline. The most significant and consistent changes include greater fire activity in the Cordillera and Plains ecozones in the west, while increasing or flat trends in annual area burned are now evident in all ecozones. Very large fires (≥20 000 ha) are getting larger and account for a greater proportion of area burned. In contrast to the preceding analysis, human-caused fires, which were previously detected as decreasing in annual area burned, have now been increasing with high confidence since the mid-2000s.