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Background. There has been little quantification of the extent and duration of micrometeorological changes within a forest after airtanker drops of water-based suppressant. It has been speculated that a period of prolonged relative humidity - referred to as a 'relative humidity (RH) bubble' - temporarily exists in the canopy understorey post-drop. Aims. We quantify the RH bubble from the drops of five airtankers commonly used by wildland fire management organisations in Canada. Methods. We measured airtankers dropping water, foam concentrates, and gel enhancers in a mature jack pine stand. We examined the duration of change in RH and temperature using Generalised Additive Models, and the consequence of these changes on fine fuel moisture. Key results. The average maximum RH increased and temperature decreased, indicating that the effects of the 'RH bubble' in-stand lasted from 25 to 76 min, depending upon the airtanker type and load configuration. Conclusion. Airtanker drops cause an in-stand increase in RH and decrease in temperature, but this ambient change has a limited effect on potential fire behaviour. Implications. The direct effect of water wetting the fuel is the most impactful effect of an airtanker drop. The 'RH bubble' created, though observable, does not change fine fuel moisture enough to impact fire behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wildland fire prevention and mitigation is of mutual interest to both government and the forest industry. In 1989, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry introduced the Woods Modification Guidelines that provided rules on how forestry operations should be modified based on local fire danger conditions. Those guidelines were replaced by the Modifying Industrial Operations Protocol (MIOP) in 2008. One objective of MIOP is to allow forestry operations to be done safely for as long as possible as the fire danger increases. We investigate the impacts of these sets of regulations on the frequency of industrial forestry-caused (IDF) wildland fires in the province of Ontario, Canada. Data from 1976 to 2019 are analyzed. A case-crossover study finds no evidence to suggest that MIOP's greater flexibility in operating hours has increased the probability of IDF fire occurrences. This result indicates that MIOP's regulations have had the desired effect of allowing longer working hours on days with heightened fire risk without adding to the seasonal wildland fire load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wildfires are worsening in Canada and globally, partly due to climate change. The government of Canada is designing and building WildFireSat, the world's first purpose-built operational satellite system for wildfire monitoring. It will provide new fire intelligence to support decision-making. It takes time for fire management agencies to use new information: to understand it and its implications, change processes, develop training, and modify computer systems. Preparing for the system's prelaunch will allow agencies to benefit more rapidly from the new information. We present (1) an assessment of the readiness of 12 Canadian fire management agencies to integrate WildFireSat information and (2) guidance for reducing readiness gaps. We used survey and other data to score readiness indicators for three readiness components: understanding, organization, and information technology. We weighted the influence of each indicator score on each component. We modelled scoring and weighting uncertainties and used Monte Carlo simulation to generate distributions of aggregated agency readiness. The results indicated that most agencies have a moderate level of readiness while others have a higher level of readiness. Cluster analysis was used to group agencies by similarity in multiple dimensions. Strategies for increasing readiness are highlighted. This identifies opportunities for agencies and the WildFireSat team to collaborate on enhancing readiness for the forthcoming WildFireSat data products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Among the most successful examples of Knowledge Exchange (KE) between researchers and practitioners in Canadian wildland fire management is the development and integration of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS) into operational use. Aims: Our aim was to identify key factors for this success. Methods: Through a case study, we investigated historical KE of two CFFDRS components in Ontario, Canada. We held semi-structured interviews with principal Canadian Forest Service researchers and Ontario fire management practitioners active in development and implementation of CFFDRS from the late 1960s to 2010s. Key results: The importance of both formal and informal facilitators to support KE was emphasised. Conclusion: Participants were most likely to associate successful implementation with informal facilitators such as personal relationships, shared field-based experiences, and opportunities for dialogue between researchers and practitioners. Critical to success were the credibility and soft skills of the knowledge brokers, early engagement, and consideration of training needs for end users in the design of products. Implications: This identification of factors that facilitated or hindered the development and implementation of CFFDRS can enhance the impact of research that will help wildland fire management deal with its present and future challenges. We describe the barriers and facilitators for knowledge exchange for wildland fire management elicited from a case study of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System development and implementation in Ontario. These findings can help guide the development and implementation of future innovations for wildland fire management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Industrial forestry operations in Ontario, Canada, may be restricted to reduce the risk of wildland fires. This is currently done according to the Modifying Industrial Operations Protocol (MIOP), which was implemented in 2008 as a replacement for the Woods Modification Guidelines that had been in place since 1989. One of MIOP's objectives is to limit the negative impact or damage caused by fires ignited by industrial forestry operations. Aims: Treating the incremental growth between discovery and final sizes as a measure of suppression effectiveness, we aimed to characterise and contrast growth distributions for three successive time periods using data spanning 1976–2019 on Crown forest areas of Ontario. Methods: Stratifying by first responding group (Ontario Ministry vs forestry personnel), we tested for evidence of changes in the growth distribution using the Kruskal–Wallis and Mann–Whitney U tests. Key results: We found iterative improvements between successive time periods (Pre-Woods, then Woods Guidelines, then MIOP) in the growth distribution of fires first responded to by forestry personnel. Conclusions: MIOP appears to be successfully limiting the negative impact of industrial forestry fires while increasing operational flexibility relative to the Woods Modification Guidelines. Implications: MIOP has been implemented in a manner that still encourages safe operations while not contradicting this objective. Ontario's Modifying Industrial Operations Protocol aims to limit wildland fire risks associated with forestry operations. We empirically investigated how the distribution of incremental growth between discovery and final sizes of industrial forestry-caused fires have changed over time, finding evidence suggesting that fires tend to grow less under current regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wildland fire management decision-makers need to quickly understand large amounts of quantitative information under stressful conditions. Categorization and visualization "schemes" have long been used to help, but how they are done affects the speed and accuracy of interpretation. Using traditional fire management schemes can unduly restrict the design of new products. Our design process for Ontario's fine-scale, spatially explicit, daily fire occurrence prediction (FOP) models led us to develop guidance for designing new schemes. We show selected historical fire management schemes and describe our method. It includes specifying goals and requirements, exploring design options and making trade-offs. The design options include gradient continuity, hue selection, range completeness and scale linearity. We apply our method to a case study on designing the scheme for Ontario's FOP models. We arrived at a smooth, nonlinear scale that accommodates data spanning many orders of magnitude. The colouring draws attention according to levels of concern, reveals meaningful spatial patterns and accommodates some colour vision deficiencies. Our method seems simple now but reconciles complex considerations and is useful for mapping many other datasets. Our method improved the clarity and ease of interpretation of several information products used by fire management decision-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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A modelling framework to spatially score the impacts from wildland fire effects on specific resources and assets was developed for and applied to the province of Ontario, Canada. This impact model represents the potential 'loss', which can be used in the different decision-making methods common in fire response operations (e.g. risk assessment, decision analysis and expertise-based). Resources and assets considered include point features such as buildings, linear features such as transmission lines, and areal features such as forest management areas. Three categories of fire impacts were included: social, economic and emergency response. Category-specific scores were determined through expert elicitation and then adjusted to account for fire intensity. Expert elicitation was shown to compare favourably with other methods in terms of the complexity, time, set-up cost and operational use. When compared with historical fire data from Ontario, it was found that impact model scores were associated with the objective to suppress or monitor fires. The model framework provides a consistent pre-fire impact assessment to support individual fire response decisions. The impact assessment can also represent the total impact for areas of Ontario that do not have prescriptive response in a formal fire response plan. Planning for and responding to wildland fires require assessment of the potential impacts, which is generally difficult to do. An easily implemented expert elicitation approach for quantifying the potential impacts on resources and assets was developed, applied and validated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]