Air quality alerts, impacts on health and effects on tourism and agriculture are just the beginning of the story about this summer’s forest fires.
In August, southern and central Alberta, including Mountain View and Red Deer counties, experienced the unending brownish haze of wildfire smoke from British Columbia.
Those with asthma, emphysema, the effects of pneumonia and other lung-related ailments, spent more time indoors or suffered more outdoors than usual.
Albertans who have summer places in B.C.’s interior or vacationed in that province experienced discomfort and disruption from the smoke.
This is the worst fire season in British Columbia’s recorded history; 13,000 square kilometres have been burned. Last year, 2017 ranked as the second-worst year with 12,100 square kilometres consumed.
And hotter summers mean more fires as forests slowly dry out and are more vulnerable to lightning, which has started 1,467 of this year’s wildfires compared to 443 started by human carelessness.
According to the climate scientists at Natural Resources Canada, “in extreme years, carbon emissions from wildland fires across Canada approach the level of emissions from all fossil fuel sources.”
The smoke from the Fort McMurray fire in 2016 was five per cent of Canada’s emissions from burning fossil fuel for that year.
The 2017 B.C. forest fires released 190 metric tonnes of CO2, nearly three times the annual average CO2 emissions that are released by the people of B.C.
Forests and woodlands, which cover 42 per cent of Canada’s land area, are considered the most effective carbon “sinks” – because the process of photosynthesis through which trees and forest underbrush nourish themselves and grow, utilizes and stores CO2.
In 2017, the forest carbon sink offset 28 per cent of Canada’s carbon footprint from all sources.
When the trees and underbrush burn in wildfires, the main component of the smoke is stored carbon dioxide. Other minor amounts of greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrogen oxide are also in the smoke as well as the ash that gives the smoke its dense brown or gray colours.
A U.S. National Foundation of Science report states, “Attempts to control fire in the past century have had the unintended benefit of sequestering more carbon and reducing the impact of human combustion of fossil fuels.
“However, as these forests now begin to burn, that stored 20th century carbon is moving back into the atmosphere, where it may compound our current problems with CO2."
The ravages of the mountain pine beetle (MPB) have compounded the threat. The MPB has destroyed 50 per cent of B.C.’s lodgepole pines, creating dead forest vulnerable to fire.
With more burning summers ahead, it’s past time to adjust.
Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist and author.
