EXPERT ADVISORY: July 25, 2024 – R0088

Scenes of devastation continue to pour out of Jasper as the western Alberta town grapples with massive wildfires.

Brock University experts are available to comment on fire ecology and management, emergency response co-ordination, climate change impacts, and the history of Jasper National Park imagery.

David Goldblum, Associate Professor of Geography and Tourism Studies, studies forest ecology, including topics related to fire ecology and fire management.

Generally speaking, “forest fires are natural and normal,” he says, but over the past few decades, they’ve become more intense, larger and harder to put out.

A major factor contributing to these trends were fire suppression practices used throughout the early 20th century that saw many forest fires extinguished, says Goldblum. It was in the 1980s that it became clear that fire suppression was detrimental and that it would lead to ecological problems and larger fires.

“A lot of forests that should have burned in the past 100 years didn’t, so in many areas we have older forests than is natural,” he says.

Plus, there have been significant outbreaks of mountain pine beetle in Alberta and British Columbia, which kills pine trees, resulting in “huge areas of dead standing trees ripe for fire,” he says.

“In addition to those factors are slightly warmer and drier conditions,” says Goldblum. “You put all that together and you get fires tipping a bit more into the intense fire end of the spectrum, which was really bad last year.”

Julia Baird, Director of Brock’s Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, conducted research as part of a larger team on how the emergency response to Fort McMurray’s 2016 wildfire was co-ordinated.

Baird says any wildfire emergency response requires upscaling of authority from regional to provincial management, and efficient and effective communication among a wide and complex array of ministries, aid organizations, industry, federal supports, and with evacuees and the public.

“In our previous research of the Fort McMurray wildfire in 2016, we found that those at the Provincial Operations Centre used both the structured incident command system that specifies a clear chain of command, but also used flexibility and pre-existing relationships to move ‘at the speed of trust’,” she says.

Baird says the emergency response to the Jasper fire has seen the successful evacuation of communities.

“There are still disastrous consequences of the wildfires, and emergency managers and firefighters are working in extremely challenging conditions,” she says.

Michael Pisaric, Professor of Geography and Tourism Studies, researches the impacts of climate and environmental change in subarctic and alpine regions of western Canada and Yukon Territory.

Climate change, driven by human activities, is leading to broad-scale impacts on global ecosystems in response to changing temperature and precipitation patterns, says Pisaric. As the climate continues to warm and precipitation regimes change, the impacts of climate change will continue to evolve.

“The frequency and severity of ecosystem disturbances such as forest fires are expected to increase in the coming decades,” he says.

Although there are short-term impacts on land and water affected by wildfires, they are “resilient and will recover in the long term,” says Pisaric. “Most importantly, the people of Jasper are losing their homes, businesses and livelihoods; the impacts on them will be felt for years to come and all our efforts should be on helping them at this time.”

Keri Cronin, Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture, has studied the history of how Jasper National Park has been represented and promoted as a wilderness destination.

“National parks themselves are cultural artifacts,” she says, noting how Jasper National Park is part of the iconic imagery of Canada. It was established in 1907 and is part of the broader UNESCO world heritage site of the Canadian Rockies.

“Seeing images of this place burning is so jarring, especially when we consider the kinds of images we normally see coming out of places like Jasper,” says Cronin.

“Quiet, still, tranquil: words like ‘unspoiled’ and ‘untouched’ are often attached to these images even though the reality is far more complex,” she says, referring to concerns about how development such ski resorts, golf courses and infrastructure have raised environmental and ecological concerns.

She notes how early photographic postcards of Banff National Park produced in the late 1800s were touched up with green pigment to hide the impacts of a massive forest fire. “Although it’s a different park and time period, that has me thinking of what happens now with visually representing the Jasper area,” she says.

David Goldblum, Associate Professor of Geography and Tourism Studies, Julia Baird, Director of Brock’s Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, Michael Pisaric, Professor of Geography and Tourism Studies, and Keri Cronin, Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture, are available for media interviews on this topic.

For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

* Sarah Ackles, Communications Specialist, Brock University sackles@brocku.ca or 289-241-5483

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