Future of wildfires: What will happen to Canada's scorched forests as fires worsen?

After a record-breaking wildfire season in 2023, land double the size of Portugal has been burnt in Canada throughout the year, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC). At 18.5 million hectares (46 million acres), that’s about five per cent of the country’s entire forests.

As the wildfire season slowly winds down with cooling temperatures, what happens to all the land and forests after the fires have been extinguished and nearby evacuated communities returned, especially with such a large swath of area affected?

In the past, fires didn’t come around an area more often than every 30 years, with the lack of trees from recent burns helping regulate the frequency of the fires and resetting the local ecosystem. But now, experts warn that climate change may be breaking that natural cycle.

“Unfortunately, what we're seeing now when we have these extremely intense fires is that, in some places, things burn so hot that they actually incinerate the seeds that are released,” warns ‘Dark Days at Noon: The Future of Fire’ author Edward Struzik. “The southern end of our boreal forest is going to disappear.”

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