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Environment, Forest Fires and Weather

TAS said:
Please don't blame me if this changes but I have not noticed one mosquito this summer - so far.
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Me either. I even went on a 5-hour long drive down south and didn't have to clean my windshield afterwards because I wasn't really hitting any bugs.

Surely this is concerning to others as well.
 
Things look good (ish) for Folk Fest this weekend.

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From the GoA:

There is one wildfire of note in the province.
Red Earth East Complex
The Red Earth East Complex is composed of 8 wildfires centered in the northeastern portion of the Slave Lake Forest Area, east of Highway 88.
The following out of control wildfires are near communities:
  • SWF085, which impacted the community of Chipewyan Lake, is 137,298 hectares (ha). Firefighters in a helicopter are monitoring the wildfire for activity. The wildfire threat to the community of Chipewyan Lake remains minimal.
  • SWF089, located 5.5 km east of Peerless Lake, is 12,520 ha.
  • SWF092, located 7 km southeast of Red Earth Creek and 8.5 km west of Trout Lake, is 82,790 ha.
  • SWF100, located 5 km west of Peerless Lake, is 18,015 ha.
Firefighters, with the support of heavy equipment and helicopters, continue to work on strengthening containment lines and extinguishing hot spots.
Evacuation order
The community of Chipewyan Lake remains under and evacuation order. See Alberta Emergency Alert for more information.

Published on August 7, 2025 4:38 pm
 
YEG imagineer said:
I wish this herbicide would be banned in western Canada too. I would be curious if any research has occured if forest fires are bigger and hotter due to the removal of more water heavy trees (broad leaf) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/forestry-herbicide-ban-ontario-1.7610057
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I just want to provide another perspective on this. Almost certainly, if you replace softwood conifers with aspen/poplar (our main broadleaves), you'll get lower susceptibility to fires. There's a reason we usually don't deliberately do that, and indeed try to prevent it from happening naturally: the softwoods have properties that make them much more versatile and in demand. Wood scientists could maybe find new uses for aspen besides pulp and particleboard, but the material is just at a natural disadvantage.

Unfortunately, for a number of reasons it seems like many pine/spruce stands are replaced by aspens after natural disturbance or harvesting, and it's not always clear that the pine/spruce will return in the course of succession. We have rules in place that push forestry companies towards harvesting on crown lands so as to emulate natural disturbance and promote the recovery of the same stand type that was harvested. These rules are meant to ensure long-term sustainability; the alternative is that the companies would just cut and run after each harvest, which would mean a lot more disturbance over the course of decades and a much faster transition towards aspen domination in susceptible areas. But it's also in part due to these rules that there's so much emphasis on controlling aspen.

Glyphosate is among the least bad of the herbicides in terms of health/environmental impacts, but it's still not great (obviously) and we don't want to see the arms race towards more resistant plants and more powerful (and toxic) herbicides that the agricultural world is going through. From what I've heard from the industry side, most companies in Alberta are gradually phasing out glyphosate due to public opinion. This is, of course, especially touchy when it comes to First Nations that practice traditional harvesting, although some First Nations have embraced glyphosate in their own forestry practices.

The alternatives to glyphosate for controlling aspen are not great. In Québec, where herbicides have long been banned in forestry, big crews go out with brush saws to clear out fast-growing, less desirable species. These workers are often exploited, and the proximity of these big mostly male crews to First Nations can also lead to violence e.g. against Indigenous women. We should probably accept at least a transition towards more mixedwood forests with much lighter and more judicious control of aspen, but I don't think we'll get around the need to control it entirely.
 
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I wish there more small operators who used select-cut instead of clear-cut tree removal with a mandate to replace like for like in terms of species.
 
archited said:
I wish there more small operators who used select-cut instead of clear-cut tree removal with a mandate to replace like for like in terms of species.
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Single tree selection isn't often used in Alberta because our major species are shade-intolerant and wouldn't recruit below a dense canopy.

I could see a place for intermediate systems like shelterwoods, especially in mixedwood stands. It was taken for granted for a long time that the main historical disturbances in Canadian boreal forests were stand-replacing fires, in which case it would make sense to use clearcuts (perhaps with seed trees) to emulate them. I've heard that this assumption is now being questioned in favor of a more mixed-severity fire regime, in which case shelterwoods might end up being closer in spirit. Even so, it probably will (and should) remain a specialized system here.
 
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A report from realtor.com (the american NAR one) says that 1/4 American homes are at high risk of damage due to climate and weather impacts, and that this risk is fundamentally tipping the way insurance is working. More homeowners are finding themselves ineligible for insurance, and those that can get it are paying substantially higher premiums.

https://www.realtor.com/research/climate-risk-2025/

Not ideal.
 
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