The Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS): Its Role within NRCan's National Carbon Accounting and Sustainable Development Framework

Wildland fires have burned an average of 1-2 M ha of forest every year in Canada during the last two decades. There is large inter-annual variability in the amount of area burned, and a wide range in forest fuel types burned. The burning conditions under which fires occur are also wide ranging. All of these factors have a strong influence on the total amount of carbon emissions released from wildland fires each year. In support of a national forest carbon accounting system, a fire and carbon emissions project was initiated to provide an annual estimate of national carbon emissions in a timely and consistent manner across the entire country. The Project is housed within the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS) which integrates multi-source data for national-level products. Burned area mapping is done using fine resolution satellite data. Spatially and temporally explicit burning conditions for each fire are determined using fire weather data from CWFIS, and by monitoring fire spread with coarse resolution satellite data. Detailed fuel type and pre-fire fuel load data are provided by the Carbon Budget Model for the Canadian Forest Sector (CBM-CFS) based on national and/or provincial forest inventory data. CWFIS calculates fuel consumption for 8 different biomass pools in each burned cell based on fuel type, fuel load, burning conditions, and fire behaviour using a fire effects model. CWFIS also performs the post-fire transfer of biomass between pools as necessary, and returns the post-fire results to CBM-CFS. Fuel consumption is summarized and reported as carbon emissions for all fires. This Project is supported through the Canadian Space Agency, and through the assistance of fire management agencies in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario to implement pilot studies in the boreal region.