Which regions of BC have been most affected by wildfires over the past 100 years and past decade?

We have correlated the BC government’s long-term record of wildfire date, location and size. This required creating six geographical fire regions as indicated in the map below. The charts below the map show, first, the percentage of each region that has burned over the past 100 years and the past 10 years, and, secondly, the total area of each region burned over the past 100 years and the past 10 years.

Below those are charts for each of the regions showing the total area burned during each decade between 1924-2023. In the case of Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii, most of the fires occurred in the first half of the twentieth century and were likely the consequence of large amounts of unburned logging residue catching on fire as a result of human activity.

The upshot? There has been a dramatic increase in area burned over the last decade (compared with long-term levels) for four of the six regions. The area of BC east of the Rocky Mountains is the most intensely impacted by fires (in terms of percentage burned), followed by the southern Interior. Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii have seen very little area burned. When experts talk about “solutions”, they need to be place-based solutions since the magnitude and intensity of the problem varies greatly around the province.