Mapping the Flames (Final Report): The Role of Climate Change in the 2023 Quebec and Ontario Wildfire Season

Introduction

The 2023 wildfire season in Quebec and Ontario was one of the most severe in recent history, marked by vast fire spread, significant impacts on communities, and smoke that traveled across North America. Through this GIS research project, I aimed to understand how climate change contributed to these unprecedented conditions. By integrating various GIS tools and datasets, I was able to map and analyze the underlying factors that fueled the 2023 fires. While I referred to well-known data sources such as those provided by NASA and NOAA for initial insights, the featured maps were crafted using more readily accessible data from platforms like Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) and the Copernicus store.

GIS Methodology and Data Sources

Data Acquisition and Processing

For this project, I used a variety of data sources to create comprehensive GIS maps and conduct spatial analysis. Here is an overview of the data and how it was used:

1. Precipitation and Climate Data:
   • Source: Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) provided precipitation data for 2023, which was essential for mapping drought conditions leading up to the fire season.
   • GIS Integration: Precipitation data from eight Quebec weather stations was downloaded in CSV format and converted into raster layers in ArcGIS Pro to visualize regional precipitation deficits. While NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) and NOAA datasets offered robust insights, I found the ECCC data to be more accessible and easier to incorporate without complex licensing or conversion. Unfortunately, most weather stations located closer to the source of the wildfires did not have complete data.
2. Fire Occurrence & Smoke Data:
   • Source: Fire occurrence and burn perimeter data were sourced from the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS) and Global Forest Watch.
   • GIS Integration: Shapefiles were used to map the locations and extent of the fires. These were overlaid with smoke data from June 7, 2003, the peak of the wildfires’ burning period, to identify areas most affected by secondhand smoke from the fires. Using ArcGIS Pro, I was able to see how areas south of Quebec, such as Syracuse, received the worst smoke conditions due to the jet stream & other prevailing wind patterns.
3. Winter Snowpack:
   • Source: Data from the aforementioned weather stations accessed via ECCC provided data on depth of snowpack during the winter months.
   • GIS Integration: By referring to the stations’ attribute tables, I was able to determine when all winter snowpack had fully melted, indicated by a string of 0s in the table under the Snow Depth field. This allowed me to determine how much earlier snowpack may have melted in 2023, and by extension if that may have also contributed to a longer fire season overall.
4. Vegetation Health:
   • Source: Data from Copernicus’ Sentinel-2 satellite offered insights into drought conditions as well as the overall health of forests prior to the outbreak of the wildfires.
   • GIS Analysis: Bands of remote sensing data from Sentinel-2 showed lower-than-normal Vegetation Moisture Index values in May 2023, indicated by lighter shades of blue in the boreal forests of Quebec. This underscored how dry, unhealthy vegetation contributed to the rapid spread of the subsequent wildfires.

Findings

1. Extended Fire Season

My GIS analysis revealed that the 2023 fire season began earlier and lasted longer than typical years. Data on depth of snow on the ground, obtained from weather stations from ECCC, indicated an earlier melt of winter snowpack, leading to an extended window for fire activity.

2. Drought Conditions

GIS maps highlighting precipitation deficits showed that large parts of Quebec experienced significant drought in 2023. Data from ECCC confirmed that precipitation levels were markedly lower than in 2013, a year chosen because it was closer to average. This created dry conditions that fueled the spread of wildfires once ignited.

Discussion

The integration of GIS tools with these various datasets provided a clear view of how climate change exacerbated the wildfire conditions in 2023. The extended fire season, marked by higher temperatures and earlier snowmelt, coupled with significant drought conditions, created an environment primed for intense fire activity. This analysis confirmed that while wildfires are a natural part of many ecosystems, climate change is shifting the baseline, making fire seasons longer and more severe.

Conclusion

This project underscored the value of GIS in understanding complex environmental phenomena like wildfires. By leveraging accessible data sources such as Global Forest Watch, ECCC, and Copernicus, I was able to create maps that illustrated the contributing factors to the 2023 wildfire season in Quebec and Ontario. These findings can help inform policymakers, researchers, and emergency response teams as they plan for future wildfire seasons in an increasingly unpredictable climate.

Overall, this entire project has been an interesting and eye-opening journey for me. What began as a curious foray into the role of GIS in understanding & mitigating wildfires ended up evolving into a valuable learning experience that not only had some relevance to my past (seeing as how I experienced the smoke from the 2023 Canadian wildfires firsthand), but also provided an opportunity for me to practice working with the same kinds of real-world GIS & satellite data that scientists use.

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