Living with Wildland Fires: Have We Learned Anything from Fort McMurray?

Living with Wildland Fires: Have We Learned Anything from Fort McMurray? (Webinar)

 Date: June 27, 2017

Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM MST

Cost: Member – $10; Non-Member – $15; Group of 3 or more – $25

 Abstract:

Fire happens in Canada’s forest. Every year, thousands of small fires and dozens of large ones occur somewhere in Canada’s vast forest landscape.  It has been the story for centuries and will continue. Now more than ever people work, build, live and play in the boreal forest but disaster can occur when people and fire intersect.  This was the case in Fort McMurray resulting in unprecedented evacuations of 90,000 people, insurable losses over $3.7 billion and a negative impact on National GDP. Have we learned from this catastrophic fire and can we co-exist with fire?

Presenter

Mike Flannigan is a professor with the Department of Renewable Resources at the University of Alberta and the director of the Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science (currently a three way partnership with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, Natural Resources Canada and the University of Alberta). He received his BSc (Physics) from the University of Manitoba, his MSc (Atmospheric Science) from Colorado State University and his PhD (Plant Sciences) from Cambridge University. Dr. Flannigan’s primary research interests include fire and weather/climate interactions including the potential impact of climatic change, lightning-ignited forest fires and landscape fire modelling. He has been studying fire for over 35 years and has published over 200 papers. Dr. Flannigan was the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Wildland Fire (2002-2008) and has taken on leadership roles with the US National Assessment on Global Change, IPCC, IGBP Fire Fast Track Initiative and Global Change Terrestrial Ecosystems (GCTE) efforts on the global impacts of fire.