Lori Daniels

Climate change is extending the season during which hot and dry weather encourages fire across North America. At the same time, a long post-settlement history of stamping out wildfires has changed much of the continent’s landscape: …Forest ecologist Lori Daniels, at the University of BC, has found evidence in tree rings for surprisingly high rates of fires before the early 1900s, thanks to the Indigenous use of fire to manage huge swaths of forest. In BC, after European settlers put an end to burning, much of the forest changed dramatically: In one study site, Daniels and her colleagues have documented 200 to 775 trees per hectare — more than four times the historical average of 50 to 190 trees. North America, researchers say, is running a “fire deficit.” Daniels is one of many ecologists now advocating for a return of more beneficial fire to the landscape in order to break up the forest and prevent catastrophic wildfires.