The West Kiskatinaw River wildfire burns in B.C. on June 9. Canada is expected to see wildfire burn area double by 2050.BC Wildfire Service via Facebook/via REUTERS
Canada is taking wildfire fighting to the final frontier at the end of the decade with three satellites – their high-tech infrared sensors focused on monitoring the size, spread and speed of the country’s blazes and smoke.
Operation WildFireSat is set to be the first time a country deploys satellites specifically geared at wildfire monitoring. A collaboration between Natural Resources Canada, the Canadian Space Agency and Environment and Climate Change Canada, the mission promises to streamline firefighting resources, increase evacuation warning time and deepen scientific understanding of wildfire behaviour.
In 2029, the $170-million initiative will launch three satellites that will measure the “fire radiative power” emitted by wildfires. This measurement means wildfire services can calculate fire intensity and rate of spread, in real-time, precisely when fires are most dangerous. It also means they can measure smoke emitted by the fire, more accurately predicting air quality conditions.
The project will be essential moving forward as Canada is expected to see wildfire burn area double by 2050, as droughts and extreme heat caused by climate change intensify. Climate change is also likely to lead to more years like this one, where resources are stretched by wildfires ravaging numerous provinces simultaneously.
Western Canada: This year’s fire season prompts dread over what’s to come
This year, Canada is on track to exceed the largest total amount of burned area with 2,214 wildfires and 3.3 million hectares burned so far, according to data released June 4 by Natural Resources Canada. With fires stretching from Nova Scotia to Quebec, services have been pulled thin.
“This is the exact scenario we designed this mission to support,” said Josh Johnston, a research scientist at Great Lakes Forestry Centre and principal investigator of the WildFireStat mission. “There’s no way we can prevent this from happening. And when your resources are stretched, you need to be able to decide which fires are getting it, and which are not.”
Number of wildfires across country straining resources
More than 400 wildfires still active in Canada
Wildfires are already monitored by satellites, but they are not dedicated to monitoring wildfires, and they are not over Canada in the afternoon and early evening, when – due to wind, heat and low humidity – wildfires are at “peak burn period.” This means the collected data are often insufficient. To fill in blanks, wildfires are currently monitored with aircraft surveys – an expensive route that takes essential resources away from fighting fires burning closer to urban areas.
Infrared sensors on the WildFireSat satellites, on the other hand, will combine data about wind direction, topography and dryness, and monitor all wildfires in Canada to determine which might turn into large uncontrolled burns – a category that only makes up 3 per cent of all wildfires, but lead to 97 per cent of burned area. This will enable firefighters to quickly dedicate resources toward suppression of more dangerous fires.
The new satellites will also allow fire services to predict the direction of fires with more accuracy, thereby giving more notice to those who need to move, and avoiding unnecessary evacuations. So far this year, 26,000 Canadians have been evacuated from their homes; many only received a few hours of notice and, fleeing residential areas with no evacuation routes, were stuck in bottleneck traffic while the forest fire raged close by.
The satellites will also be able to measure wildfire smoke, predicting when and how much will reach urban areas. This means governments will be able to issue warnings ahead of time, limiting exposure and lessening pressure on the health care system.
“This advanced warning will lessen the impact on our economy,” Mr. Johnston said. “And the load on our health care system. This will make a big difference in public health and earlier evacuations.”
The satellites could also provide more data to wildfire researchers, said Mathieu Bourbonnais, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia. This is because satellites currently used to monitor wildfires often take photographs, so observation of the fires is limited by smoke.
“This data will give us a better understanding of how fires are behaving,” said Prof. Bourbonnais. “Being able to work with this data, understand fire spread and how climate change is impacting fires is super valuable.”
Much is left to do before the satellites can be launched in 2029, Mr. Johnston said. While the science on how to monitor wildfires from space is mature and similar projects have been proposed before, no other country has reached this point in the process, which makes the design novel but complicated.
For example, normally infrared sensors need to be cooled using heavy equipment with high energy demands, increasing the weight and cost of operations. The WildFireSat sensors will use microbolometer technology that does not need to be cooled, reducing the weight and size of the satellite and the power required to operate it.
Operational WildFireSat is currently engaging in preparatory contracts, with hopes to start building in the spring/summer of 2024. Should this timeline be met, it would be record-breaking speed for a project of this size, Mr. Johnston said.
However, he emphasized the need for high quality control.
“This is probably the fastest we’ve ever delivered an operational satellite into orbit,” Mr. Johnston said. “But we need to be absolutely sure it’ll work. Our job is to design a system that can do this in real-time. There are no humans. It can never fail.”
In the meantime, Canada needs to focus on what can be done right now to limit wildfires, such as more investment in forest firefighting and building resilient communities with evacuation routes, Prof. Bourbonnais said.
Canada also needs to think critically about land management, he added. For example, British Columbia is starting to do more prescribed fires and cultural burns, alongside fuel mitigation measures such as thinning and pruning forests.
“Satellites give us the ability to monitor,” Prof. Bourbonnais said. “But ultimately, this comes down to climate change and land management decisions. And there’s a lot of mechanisms that we have available right now where we can start affecting change, well before 2029.”