The Impact of Forestry Regulations on the Growth of Industrial Forestry-Caused Wildland Fires in Ontario, Canada

• Activity Number: 454 - Statistical Innovations to Facilitate Understanding and Prediction of Wildland Fires
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 10, 2022 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
• Author(s): Kevin Granville* and Doug Woolford and Charmaine Dean and Colin B. McFayden and Shi Yu Cao
• Companies: University of Windsor and Western University and University of Waterloo and Ontario Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry, AFFES and Western University
• Keywords: Fire Prevention; Non-Parametric Methods; Quantile Regression; Regulations; Wildland Fire Risk Mitigation

Abstract

Wildland fire prevention and mitigation is of joint interest to both government and the forest industry. Industrial forestry operations conducted under an approved forest management plan in Ontario, Canada may be restricted to reduce the risk of industrial forestry-caused wildland fires according to the Modifying Industrial Operations Protocol (MIOP). MIOP was implemented in 2008 as a replacement for the Woods Modification Guidelines that had been in place since 1989. Distributions of incremental growth of fires ignited by industrial forestry operations are investigated. Data from 1976 – 2019 is analyzed and our focus is on contrasting distributions across time periods reflecting the varying guidelines and regulations. In this talk, I will review the main results from a nonparametric study of empirical distributions of incremental fire growth which employs the use of the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests. Additionally, a quantile regression analysis which controls for strong predictors of fire growth will also be discussed. We find that there is evidence of industrial forestry-caused fires growing less under MIOP when contrasted with the preceding time periods.