STORY: Boreal forests likely to become savanna after wildfire if climate changes: Canadian scientist
DATELINE: July 20, 2023
LENGTH: 00:01:54
LOCATION: Ottawa
CATEGORY: ENVIRONMENT
 
SHOTLIST:
1. various of Paul Beckwith being interviewed
2. SOUNDBITE 1 (English): PAUL BECKWITH, Former assistant professor at the University of Ottawa
3. SOUNDBITE 2 (English): PAUL BECKWITH, Former assistant professor at the University of Ottawa
 
STORYLINE:
 
The boreal forests in Canada's wildfire region will likely not regrow if the climate there has changed, a Canadian climate system scientist has warned.
 
"We can't assume that when a forest burns down it will be replaced over time by another forest," Paul Beckwith told Xinhua in a recent interview, explaining that if the annual temperatures have changed and the precipitation in that region has also changed and reduced, the region where the forests used to be will become savanna, mostly grasslands with the odd, isolated trees, or just pure grasslands.
 
Formerly an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa, Beckwith studies abrupt climate system changes related to oceans, biosphere, air temperatures, the lithosphere and cryosphere.
 
"We haven't seen fires like this before in Canada for an awful long time. Maybe ever," Beckwith said.
 
The wildfires in Canada are exceptional by any measure and this wouldn't be happening without the heat waves and the lack of moisture. A boreal forest is a wet and cold-adapted forest that gets lots of rain and sunlight. But now Canada has warmed at over double the rate than the rest of the planet, Beckwith said.
 
Beckwith said that typically the return time of large fires in a boreal forest is about 50 to 100 years and forest fires are a part of the lifecycle of the boreal forests.
 
SOUNDBITE 1 (English): PAUL BECKWITH, Former assistant professor at the University of Ottawa
"So the fires there left alone to burn, if they're not interfering with infrastructure, with towns, with roads, rail, etc, they just burn themselves out. But the problem is that when you get these fires igniting in these remote areas in the spring, I mean, do you really want to let them burn all summer? Right? We've got to do firefighting differently in this country, for sure."
 
But when there are too many at any one time, it really overstretches firefighting resources, he said.
 
SOUNDBITE 2 (English): PAUL BECKWITH, Former assistant professor at the University of Ottawa
"And we can't assume that when a forest burns down, it will be replaced over time by another forest, because if the mean annual temperatures have changed, go out of that regime for forest, and if the precipitation in that region has also changed, reduced, then we can have the growth in that region where the forests used to be savanna, where it's mostly grasslands with the odd, isolated trees, or just pure grasslands.
The problem with the forest burning is that the forests are a huge sink of carbon. So, if these fires continue throughout the summer, and we still have the burning of forests in Indonesia, in Siberia, if these things continue with no lead-up throughout the summer, I would expect that maybe the CO2 rise, the global rise and CO2 concentration, instead of being what was the record of three parts per million, it varies between two and three parts per million, typically might approach three and a half or four parts per million just do because of these forests."
 
The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre said Sunday there were 888 active wildfires nationwide and the number of out-of-control wildfires was 586. The number of wildfires in the country so far this year reached 4,152, devouring about 100,000 square km of land.
 
Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Ottawa.
(XHTV)