Description
This Alberta Official Statistic describes the number of hectares of land burned from wildfire in Alberta during the fire season which runs from April 1 to October 31 of each year. Alberta Agriculture and Forestry is mandated to control and contain wildfires within the Forest Protection Area of the province. The number of wildfires and the amount of hectares burned vary greatly due to factors such as environmental conditions, response times, resources available for containing fires, and swiftness of detection and containment. Wildfire management practices are important because they protect our forest resources and the communities which depend on them.
Updated
August 5, 2015
Tags
Resources
-
CSV
More information DownloadDownloads: 442
-
Alberta Official Statistic Visualization
More information DownloadDownloads: 671
Title and Dataset Information
Date Modified
2015-08-05
Update Frequency
Annual
Publisher / Creator Information
Creator
Publisher
Agriculture and Forestry
Subject Information
Resource Dates
Date Created
2015-05-13
Date Added to catalogue
2015-05-13T19:26:45.334081
Date Issued
2014-08-28
Date Modified
2015-08-05
Audience information
Language
Identifiers
Usage / Licence
Usage Considerations
The Alberta Forest Service initiated the modern era of wildfire recordkeeping in 1931, the first complete fire season under provincial jurisdiction. Over the years, this information has been recorded, stored and made available in different formats.
The Fire Resource Information System (FIRES) is a live data system. The size, status, and other details about wildfires are constantly updated by fire staff across the province. Therefore, data pulls with different dates will result in numbers that vary slightly.
Alberta Agriculture and Forestry uses a wildfire management framework composed of meteorological equipment, lookout towers, knowledge about wildfire spread and growth, firefighters and firefighting equipment to suppress and contain wildfires quickly.
Annual fluctuations in total hectares burned are due to a number of variable conditions including moisture levels, drought, wildfire location, and the resources available to contain and suppress wildfires, considering other wildfire activity in the province.
Note: 2006‑2010 data was adjusted to represent the fire season (April 1 to October 31) to align with the other reported numbers. Previously these values were reported by fire year.
Note: The most current 5 years of data reported undergoes reconciliation as the size of wildfires burned are confirmed. These figures may undergo small adjustments year over year.
Contact
Contact Name
Office of Statistics and Information
Contact Email
Contact Other
(780) 427-2071