Some forest regrowth in an area burned by the 2017 Kenow Wildfire. (University of Lethbridge)

By David Opinko

CO2 release from 2017 Kenow Wildfire equivalent of 1.1-1.8 million cars

Jul 28, 2021 | 10:10 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – A new study from the University of Lethbridge is highlighting another aspect of the environmental harms caused by wildfires.

Fourth-year geography undergraduate student Sam Gerrand had his paper, titled, Partitioning losses from fire combustion in a montane valley, Alberta Canada, published in the Forest Ecology and Management journal.

He tried to quantify how much carbon dioxide was released from the soil and trees in a 300-metre area that was burned in the Kenow Wildfire in 2017.

“Trees store carbon when they grow, and many studies have looked at how much carbon is lost after fires because that is all part of the cycle of carbon and a contributor to climate change,” says Gerrand. “As fires burn, they don’t just burn the grasses, shrubs and trees, they also burn into the ground, and there haven’t been many studies focused on the carbon lost from the soil, and especially in montane environments like we have in Waterton.”

The fire, in Southwestern Alberta and Southeastern B.C. burned approximately 35,000 hectares of land including 19,303 hectares in Waterton Lakes National Park.

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In each hectare, Gerrand found that the carbon loss in the wet riparian site was equivalent to the annual emissions of 53 cars, while the dry site lost an equal amount to 33 vehicles.

By multiplying those numbers by the 35,000 total impacted hectares, he concludes that the wildfire would have released the equivalent of the CO2 emissions from 1,155,000 to 1,855,000 cars.

“You can learn a lot about the environment through remote sensing and GIS technology, and I think it’s pretty interesting how you can tie that into the way we build our communities and the way we manage forests,” he says. “If we’re disturbing forests, and we’re altering the way our world works, how does that affect us? We’re living on the landscape, so we need to understand how altering it affects our quality of life.”

The Kenow Wildfire burned about 80 per cent of Waterton’s hiking trail network. Gerrand grew up in Pincher Creek and was hired to work with Parks Canada’s trail crew shortly afterward.