Forest blackened by Saint Andrews-area fire sprouts signs of life
Homeowner sees renewal, UNB tree expert says fire a normal part of forest regeneration
Within hours of evacuating from his Bocabec home on May 28, as billows of thick smoke rolled in through the trees, Brian Childs watched a video of the fire taken across the cove from his property.
"It was like a lava flow," said Childs.
"That was the most devastating part of it, to look like a lava flow coming down your road. And as you come up it now, it's burned on both sides, so you can imagine the intensity of the fire at the time."
Driven by very strong winds, the wildfire that began on the South Glenelg Road near Stein Lake, about 13 kilometres north of Saint Andrews, N.B., reached his heavily wooded 24-hectare property within hours.
By the time the all-clear came for residents to return to their homes on May. 31, a neighbour had already reassured Childs that his home had survived. Even with that knowledge, arriving to inspect his property was still an overwhelming experience.
He walked around his house, pausing at one end. Even from a distance, his shudder was unmistakable.
Recalling that moment, Childs said he was struck by how close the fire had come. He estimates it burned to within 30 centimetres of his house.
With a few exceptions, all of the trees that he can see from his house today are black and dead, affecting about a third of his wooded property.
Childs said it's depressing living in the middle of a once-green, now-blackened, environment. But there are signs of hope.
"I didn't think it was going to come around but all under the trees now, it's all coming back green. … It's amazing how fast it regenerates itself. And that to me that's a wonderful thing."
Fire offers a fresh start
Fire has always been part of forest regeneration, says Loïc D'Orangeville, an associate professor in the forestry program at the University of New Brunswick, who studies the life and history of forest trees.
"Fire is a normal part of our ecosystems. Even in the Wabanaki forest, the Acadian Forest, fire is one of the major natural drivers of forest regeneration. So it's not necessarily a bad thing.
"It's actually healthy for the forest to get a fresh start," said D'Orangeville,
He said the areas of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick that burned in the spring are already showing a lot of green.
"You'll see already green plants growing back, you'll see ferns, you'll see herbaceous plants and potentially some young trees growing back already. So it's a really quick process."
The site of a forest fire can even be ideal for a lot of species, he said.
"You have lots of nutrients available, you have low competition. And so lots of plants will love that sort of environment and will be fierce competitors to actually fill the room, basically."
D'Orangeville said even without fire to dramatically re-set the playing field, forests are always changing and species come and go. It's called forest succession.
Wildfires simply give certain species an immediate jump on succession.
"Think about poplar, birch, cherries that are adapted to grow rapidly after such a massive disturbance. So they're the first ones to get in and grow fast, but then they die young and so they're going to be replaced by more shade-tolerant species."
Those are "later successional species" that are then followed by "climax species," like sugar maple and yellow birch, he said.
That could mean that after several decades, the forest will end up looking exactly like it did before it burned. But, said D'Orangeville, there are now other factors at play, such as climate change.
"If we have a more stressful climate this might favour certain species over others."
In New Brunswick, there are boreal and temperate species that naturally grow back after harvesting — balsam fir, for example.
"But with climate change, we now know that it's less adapted to the warmer conditions. So you might have a shift towards more warm-adapted species like red maple."
What grows back immediately will depend on the intensity of the fire, said D'Orangeville.
"Some trees actually do very well with burning. Some trees have really thick bark. They can recover from a fire."
He said red and white pine can withstand fire and "actually take advantage of fires because it reduces competition and it allows them to grow better.
In some other cases, such as trembling aspen, "what you see burned is dead, but what you don't see underground is actually very alive and well, D'Orangville said. "So it doesn't mean because the tree is dark and burned that the tree is dead."
But if the fire is severe enough, there are no trees left to grow back. That means regrowth will depend on the seeds of neighbouring stands and which species can get their seeds to the burned area.
Dead trees give life
The trees that were definitely killed by the fire will eventually fall over, said D'Orangeville. But until that happens, he said "they'll become apartment buildings for lots of biodiversity."
"These dead trees are critical components of a healthy forest ecosystem," he said.
And some of those dead trees can also be salvaged, said Sarah Dickson-Hoyle, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia's faculty of forestry, whose PhD is in fire ecology and wildfire recovery with First Nations.
When vast areas of woodland are burned, "there is often a real push" to "salvage-harvest" what's left.
She said the trees are often only charred on the outside, so they can still be used, preventing them from going to waste. Typically, though, they have "a shelf life" of only a few years.
For Childs, it took about a month after the fire, but the deer eventually came back to his property.
He points out two fawns, still sporting their baby spots, nibbling at the foot of a blackened tree trunk.
"So the animals are back and, you know, I'm content."
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