Fire cycle of the Canada's boreal region and its potential response to global change

Interactions of fire cycle and plant species' reproductive characteristics could determine vegetation distribution pattern of a landscape. In Canada's boreal region, fire cycles before the Little Ice Age (c. 1850s) ranged from 30-130 years and 25-234 years afterwards until the settlement period (c. 1930s) when longer fire cycles occurred in response to climatic change and human interference. Analysis indi-cated that fire cycles were correlated with growing season (April-October) temperature and precipitation departure from the 1961-1990 nor-mal, varying by regions. Assuming that wildfires will respond to future warming similar to the manner during the past century, an assess-ment using climatic change scenarios CGCM1, CGCM2 and HadCM2 indicates fire cycles would divert to a range of 80-140 years in the west taiga shield, more than 700 years for the east boreal shield and east taiga shield, and 300-400 years for the boreal plains in 2050.