Appropriate indicators for assessing forest fire season outcomes: Annual area burned in the boreal forest region of Ontario

The area burned annually by forest fires is a highly variable outcome of the complex interaction of ecosystems, weather, fire occurrence and management systems. Adaptive strategies to support sustainable forest management require that managers can measure forest fire outcomes in the context of fire management policy and fire season severity. Forest fire and weather records from 1965 to 2005 were partitioned into 14 spatial analysis units that represent a range of ecological and policy conditions across the boreal forest region of Ontario. Statistical techniques were used to examine definitions of extreme events and to develop fire load indices and other measures of fire season severity. The relationship between area burned and a fire season severity index was described for each analysis unit using regression analysis. New indicators of annual fire season outcomes were developed that can be used to support forest and forest fire management policy decisions.