In this new monthly map series, The Energy Mix partners with mapmaking and visual storytelling experts at North Arrow to unveil a series of interactive maps that dig into climate change’s causes and effects, enriched with insights from Canadian experts.
Our first map comes from Global Forest Watch (GFW), which has a pioneering mapping project focused on global tree cover. GFW has country-specific data on deforestation, reforestation, and natural forest changes, with tree loss delineated by its main drivers—forestry, wildfire, agriculture, urbanization, and others. A visual representation of satellite imagery and open-source data, the GFW map helps identify risk areas and celebrate conservation successes.
The screengrab at the top of the page shows Canada’s tree cover loss by dominant drivers between 2001 and 2022. The brown in the boreal zone over Saskatchewan indicates that tree loss there was largely wildfire-driven, while in British Columbia, forestry was the main cause.
While that seems to be a fair observation, it gets complicated pretty quickly!” University of British Columbia Department of Forest Resources Management lecturer Peter Wood told The Mix in an email.
“There’s a lot of nuance to understand about what’s actually happening, and how that shows up on this mapping system.”
But, yes—B.C. has been massively affected by industrial logging, Wood said, with a total of 22 million hectares permitted for timber production [pdf]. These areas are also typically more vulnerable to fire after harvesting, due to drier conditions in logged forests that are exposed to more sun, resulting in quicker snow melt, Wood added. Logging debris left behind (around half of total timber volume cut down is left in clearcuts) dries out and provides fuel, while logging roads introduce opportunities for human ignition sources.
Furthermore, replanted, young conifers are more prone to fire than older conifer forests. And often deciduous trees, which are less likely to burn, are suppressed by chemicals, or manually by cutting/“brushing” to make sure that conifers come back.
So even the mapping that shows “fire” as the cause of forest loss could actually have been logged first, Wood said.
For forests in B.C.’s interior, non-coastal region and in the boreal (the case with Saskatchewan), fire is an important part of the natural ecosystem. But logging is having an impact on its frequency and intensity, he said. “And that’s before we start talking about the influence of climate change.”
In a 2021 report for Sierra Club, Wood outlined [pdf] how industrial logging practices and poor forest management had worsened the risk of severe wildfire seasons, long-term and seasonal water shortages, river flooding, heatwaves, and lowered ecosystem connectivity that provides pathways for wildlife movement.
The GFW tool also shows how much tree cover Canada has gained (versus lost) between 2000 and 2020. In this map, tree losses are shown in pink, gains in blue.
Where “tree cover gain” in blue follows patches with square corners, Wood explained, this is likely regrowth following clearcutting of a defined cutblock.
This GFW map shows the net change in tree cover in North America from 2000 to 2010, the latest decadal span available on the site. Canada appears to have done worse than the United States, but it’s worth remembering that the U.S. did most of its forest clearing a long time ago—not in the past 20 years, Wood said.
To view these maps in full detail, visit Global Forest Watch.
