The changing landscape of fire fuels in western Canada: Insights from 40 years of public data and research

Wildland fire regimes are shifting in western Canada; however, relatively little has been directly synthesized on the state of fuels and their influence on and response to fire activity in recent decades. This article presents a systematic review of the literature from Western Canada between 1985 and 2025 to examine the role of fuels, climate, and weather conditions in shaping fire behaviour. We reviewed 245 articles on fire-related research in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories, and Yukon Territory to assess the literature on the significant feedbacks among climate, fuel conditions, and fire behaviour, and to evaluate how large fires over the last four decades have affected fuel characteristics. Secondarily, we examined trends in publicly available National Burned Area Composite (NBAC) data to assess how large fires (≥95th percentile by size) interact with pre-fire vegetation types and how post-fire severity has changed over time. Our findings indicate shifts in fuels, including abundance, composition, and conditions that interact with changing climate dynamics, while also highlighting substantial limitations in the literature regarding structural arrangement and continuity of fuels. Consistent with recent publications, our results show an increase in the number of extremely large fires (P95) over the last decade. However, increasing severity does not necessarily correspond to increasing fire size. Collectively, findings reveal geographic gaps in fire research coverage, particularly in northern regions, and limitations in current systems for accurately representing ongoing changes in fuels in western Canada. This review highlights important advances in understanding fuel dynamics and fire behaviour while also identifying critical gaps that limit our ability to anticipate how these systems will respond to continued climatic change.