Mike Waddington has a special concern for the people of Slave Lake, Alberta,
having
conducted research on wildfire in peatlands in rural areas outside the town for the past
four years.

He and his team of post-doctoral fellows, graduate students and research
assistants
were in the community the day before much of it was destroyed in a fast-moving
wildfire last month.

“Some residents have lost everything,” said Waddington, a professor in the School
of
Geography & Earth Sciences and associate director of the McMaster Centre for Climate
Change. “It's hard to imagine what that must be like.”

When the fire ripped through on May 15, Waddington was on the other side of
Alberta at
a conference presenting his research on the vulnerability of peatland ecosystems to
wildfire.

Like other colleagues in the field, his thoughts turned immediately to the people
who
were in Slave Lake, both the residents he knows from working near the community, and
fellow researchers for whom the town is a hub. Until recently, the fate of Waddington's
teams equipment at a research station 70 km north of Slave Lake was uncertain.

“The latest fire perimeter images suggest that a wildfire more than 80,000 hectares
in
size came within about 200 m of wiping out our research,” said Waddington. “But that is
a minor concern considering the consequences of the other wildfires that destroyed
hundreds of homes and businesses and damaged hundreds more,” he said.

“Seeing so many lives turned upside down is simply heartbreaking.”

One aim of the research by Waddington, PhD student Dan Thompson and his
colleagues
from the University of Guelph and the Canadian Forest Service, is to establish a risk-
alert system that would measure soil moisture levels to assess the likelihood of fire in
deposits of peat, a deep organic soil.

Peat is rich with carbon, and peat fires can smoulder underground, sometimes for
months.

Peat covers a huge portion of Canada and other parts of the globe.
Waddington is exploring the effects of drainage and climate change on peat, which can
significantly increase the risk of wildfire by drying out the organic soil.

In Russia last summer, fires in drained peat bogs spewed smoke and particulates
into
the air for weeks, choking Moscow with thick smog.

Waddington expects his research will soon assist in mitigating the damage done by
such fires, as large wildfires such as those in Alberta are expected to become more
common as global temperatures rise.