Wildfire Timeline Exposure Map 1961 - 2100

The rapid increase of wildfires in North America over the last decades is directly tied to climate change, and thus, systems of industry and colonial power. Data from The Canadian Journal of Forest Research shows that Indigenous communities living within wildland-urban interfaces are disproportionately displaced by wildfires when compared to the remaining population within these interfaces, representing almost a third of all evacuees in the last decades. These communities will be increasingly affected by wildfires as the intervals between fires decrease given internationally recognized climate change predictions.

The study uses various Representation Concentraion Pathway scenarios, a form of greenhouse gas trajectory widely adopted in climate change science. The study, and our project, focus on RCP 8.5, one of the more severe scenarios.

On-Reserve Indigenous communities make up 10% of the affected people, but by 2100 that percentage will increase to 39% as the affected area increases and the intervals shrink.

At first we believed that we were not suited to represent, in the physicalization of this data, the vast amount of indigenous people affected by wildfires.

Throughout the entire process this became an integral part of the argument of the piece and a major moral focus to consider.

Our initial idea consited of grid of burnt wooden cubes representing the map of Canada, and where each cube would be a button that lit up a different affected area by wildfires.

We abandonned the light up effects because the scorched surface was enough to communicate our main idea and goals.

Special thanks to Hewitt Miller

sources and inspiration

Sandy Erni, Lynn Johnston, Yan Boulanger, Francis Manka, Pierre Bernier, Brian Eddy, Amy Christianson, Tom Swystun, and Sylvie Gauthier. “Exposure of the Canadian wildland–human interface and population to wildland fire, under current and future climate conditions.” Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 51(9): 1357-1367. https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/cjfr-2020-0422

Segal, A. (2020). Form Follows Data.