General Environmental Impacts

Q: How do the health risks of wildfire compare with the health risks of prescribed fire?

A: During prescribed burns, smoke issues can be minimized through conducting the burns on days of good venting conditions. Also, unlike wildfires, prescribed burns are brief events of only a couple of days duration.

Q: What impacts are expected in watershed areas?

A: Watershed impacts depend on the size and severity of the burned area together with factors such as slope, gradient, geology and soil depth. Each watershed will need to be assessed before specific impacts can be identified. However, general predictions can be made based on wildfire experience elsewhere.

Wildfires affect aquatic ecosystems through changes to water runoff, nutrients, sediment, riparian and in-stream vegetation and the types of aquatic organisms present. There may be immediate, short and long term impacts.

There can be an increase in turbidity and sediment load in the watershed as a result of surface runoff caused by rain or spring melt. The severity of this will however depend upon how badly the soils and vegetation root system in the affected area have been damaged.

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