British Columbia is facing an increase in the number of large, intense high-severity wildfires in the Wildland Urban Interface. This increase is due to historical suppression efforts, climate change, forest structure alterations, exclusion of burning practices, and mismanagement of the landscape. Predictability of fire growth and behaviour is becoming challenging as these high severity wildfires create many uncertainties with respect to firefighter and public safety. Fire prediction modelers are stepping up to adapt to the growing needs of fire managers and with the pressure of climate change. In conjunction, proactive measures look to increase fuel treatments adjacent to communities to reduce wildfire threat, but implementation is slow due to funding limitations, priority setting, and feasibility uncertainties. In this research, I analyzed a fire effects model (BC CanFIRE) adapted to British Columbia and compared fuel treatment strategies with the goal to provide insight on building resilience in British Columbia’s Wildland Urban Interface. Alongside B.C. CanFIRE, I gathered data from a harvesting prescription, TIPSY, ClimateBC, the B.C. Wildfire Legacy Weather Application, and the Carbon Budget Model to determine varying weather, climate change scenarios, and site-specific details for the South Green Lake research area. Fuel treatments focused on a reduction of coniferous species to <100 stems/ha while retaining the deciduous stems/ha in the Aspen Parklands. The Shaded Fuel Break focused on a 50% and 80% reduction of Douglas-fir, complete removal of other coniferous species, and tested a planting scenario of 196 stems/ha for each Douglas-fir scenario. Results from this research show that the Intensity Class with both planting and harvesting was reduced. There were also slight decreases in final head fire intensities post-harvest, and a reduction in rates of spread with planting but dependent on the percentage of Douglas-fir removed when examining future years and climate change.
