Wildland fire prevention: the impact of the Modifying Industrial Operations Protocol on the growth of industrial forestry-caused wildland fires in Ontario, Canada

Abstract

Background Industrial forestry operations in Ontario, Canada, may be restricted to reduce the risk of wildland fires. This is currently done according to the Modifying Industrial Operations Protocol (MIOP), which was implemented in 2008 as a replacement for the Woods Modification Guidelines that had been in place since 1989. One of MIOP’s objectives is to limit the negative impact or damage caused by fires ignited by industrial forestry operations. Aims Treating the incremental growth between discovery and final sizes as a measure of suppression effectiveness, we aimed to characterise and contrast growth distributions for three successive time periods using data spanning 1976–2019 on Crown forest areas of Ontario. Methods Stratifying by first responding group (Ontario Ministry vs forestry personnel), we tested for evidence of changes in the growth distribution using the Kruskal–Wallis and Mann–Whitney U tests. Key results We found iterative improvements between successive time periods (Pre-Woods, then Woods Guidelines, then MIOP) in the growth distribution of fires first responded to by forestry personnel. Conclusions MIOP appears to be successfully limiting the negative impact of industrial forestry fires while increasing operational flexibility relative to the Woods Modification Guidelines. Implications MIOP has been implemented in a manner that still encourages safe operations while not contradicting this objective.