Co-author: Piper Bernbaum
Journal of Landscape Architecture (JoLA) Issue 1/2, 2025
Wildfires in Canada are common occurrences, but as climate change drives rising fire activity and intensity, remote wildland-urban interface (WUI) sites are increasingly under threat. This paper uses a single event—the 2023 Québec wildfires prompting evacuation of Lebel-sur-Quévillon (LSQ)—as a methodological pilot project for visualizing dynamic wildfire behaviour and the traces megafires leave behind. The paper utilizes two methods, moving between general fire behaviour principles at a distance and their specific impacts on the ground. First, we developed physical models that draw from fire science experimentation methods to visualize principles of fire behaviour. Second, we completed fieldwork in LSQ a year post-fire; we then identified and mapped three sites of WUI significance: a firebreak, a power substation and a logging clean-up site. Combined, the work makes legible variables that drive volatile dynamic fire spread while revealing the wide range of conditions that fall within the WUI purview.