For my final assignment, I decided to do a data analysis on Canada’s Wildfires. Why exactly did I choose this topic to research? I believe that this issue needs a little more recognition. My overall goal for this project is to spread awareness about Canada’s wildfires, how we can help and the fact that they aren’t always a negative thing. In Canada, the wildfires have improved a lot, the fire levels now are very different to the ones in the past. Sadly, 45% of wildfires are caused by people. And although a large amount of this is natural, it is still affected by the way we treat nature. How? Because people will often leave things out that will catch fire from lightning. How exactly can we help? By reading more on Canada’s fire-safety websites, we can prevent more deadly and destructive fires.
I used many different sites to collect my needed data, some of them included the following:
https://www.getprepared.gc.ca/cnt/hzd/wldfrs-en.aspx
https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/ha/nfdb
https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/interactive-map
https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/ha
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/07/05/The-Fire-Future-In-Canada/
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/wildfire-status/wildfire-response/what-causes-wildfire#:~:text=Lightning%20activity%20causes%20approximately%2060,the%20result%20of%20illegal%20activities.
https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/report
The site I used the most was the Canadian National Fire Database, which was filled with a lot of information, data and graphs I used for my research. One thing that I learned from this website was that the fire levels in 2023 vs 1995 are very different. In the graphs below, we can see that the fire levels in 1995 are one of the highest at 7.1 million hectares burned. With time, we were able to learn different strategies on how to keep the wildfires at a minimum.
The process of utilizing these sites impacted my understanding of how technology can change and/or help out the world. Websites can help spread information much faster than newspapers might. By using technology, we can spread important messages all throughout the world, changing it for the better!
