- Uses historic records from 1959–99 to explore fire regime characteristics at ecozone scales across the entire North American boreal region (NABR)
- Finds that shifts in the NABR fire regime between the 1960s/70s and the 1980s/90s were characterized by a doubling of annual burned area and more than a doubling of the frequency of larger fire years because of more large fire events (>1,000 km2)
- Finds the proportion of total burned area from human‐ignited fires decreased over this same time period, while the proportion of burning during the early and late‐ growing‐seasons increased
- Finds that trends in increased burned area were consistent across the NABR ecozones, though the western ecozones experienced greater increases in larger fire years compared to the eastern ecozones
- States that seasonal patterns of burning differed among ecozones
- Concludes that, along with the climate warming, changes in the fire regime characteristics may be an important driver of future ecosystem processes in the NABR
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