1998 was an extreme year for wildfire activity throughout the North American and Russian boreal forests. More than 11 million hectares (110,000 square km) burned that year (Kasischke et al 1999). Examination of NOAA Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and Landsat satellite images over the worlds high northern latitude forests reveals a heavy peppering of burn scars across the boreal landscape. Closer examination of those image data reveals the boreal forest canopy to be a patchy mosaic of splotches where there are various stages of plant regrowth in the wake of earlier fires.

Although most people regard fire as a destructive force that should be fought and quickly extinguished, the fact is the boreal forest evolved in the presence of fire and adapted to it. Forrest Hall says its not a question of if a given region of the boreal forest will burn, its a question of when . Hall, a physicist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, explains that wildfire is an integral part of the boreal ecosystem. Indeed, the high northern latitude forests would be quite different were it not for frequent fires (Hall 1999).