Forest fire history: The last 400 year's
 Fire history of
the islands and mainland adjacent to Lake Duparquet has been reconstructed using fire
scars and age determination of trees that colonize burned sites immediately after a fire,
specifically, jack pine, white birch and trembling aspen. Fire history over the last 400
years (fire history map) shows a surprisingly high number
of fires (precisely 82) that generally covered fairly large areas (Bergeron, 1991).
This is the case, notably, of the fires that occurred in 1760, 1797, 1823, 1847, 1870,
1916, 1923 and 1944 (Dansereau et Bergeron, 1993). The 1760 fire, to the northwest, and the 1717 fire in the
southeast, covered the largest areas. A significant decrease in fire occurrence has been
observed over the last 100 years.
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