Dataset title: Forest Area Burned - Prince Albert - Area Burned - Prince Albert - Data
Dataset link: https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/2d60830b-ee2e-4fb5-8c6c-f241f6bf76ba/resource/2086cc8d-df15-4044-82b5-509227768571

This dataset contains forest area burned in Prince Albert, BC, Canada from 1930 to 2019.

What is forest area burned measured in this dataset?

Forest area burned is measured in hectares in this dataset.
1 sq. km = 100 hectares.

Why are wildfires bad?

Wildfires cause more carbon dioxide to be released into the air, aiding global warming. Apart from that, they destroy habitats and have the ability to affect nearby water bodies negatively via pollution.

ML Model Used: LSTM Recurrent Neural Network

To find out more, click the "ML Methods Used" button on the top navigation bar.

Parameters:

I'm looking back 50 years to predict values until 2030.

As you can see, the graph has no trend, but after the dotted line, we can see an increase in hectares burned. The dotted line depicts the distinction between real data and predictions. To the left of the dotted line is real data, to the right are predictions by the ML model.

This observation and my machine learning model do not see a clear trend between the data and predictions, mainly due to the initial spike in the 1940s. Although, it does predict that hectares burned will increase from 2019 to 2030.

The ML model also predicts that by 2030, the total forest area burned will be in the range of 15 000 to 20 000 hectares/year.

This observation concludes that forest area burned in Prince Albert will increase between the range of 15 000 to 20 000 hectares/year by 2030.

This will result in more CO2 in the air and more pollution, further worsening our global warming efforts.