Canada has vast boreal forests that span from the Yukon in the west to Newfoundland and Labrador in the east. Each year, thousands of wildland fires char millions of hectares of these forests, particularly in the northern areas, where few people live and development is scarce. Indeed, some amount of fire is beneficial to boreal forest health and biodiversity.
Challenges arise when human activity and fires collide, as they did in May and June 2025, when several large fires raged in northern Alberta’s oil sands region. The fast-developing region is home to the world’s fourth-largest proven oil reserves. The oil sands accounted for 58 percent of oil production in Canada in 2023, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
On May 30, 2025, the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 captured this false-color image of charred lands around oil infrastructure near Conklin. This band combination (6-5-3) helps to distinguish between unburned vegetated areas (green) and recently burned landscapes (brown). Thicker parts of the smoke plume appear light blue. Well pads and other gas and oil infrastructure appear as rectangular clearings connected by roads.
In June, news reports indicated that fires in Alberta forced some companies to evacuate workers and temporarily pushed a portion of the province’s oil production offline. Subsequent reports indicated that production resumed after conditions improved. Alberta still had 51 out-of-control wildfires burning on June 4, 2025, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center.
References & Resources
- Alberta Oil sands facts and statistics. Accessed June 5, 2025.
- Alberta Active wildfires. Accessed June 5, 2025.
- Calgary Herald (2025, June 4) Rain slows wildfires, some of Alberta oil output restored. Accessed June 5, 2025.
- Canada Energy Regulator Provincial and Territorial Energy Profiles—Alberta. Accessed June 5, 2025.
- Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (2025) Current Fires Summary. Accessed June 5, 2025.
- CBC (2025, June 2) Oilsands companies evacuate workers, reduce production due to northern Alberta wildfires. Accessed June 5, 2025.
- NASA (2025) Fire Information for Resource Management System. Accessed June 5, 2025.
- NASA (2025) Fire Event Explorer. Accessed June 5, 2025.
- NASA Earth Observatory Athabasca Oil Sands. Accessed June 5, 2025.
- Natural Resources Canada (2014) Oil supply and demand. Accessed June 5, 2025.
- Oilprice.com (2025, June 2) Wildfires Shut Down 350,000 Bpd of Alberta Oil Output. Accessed June 5, 2025.
- Reuters (2025, June 4) Canadian Natural Resources restarts oil sands operation as wildfire risk lessens. Accessed June 5, 2025.
- Reuters (2025, June 2) Alberta’s wildfires disrupt some 7 percent of Canada’s oil production. Accessed June 5, 2025.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang , using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey . Story by Adam Voiland .
