Belgium wildfire highlights relevance of McMaster-KU Leuven peatland fire collaboration

A major wildfire in Belgium is drawing attention to the growing risks facing peatlands and highlighting the relevance of an international research collaboration between McMaster University and KU Leuven. 

Earlier this year, McMaster’s Office of International Affairs highlighted the collaboration between Dr. James Michael Waddington, Canada Research Chair in Ecohydrology and Professor in the School of Earth, Environment & Society, and KU Leuven principal investigator Dr. Gabrielle De Lannoy, Professor in the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering. The researchers received funding through the 2025 KU Leuven Global Seed Fund. 

Their project, Hidden Heat: Modeling Overwintering Peatland Fires, focuses on improving understanding of fires that can continue smouldering underground in peatlands and persist for extended periods. The team also hosted a workshop at Waddington’s NOBEL Water Observatory and Living Lab near Parry Sound, Ontario, in late August. 

The importance of understanding these fires was underscored this August when a wildfire spread across Belgium’s High Fens nature reserve. By the afternoon of August 15, more than 1,600 hectares had been affected, with nearby residents ordered to evacuate as extremely dry conditions and difficult terrain complicated firefighting efforts.  

Peatlands are typically wet, carbon-rich ecosystems, but prolonged heat and drought can dry the peat enough for fires to smoulder underground for weeks or even months, making them particularly difficult to detect and extinguish. KU Leuven researcher Jonas Mortelmans noted in Belgian media that conventional wildfire models may not fully capture these conditions, as groundwater plays an especially important role in determining peatland fire risk. 

These challenges extend well beyond Belgium. According to Natural Resources Canada, approximately 4.48 million hectares had burned across Canada by September 5, 2026. The ongoing wildfire season further underscores the relevance of research aimed at better understanding and predicting persistent peatland fires. 

These challenges closely reflect the questions at the centre of Waddington and De Lannoy’s Global Seed Fund collaboration. By bringing together complementary expertise at McMaster and KU Leuven, the project supports research into a complex environmental risk that crosses both geographic and disciplinary boundaries. 

The KU Leuven Global Seed Fund further supports this work by helping researchers at KU Leuven and international partner institutions launch collaborative projects, deepen academic connections, and create foundations for longer-term research partnerships. 

As periods of extreme heat and drought place increasing pressure on peatland ecosystems, the High Fens wildfire offers a timely example of why international collaborations like Hidden Heat matter. By connecting researchers across countries and areas of expertise, partnerships like this can help advance understanding of emerging environmental challenges and support the development of new approaches to addressing them. 

The collaboration also builds on a broader relationship between the two institutions. McMaster University and KU Leuven are both members of Universitas 21, a global network of leading research-intensive universities committed to advancing internationalization and collaboration in higher education. Their shared membership creates further opportunities for researchers to connect across borders and disciplines and strengthen international partnerships focused on complex global challenges. 

Discover how the Hidden Heat collaboration began through the 2025 KU Leuven Global Seed Fund. 

Explore how McMaster’s participation in Universitas 21 is creating opportunities for global research and collaboration.