scholarly journals The current landscape fire management in Ukraine and strategy for its improvement

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-51
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Soshenskyi ◽  
Sergiy Zibtsev ◽  
Vasyl Gumeniuk ◽  
Johann Georg Goldammer ◽  
Roman Vasylyshyn ◽  
...  

Abstract Recurrent wildfires in Ukraine exert severe impacts on the environment, human health and security as well as damage to private and public assets. From 2007 to 2020, the frequency of large wildfires has increased and reached a level that has not occurred previously. The period during April-October 2020 was the worst in modern Ukrainian history for the occurrence of catastrophic fires, e.g. in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (67 000 ha), Zhytomyr oblast (43 000 ha), Lugansk oblast (35 000 ha) and Kharkiv oblast (8 000 ha). In Ukraine there is the additional problem of open burning, mainly burning agriculture residues, which covers two million hectares (ha) annually. State forestry enterprises who are responsible for the management of 71% of the Ukrainian forests (7.6 million ha)and agricultural holdings are also responsible for the management of 41.3 million ha of croplands. The remaining forest users manage forest areas of 3.1 million ha within reserves and national nature parks. This article presents a brief overview of the problem of forest fires as well as of fires in other landscapes in Ukraine, and includes a critical reviews of the current wildfire management system and a description of the main features of the national wildfire management strategy. It also highlights the results of a survey of numerous stakeholders conducted on landscape fires in Ukraine. Based on the review of global and regional experiences, as well as existing fire risks in Ukraine, recommendations were developed for implementing an integrated landscape level national fire management approach.

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 202-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
G Bovio ◽  
M Marchetti ◽  
L Tonarelli ◽  
M Salis ◽  
G Vacchiano ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Victor Movenko ◽  

Urgency of the Research. Thirty-five years have passed since the Chernobyl accident. During this time, the environment has undergone constant changes under the influence of natural and human factors. Knowledge of these changes is impossible without the separation of anthropogenic processes from natural, which is why they organize special observations on various parameters of the biosphere, which change as a result of human activity. It is in the observation of the environment, the assessment of its actual state, and the forecasting of its development, that the essence of monitoring of radiation pollution of the territory of the Chernobyl zone is under the present conditions. Target setting. Investigation of modern technological procedures and technical means of monitoring to further create a system of integrated radiological control of the environment will ensure the prevention and elimination of negative changes in the state of the environment in the territory of both the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (ChEZ) and throughout Ukraine. Actual scientific researches and issues analysis. Recent publications and reports on open access concerning the problems of monitoring of radiation pollution of the Chernobyl zone in the current conditions have been considered. Uninvestigated parts of general matters defining. Maintaining integrated radio-ecological environmental monitoring in areas where radiation hazards are located requires constant monitoring and monitoring of the radiation environment in the environment in order to determine its level of contamination and respond quickly to emergencies and prevent possible radiation accidents, as well as to prevent their occurrence. and the environment. The research objective. Comprehensive monitoring of radiation pollution requires the adaptation of the RODOS system to the conditions of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and potential specific sources of emissions in the ChEZ, the creation of a complete register of collected data for the adaptation of the RODOS system to the conditions of the ChEZ, a systematic description of sources of emissions from forest fires, fires, during the decommissioning of the ChNPP. The statement of basic materials. The article deals with the issues of integrated radio-ecological monitoring of the environment in the areas of radiation hazard objects, the use of an automated radiation monitoring system (ASCRO), the implementation of a real time decision support system in response to nuclear accidents - RODOS in Chernobyl. Conclusions. The implementation of ASCRO and RODOS systems in the Chernobyl zone has allowed to create a comprehensive system of radio-ecological environmental monitoring of the state, regional and local levels, which is intended to solve the main tasks of environmental safety management, including, at high risk objects.


1993 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J. Stocks

The looming possibility of global warming raises legitimate concerns for the future of the forest resource in Canada. While evidence of a global warming trend is not conclusive at this time, governments would be wise to anticipate, and begin planning for, such an eventuality. The forest fire business is likely to be affected both early and dramatically by any trend toward warmer and drier conditions in Canada, and fire managers should be aware that the future will likely require new and innovative thinking in forest fire management. This paper summarizes research activities currently underway to assess the impact of global warming on forest fires, and speculates on future fire management problems and strategies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (9) ◽  
pp. 1653-1668 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.R. Carruthers ◽  
A.R. Hordyk

A new indicator is described that uses multivariate posterior predictive data arising from management strategy evaluation (MSE) to detect operating model misspecification (exceptional circumstances) due to changing system dynamics. The statistical power of the indicator was calculated for five case studies for which fishery stock assessments have estimated changes in recruitment, natural mortality rate, growth, fishing efficiency, and size selectivity. The importance of the component data types that inform the indicator was also calculated. The indicator was tested for multiple types of management procedures (e.g., catch limits by stock assessment, size limits, spatial closures) given varying qualities of data. The statistical power of the indicator could be high even over short time periods and depended on the type of system change and quality of data. Statistical power depended strongly on the type of management approach, suggesting that indicators should be established that rigorously account for feedbacks between proposed management and observed data. MSE processes should use alternative operating models to evaluate protocols for exceptional circumstances to ensure they are of acceptable statistical power.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Avery P. Hill ◽  
Christopher B. Field

AbstractDue to climate change, plant populations experience environmental conditions to which they are not adapted. Our understanding of the next century’s vegetation geography depends on the distance, direction, and rate at which plant distributions shift in response to a changing climate. In this study we test the sensitivity of tree range shifts (measured as the difference between seedling and mature tree ranges in climate space) to wildfire occurrence, using 74,069 Forest Inventory Analysis plots across nine states in the western United States. Wildfire significantly increased the seedling-only range displacement for 2 of the 8 tree species in which seedling-only plots were displaced from tree-plus-seedling plots in the same direction with and without recent fire. The direction of climatic displacement was consistent with that expected for warmer and drier conditions. The greater seedling-only range displacement observed across burned plots suggests that fire can accelerate climate-related range shifts and that fire and fire management will play a role in the rate of vegetation redistribution in response to climate change.


2004 ◽  
Vol 155 (7) ◽  
pp. 263-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Conedera ◽  
Gabriele Corti ◽  
Paolo Piccini ◽  
Daniele Ryser ◽  
Francesco Guerini ◽  
...  

The Southern Alps, in particular the Canton Ticino, is the region of Switzerland that is most affected by the phenomenon of forest fires. Therefore, the cantonal authorities are continually confronted with problems of prevention, fire fighting and mitigation of the effects of forest fires. In this article forest fire management in Canton Ticino is analyzed in historical terms, verifying in particular the impact of the methods used and the improvement of technology addressing the frequency of events and the extent of burned surfaces. In this way it has been possible to show how a few structural measures (better organization of fire fighting crews and equipment, introduction of aerial fire fighting techniques, electrification followed by construction of shelters along railway lines, etc.) have rather reduced the extent of burned surfaces, while legislative measures such as restrictions of open fires help to reduce the number of forest fires.


Author(s):  
Paul Charbonneau

This chapter explores how a “natural” process generates dynamically something that is conceptually similar to a percolation cluster by using the case of forest fires. It first provides an overview of the forest-fire model, which is essentially a probabilistic cellular automata, before discussing its numerical implementation using the Python code. It then describes a representative simulation showing the triggering, growth, and decay of a large fire in a representative forest-fire model simulation on a small 100 x 100 lattice. It also considers the behavior of the forest-fire model as well as its self-organized criticality and concludes with an analysis of the advantages and limitations of wildfire management. The chapter includes exercises and further computational explorations, along with a suggested list of materials for further reading.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 16-35
Author(s):  
Iván Győző Sombai ◽  
John Karakatsoulis ◽  
Wendy Gardner ◽  
Ambika P. Gautam ◽  
Sundar Prasad Sharma ◽  
...  

Numerous inter-related social and institutional factors are causing concern as to effective responses to the increasing number and severity of forest and wildfires in Nepal, due in similar measure to socio-cultural, politico-bureaucratic as well as global climatic issues. Our binational team of multisectoral field practitioners in bureaucratic as well as natural resource and fire management compiled and verified background information to more clearly discern the issues affecting improved fire governance and thereupon has made supportive recommendations for the belated establishment of a dedicated unit within the Government of Nepal Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation to coordinate, administer and manage a comprehensive forest fire management programme.


2020 ◽  
Vol 144 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 279-288
Author(s):  
Abdullah E. Akay ◽  
Michael Wing ◽  
Halit Büyüksakalli ◽  
Salih Malkoçoglu

Effective forest fire fighting involves alerting firefighting teams immediately in the case of a fire so that teams can promptly arrive the fire scene. The most effective way for an early detection of forest fires is monitoring of forest lands from fire lookout towers. Especially in fire sensitive forest lands, towers should be systematically located in such a way that fire lookout personnel can monitor the largest amount of forest land as possible. In this study, the visibility capabilities of lookout towers located in Köyceğiz Forest Enterprise Directorate (FED)in the city of Muğla in Turkey were evaluated by using Geographical Information System (GIS) based visibility and suitability analysis. The results of visibility analysis indicated that 77.12% of forest land were visible from the current towers. To extend the proportion of visible forest lands, locations of additional lookout towers were evaluated using spatial visibility and suitability analysis in which the tower locations were examined by considering specific criteria (i.e. distance to roads, elevation, ground slope, topographic features). Suitability analysis results identified five new towers in addition to current towers in the study area. The results indicated that visible forest lands increased to 81.47% by locating new towers, and increase of almost 4.35%. In addition, over half of the forests became visible by at least two towers when including five towers suggested by suitability analysis. The GIS-based method developed in this study can assist fire managers to determine the optimal locations for fire lookout towers for effective fire management activities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 92 (5) ◽  
pp. 523-537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly M Proffitt ◽  
Jesse DeVoe ◽  
Kristin Barker ◽  
Rebecca Durham ◽  
Teagan Hayes ◽  
...  

Abstract Forestry practices such as prescribed fire and wildfire management can modify the nutritional resources of ungulates across broad landscapes. To evaluate the influences of fire and forest management on ungulate nutrition, we measured and compared forage quality and abundance among a range of land cover types and fire histories within 3 elk ranges in Montana. We used historical fire data to assess fire-related variations in elk forage from 1900 to 2015. Fire affected summer forage more strongly than winter forage. Between 1900–1990 and 1990–2015, elk summer range burned by wildfire increased 242–1772 per cent, whereas the area on winter range burned by wildfire was low across all decades. Summer forage quality peaked in recently burned forests and decreased as time since burn increased. Summer forage abundance peaked in dry forests burned 6–15 years prior and mesic forests burned within 5 years. Forests recently burned by wildfire had higher summer forage quality and herbaceous abundance than those recently burned by prescribed fire. These results suggest that the nutritional carrying capacity for elk varies temporally with fire history and management practices. Our methods for characterizing nutritional resources provide a relatively straightforward approach for evaluating nutritional adequacy and tracking changes in forage associated with disturbances such as fire.


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