Forest fires are changing: let’s change the fire management strategy

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.

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Global warming and forest fires in Canada

The Forestry Chronicle ◽

10.5558/tfc69290-3 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 69 (3) ◽

pp. 290-293 ◽

Cited By ~ 47

Author(s):

Brian J. Stocks

Keyword(s):

Global Warming ◽

Forest Fire ◽

Forest Fires ◽

Fire Management ◽

Warming Trend ◽

Research Activities ◽

Forest Fire Management ◽

The Future ◽

Innovative Thinking ◽

The Impact

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.

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Forest fires and climate-induced tree range shifts in the western US

Nature Communications ◽

10.1038/s41467-021-26838-z ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Avery P. Hill ◽

Christopher B. Field

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Forest Fires ◽

Fire Management ◽

Range Shifts ◽

Inventory Analysis ◽

Plant Populations ◽

Wildfire Occurrence ◽

Western Us ◽

The Difference ◽

Climate Space

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.

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La gestione degli incendi boschivi in Canton Ticino: tentativo di una sintesi storica | Forest fire management in Canton Ticino: attempting a historical overview

Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur Forstwesen ◽

10.3188/szf.2004.0263 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 155 (7) ◽

pp. 263-277 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Marco Conedera ◽

Gabriele Corti ◽

Paolo Piccini ◽

Daniele Ryser ◽

Francesco Guerini ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Forest Fire ◽

Forest Fires ◽

Fire Management ◽

Southern Alps ◽

Fire Fighting ◽

Historical Overview ◽

Forest Fire Management ◽

Structural Measures ◽

The Impact ◽

Legislative Measures

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.

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Evaluation of Fire Lookout Towers Using GIS-based Spatial Visibility and Suitability Analyzes

Šumarski list ◽

10.31298/sl.144.5-6.5 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 144 (5-6) ◽

pp. 279-288

Author(s):

Abdullah E. Akay ◽

Michael Wing ◽

Halit Büyüksakalli ◽

Salih Malkoçoglu

Keyword(s):

Forest Fires ◽

Fire Management ◽

Geographical Information ◽

Suitability Analysis ◽

Forest Land ◽

Topographic Features ◽

Fire Scene ◽

Forest Lands ◽

In Fire ◽

The City

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.

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Identifying Forest Fire Driving Factors and Related Impacts in China Using Random Forest Algorithm

Forests ◽

10.3390/f11050507 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (5) ◽

pp. 507

Author(s):

Wenyuan Ma ◽

Zhongke Feng ◽

Zhuxin Cheng ◽

Shilin Chen ◽

Fengge Wang

Keyword(s):

Random Forest ◽

Forest Fire ◽

Forest Fires ◽

Fire Management ◽

Fire Hazard ◽

Management Strategies ◽

Driving Factors ◽

Socioeconomic Variables ◽

Forest Fire Management ◽

Geographical Regions

Reasonable forest fire management measures can effectively reduce the losses caused by forest fires and forest fire driving factors and their impacts are important aspects that should be considered in forest fire management. We used the random forest model and MODIS Global Fire Atlas dataset (2010~2016) to analyse the impacts of climate, topographic, vegetation and socioeconomic variables on forest fire occurrence in six geographical regions in China. The results show clear regional differences in the forest fire driving factors and their impacts in China. Climate variables are the forest fire driving factors in all regions of China, vegetation variable is the forest fire driving factor in all other regions except the Northwest region and topographic variables and socioeconomic variables are only the driving factors of forest fires in a few regions (Northwest and Southwest regions). The model predictive capability is good: the AUC values are between 0.830 and 0.975, and the prediction accuracy is between 70.0% and 91.4%. High fire hazard areas are concentrated in the Northeast region, Southwest region and East China region. This research will aid in providing a national-scale understanding of forest fire driving factors and fire hazard distribution in China and help policymakers to design fire management strategies to reduce potential fire hazards.

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The spatio-temporal characteristics of forest fires in China: observations from hybrid remote sensing data

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-2281 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Lei Fang ◽

Zeyu Qiao ◽

Jian Yang

Keyword(s):

Forest Fire ◽

Forest Fires ◽

High Frequency ◽

Fire Management ◽

Hot Spot ◽

Landsat Imagery ◽

Low Frequency ◽

Burned Area ◽

Prevention Policy ◽

The Past

<p>Forest fire is a natural disaster threatening global human well-beings as well as a crucial disturbance agent driving forest landscape changes. The remotely sensed burned area (BA) products can provide spatially and temporally continuous monitoring of global fires, but the accuracies remain to be improved. We firstly developed a hybrid burned area mapping approach, which integrated the advantages of a 250 m global BA product (CCI_Fire) and a 30 m global forest change (GFC) product, to generate an improved 250 m BA product (so-called CCI_GFC product). Based on 248 fire patches derived from Landsat imagery, the results showed that the CCI_GFC product improved the CCI_Fire product substantially, which are significantly better than MCD64A1 product. According to the CCI_GFC, we found the total BA in the past 17 years was about 12.1 million ha in China, which approximately covered 6.1% of the total forested areas with a significantly decreased trend through Mann-Kendall test (Tau= -0.47, P<0.05) . We conducted a grid analysis (0.05&#176;&#215;0.05&#176;) to determine the hot spots of forest fire from 2001 to 2017. We also quantified fire characteristics on frequency, spatial distribution, and seasonality in terms of Burned Forest Rate (BFR), hot spot areas, and fire seasons, respectively. We found that low frequency burns with a 0<BFR&#8804;20% in 17 years covered 64% of total grids; the medium-low frequency burns (20%<BFR&#8804;40%), the medium frequency burns (40%<BFR&#8804;60%), the medium-high frequency burns (60%< BFR&#8804;80%) accounted for 15%, 7%, 4% respectively; the high frequency burns (80%<BFR&#8804;100%) and extremely high burns (100%<BFR&#8804;120%) together occupy 10% of total grids which mainly distributed in Xiao Hinggan mountains, south China, and southwest China. The seasonality of forest fires differed substantially among eco-regions. The fire seasons of two temperate forest eco-regions are spring and autumn. The two peak fire months are May and October, in which about 22% and 37% of the total burned area were founded respectively. As a comparison, fire seasons in tropical and subtropical eco-regions are spring and winter (i.e., November to March of the next year), which accounted 88% of the total burned area. Our study clearly illustrated the characteristics of forest fire patterns in the past 17 years, which highlighted the remarkable achievements due to a nationwide implementation of fire prevention policy. At the same time, we emphasized that it is critically important to regard the long-term forest fire dynamics to design scientific and reasonable strategies or methods for fire management and controlling, which will be of sound significance to optimize the allocation of financial resources on fire management, and to achieve sustainable management of forests.</p>

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Wildfire in Ukraine: an overview of fires and fire management system

Ukrainian Journal of Forest and Wood Science ◽

10.31548/forest2020.02.015 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 15-31

Author(s):

S. V. Zibtsev ◽

O. M. Soshenskyi ◽

V. V. Myroniuk ◽

V. V. Gumeniuk

Keyword(s):

Fire Protection ◽

Forest Fires ◽

Management System ◽

Fire Management ◽

Residential Buildings ◽

Protection System ◽

Agricultural Lands ◽

Severe Problem ◽

Natural Landscapes ◽

Fire Protection System

In the last decade, the problem of fires in the natural landscapes of Ukraine has aggravated due to climate change, changes in society and land use. Catastrophic wildfires in 2014, 2015 and 2020 indicate that Ukraine is now in the new climate conditions in terms of the level of fire danger. It is clear that in such conditions departmental forest and landscapes fire protection system is incapable of control over the situation. Such situation requires an analysis of the effectiveness of the existing forest and landscapes fire protection system and its improvement in accordance with new risks and challenges. Based on the methods of RS with the help of modern software products, it was established that in Ukraine over the past 19 years wildfires have damaged 38.4 million hectares of natural areas, an average of 2.0 million hectares annually. The most severe problem of wildfires is observed in the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine, where forest cover is low, part of agricultural lands is large (over 70%), which indicates, first of all, a problem of agricultural fires. In comparison to fires (burnings) on agricultural lands, the problem of forest fires does not seem very significant. Yet, taking into the account especially large forest fires in Ukraine during 2007 – 2020 that have led to human deaths, destruction of residential buildings, manufacture and social infrastructure, which has resulted in enormous ecological and economical losses, it is clear that forest fire protection system requires deep analysis and appropriate decisions for its improvement. The article is devoted to the study of fires in the natural landscapes of Ukraine, analysis of the current forest and landscapes fire protection system and ways to improve it. The first step towards establishing a modern fire management system in Ukraine should aim at establishing a reliable national fire statistics system, which would highlight the real problem and include all type of landscape fires - in open lands and in forests. The scientific article represents analyzes the landscape fires for the period 2001-2019 according to the global products of the MODIS system. Also in the article, performed the analysis of the components of the current fire management system and the main shortcomings and key recommendations for its improvement are formulated.

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Application of Multi-Criteria Decision Making Models in Forest Fire Management

10.21203/rs.3.rs-705051/v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Roya Abedi

Keyword(s):

Forest Fire ◽

Forest Fires ◽

Fire Management ◽

Scientific Information ◽

Public Trust ◽

Environmental Damage ◽

Prevention Policy ◽

Network Access ◽

Forest Road ◽

Forest Fire Management

Abstract The study on effective factors of forest fire prevention policy is helpful to reduce forest fire impacts on extensive environmental damage in the long-term period. In other words, forest fire management is the result of a complex interaction among criteria. The present study aims to create a scientific analysis of the most effective criteria based on TOPSIS and SAW methods in the Arasbaran forest. The five top optimal criteria selection by TOPSIS method introduced that “association and cooperation between the executive and responsible institutions” have the first rank (CCi+=0.85), “Lack of deterrence law in dealing with forest fire offenders in human–caused forest fires” has the second rank (CCi+= 0.84) and followed by “Lack of up-to-date scientific information on susceptible areas in the region”, “Increasing the cooperation of NGOs and increase public trust”; and “Lack of forest road network access to ignite regions” (CCi+= 0.789; 0.787; 0.77, respectively). The five top optimal criteria resulting from the SAW method showed that “Local people participations” provide the highest score (FS=0.39) and followed by “association and cooperation between the executive and responsible institutions (FS=0.39), “Increasing the cooperation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and increase public trust” (FS=0.36), “Raising awareness of the position of natural resources among local peoples and attracting their cooperation” (FS=0.35) and “Optimal Use past experiences” (FS=0.34). It is suggested that evaluating the ecological and environmental factors affecting the forest fire occurrence and extension could become a set of complement factors to setting management criteria for demonstrating the best management strategies.

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Aqueous Extracts Prepared with Young E. globulus Leaves as a Biocide - A Novel Post-Fire Management Strategy of Eucalyptus Stands

10.20944/preprints202103.0047.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Mafalda Pinto

Keyword(s):

Weed Management ◽

Eucalyptus Globulus ◽

Management Strategy ◽

Fire Management ◽

Fire Hazard ◽

Positive Control ◽

Herbicidal Activity ◽

Native Forest ◽

Allelopathic Potential ◽

Physiological Processes

Along with climate change, the native forest replacement by exotic species, such as Eucalyptus globulus, is contributing to a highly fire-prone environment. Since E. globulus detains several post-fire regeneration strategies, sustainable practices are needed to manage eucalyptus stands. Thus, eucalyptus allelopathic potential can be used for weed control. Therefore, this study aimed at assessing the herbicidal potential of post-fire regenerated E. globulus leaves in Portulaca oleracea, and unraveling the main physiological processes disturbed by biocide application. For this, an aqueous extract prepared with fresh leaves (FLE; 617 gfresh weightL-1) and other with oven-dried leaves (DLE; 250 gdry weightL-1) were prepared and foliar-sprayed twice-a-week at different dilutions in 7-days-old purslane plants. As positive control, glyphosate was used. After five weeks, results revealed that DLE at the highest dose detained the greatest herbicidal activity against P. oleracea. To understand how DLE impacted weed physiology, several biochemical and redox-related parameters were evaluated in purslane plants treated with DLE highest dose. Results suggested an overproduction of hydrogen peroxide, causing severe oxidative damage in roots. Overall, this study showed that young E. globulus dried leaves had powerful herbicidal properties against P. oleracea and can represent a feasible approach for weed management, while reducing fire hazard.

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