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1
Plucinski, M. P., A. L. Sullivan, and W. L. McCaw. "Comparing the performance of daily forest fire danger summary metrics for estimating fire activity in southern Australian forests." International Journal of Wildland Fire 29, no. 10 (2020): 926. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/wf19185.
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Fire danger indices integrate weather and fuel variables to indicate the potential for wildland fires to ignite, spread, resist suppression and cause damage. McArthur’s Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) is applied across much of Australia, with the forecast daily maximum value used to inform fire management planning decisions and issuance of public warnings. Variations in daily maximum FFDI and the hourly changing of FFDI values during the day (including use of different soil moisture deficit indices) were compared against five binary fire activity statistics in six forested areas in southern Australia, with performance assessed using Theil–Sen regression lines fitted to rank percentile curves. Fire activity rates were similar on days with wide and narrow hourly FFDI distributions except in one study area where days with wide distributions experienced more fires. The maximum hourly FFDI metric performed the best of all the metrics tested, though there were no statistically significant differences among any of them. There was also little difference in the performance of metrics determined using alternative calculations and different drought indices. These results suggest that the current use of the forecast hourly maximum FFDI is appropriate and that using alternative methods to determine Drought Factor offers little benefit.
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Hollis, J. J., S. Matthews, W. R. Anderson, M. G. Cruz, and N. D. Burrows. "Behind the flaming zone: Predicting woody fuel consumption in eucalypt forest fires in southern Australia." Forest Ecology and Management 261, no. 11 (June 2011): 2049–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2011.02.031.
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Russell-Smith, Jeremy, Cameron P. Yates, Peter J. Whitehead, Richard Smith, Ron Craig, Grant E. Allan, Richard Thackway, et al. "Bushfires 'down under': patterns and implications of contemporary Australian landscape burning." International Journal of Wildland Fire 16, no. 4 (2007): 361. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/wf07018.
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Australia is among the most fire-prone of continents. While national fire management policy is focused on irregular and comparatively smaller fires in densely settled southern Australia, this comprehensive assessment of continental-scale fire patterning (1997–2005) derived from ~1 km2 Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) imagery shows that fire activity occurs predominantly in the savanna landscapes of monsoonal northern Australia. Statistical models that relate the distribution of large fires to a variety of biophysical variables show that, at the continental scale, rainfall seasonality substantially explains fire patterning. Modelling results, together with data concerning seasonal lightning incidence, implicate the importance of anthropogenic ignition sources, especially in the northern wet–dry tropics and arid Australia, for a substantial component of recurrent fire extent. Contemporary patterns differ markedly from those under Aboriginal occupancy, are causing significant impacts on biodiversity, and, under current patterns of human population distribution, land use, national policy and climate change scenarios, are likely to prevail, if not intensify, for decades to come. Implications of greenhouse gas emissions from savanna burning, especially seasonal emissions of CO2, are poorly understood and contribute to important underestimation of the significance of savanna emissions both in Australian and probably in international greenhouse gas inventories. A significant challenge for Australia is to address annual fire extent in fire-prone Australian savannas.
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Safonova, T. V., N. V. Yagotinceva, O. N. Kolbina, and A. V. Mokryak. "Selection of the Methodology for Predicting the Forest Fires Risks." Occupational Safety in Industry, no. 4 (April 2022): 69–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.24000/0409-2961-2022-4-69-74.
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According to the Federal Forestry Agency, the area of forestry on the territory of the Russian Federation covers approximately two-thirds of the entire area of the country - 1.146 billion hectares. In terms of the forest area in the world in the boreal zone, the leader is the Russian Federation. A distinctive feature of such forests is the inaccessibility and extreme susceptibility to fires. The group of countries in the boreal zone also includes Canada, the USA, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, which makes it possible to refer to their research on selecting the optimal model for calculating fire risks. Due to the abnormally hot weather and the lack of precipitation, a significant fire hazard in the number of the subjects of the Russian Federation in 2020 was recorded from April to September (in 2019, even until November). Weather conditions contributed to the emergence of forest fires in the Urals, Far East, Siberian and Southern federal districts. Monitoring and forecasting of fires in the forest area is poorly developed in the Russian Federation, therefore, it is required to select the optimal method using modern achievements of science and technology to minimize the human contact with the force of nature and the girth of a larger area. The purpose of the study is to select the optimal methodology for predicting the risks of forest fires occurrence. Russian, Canadian, American, and Australian fire risk assessment methodology were identified. In the process of the analysis of the functional features of forest fire forecasting models, the models were compared. As a result, the advantages and disadvantages of the considered models, the scope and versatility of application, as well as their functionality are noted. A further mechanism of work is proposed to create an optimal methodology for calculating risks as the result of forest fires in relation to the features of the relief.
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Budd, GM, JR Brotherhood, AL Hendrie, SE Jeffery, FA Beasley, BP Costin, W. Zhien, MM Baker, NP Cheney, and MP Dawson. "Project Aquarius 1. Stress, Strain, and Productivity in Men Suppressing Australian Summer Bushfires With Hand Tools: Background, Objectives, and Methods." International Journal of Wildland Fire 7, no. 2 (1997): 69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/wf9970069.
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This is the first in a series of 13 papers about the safety and productivity of firefighters suppressing wildland fires ('bushfires' in Australia) with hand tools, with particular emphasis on their physiological and subjective responses and the factors that influence them. The measurements were made during a broader investigation to determine the most intense fire that could be suppressed by hand tools, by bulldozers, and by air tankers. The investigation was carried out during three successive summers in dry eucalypt forests of Western Australia and Victoria. Four crews, each of 7 or 8 male firefighters, were studied while they attempted, for periods of 35-220 minutes, to suppress well-developed experimental bushfires with hand tools, and also while they built fireline in the same way without fire. Additional studies were made under controlled conditions: outdoors in the forest, indoors in field laboratories, and in a climatic chamber in Sydney. Most of the measurements were also made on the scientific observers, who shared the firefighters' environment but performed less strenuous work. All findings were highly consistent over the four crews, three summers, and two States and are thus generally applicable to bushfire suppression with hand tools in southern Australia.
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Hollis, J. J., S. Matthews, R. D. Ottmar, S. J. Prichard, A. Slijepcevic, N. D. Burrows, B. Ward, K. G. Tolhurst, W. R. Anderson, and J. S. Gould. "Testing woody fuel consumption models for application in Australian southern eucalypt forest fires." Forest Ecology and Management 260, no. 6 (August 2010): 948–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2010.06.007.
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Barker, James W., and Owen F. Price. "Positive severity feedback between consecutive fires in dry eucalypt forests of southern Australia." Ecosphere 9, no. 3 (March 2018): e02110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2110.
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Williams, JE, RJ Whelan, and AM Gill. "Fire and Environmental Heterogeneity in Southern Temperate Forest Ecosystems: Implications for Management." Australian Journal of Botany 42, no. 2 (1994): 125. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/bt9940125.
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Fire is a natural part of most Australian landscapes and has an important influence on the biological productivity and biotic composition of many ecosystems. Although fire is commonly used as a management tool, the precise nature of the way it may influence productivity and biotic composition is often poorly understood and, as a consequence, its use is controversial. This paper considers the use of fire for the management of ecosystems. Specifically, the influences of fire on environmental heterogeneity and the effects these have on shaping biological productivity and biotic patterns are discussed. Heterogeneity that affects biotic response includes variation in biophysical attributes of landscapes such as topography, fire regimes and the spatial attributes of fire. Examples are used to address the interplay between fires, environmental heterogeneity and biological patterns: (1) the effects of frees on plant resource availability; (2) crown scorch in eucalypt forests; and (3) the effects of spatial variation (patchiness) within a fire on species composition. Heterogeneity should be considered explicitly in management because prescriptions devised elsewhere may not be able to be imported with confidence to all sites and the responses of the biota to fires may differ from available information. Ecological monitoring and research into the ecological effects of heterogeneity are required to provide a predictive understanding of natural systems and provide information to aid decisions about the use of fire as a management tool.
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Cook, Garry D., Adam C. Liedloff, C. P. (Mick) Meyer, Anna E. Richards, and Steven G. Bray. "Standing dead trees contribute significantly to carbon budgets in Australian savannas." International Journal of Wildland Fire 29, no. 3 (2020): 215. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/wf19092.
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Previous estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from Australian savanna fires have incorporated on-ground dead wood but ignored standing dead trees. However, research from eucalypt woodlands in southern Queensland has shown that the two pools of dead wood burn at similar rates. New field data from semiarid savannas across northern Australia confirmed that standing dead trees comprise about four times the mass of on-ground dead wood. Further, the proportion of total woody biomass comprising dead wood increases with decreasing fire frequency and a decreasing proportion of late dry season (August to December) fires. This gives scope for increasing the carbon stock in the dead wood pool with a reduced fire frequency. Following a previously published approach to quantify total dead wood loads in savannas, new and previously collected data on tree stand structures were used across the whole savanna zone to quantify dead wood loads in equilibrium with historic fire regimes. New parameters are presented for calculating dead wood dynamics including dead trees in Australia’s savannas.
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Renkas, Artur, Vasyl Popovych, and Dmytro Rudenko. "Optimization of Fire Station Locations to Increase the Efficiency of Firefighting in Natural Ecosystems." Environmental Research, Engineering and Management 78, no. 1 (April 1, 2022): 97–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.erem.78.1.25581.
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Wild fires have a catastrophic impact on the environment and lead to people’s deaths. Such fires are relevant in the global context. Many countries declare some of their territories an ecological disaster zone during fires in natural ecosystems (USA, Portugal, Greece, Spain, Italy, Australia). Fires in ecosystems occurred in southern Ukraine in 2007 and in the eastern part of Ukraine in 2021, which destroyed large tracts of pine, as well as homes, buildings and caused human casualties. In the given research, much attention is paid to fire-prevention measures in natural ecosystems. It is proposed to optimize fire stations in the territory of Male Polissya (Ukraine), where frequent grass fires and grassland forest fires occur, since existing fire stations are not able to respond to all fires in the region in a timely manner due to the lack of forces and resources. Optimization of fire station locations was carried out using Voronoi diagrams. This research has a practical aspect, ensuring the protection of human health and life by preventing destructive fires in natural ecosystems through the creation of local safety facilities. On the example of 3 administrative districts of Lviv Oblast in Ukraine, it was established that in order to respond quickly to fires in ecosystems, it is necessary to create 20 additional fire stations, which has been determined by the 20-minute drive method approved by the state authorities. The algorithm proposed in this work can be applied to rural areas in other administrative units, both in Ukraine and other countries. The next step in the development of this technique is to determine the required amount of equipment and human resources for firefighting in ecosystems taking into account the projected dynamics of fires and the time required for the delivery of fire extinguishers to epicenters of these events.
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Penman, T. D., and B. A. Cirulis. "Cost effectiveness of fire management strategies in southern Australia." International Journal of Wildland Fire 29, no. 5 (2020): 427. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/wf18128.
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Fire-management agencies invest significant resources to reduce the impacts of future fires. There has been increasing public scrutiny over how agencies allocate fire-management budgets and, in response, agencies are looking to use quantitative risk-based approaches to make decisions about expenditure in a more transparent manner. Advances in fire-simulation software and computing capacity of fire-agency staff have meant that fire simulators have been increasingly used for quantitative fire-risk analysis. Here we analyse the cost trade-offs of future fire management in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and surrounding areas by combining fire simulation with Bayesian Decision Networks. We compare potential future-management approaches considering prescribed burning, suppression and fire exclusion. These data combined costs of treatment and impacts on assets to undertake a quantitative risk analysis. The proposed approach for fuel treatment in ACT and New South Wales (NSW) provided the greatest reduction in risk and the most cost-effective approach to managing fuels in this landscape. Past management decisions have reduced risk in the landscape and the legacy of these treatments will last for at least 3 years. However, an absence of burning will result in an increased risk from fire in this landscape.
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Sluiter, Ian R. K., David T. Blackburn, and Guy R. Holdgate. "Fire and Late Oligocene to Mid-Miocene peat mega-swamps of south-eastern Australia: a floristic and palaeoclimatic interpretation." Australian Journal of Botany 64, no. 8 (2016): 609. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/bt16165.
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The Late Oligocene to Mid-Miocene (25–13 million years ago) brown coals of the Gippsland Basin in southern Victoria, Australia, were deposited in peat mega-swamps, unlike any in the world at the present day. The swamps preserve a rich botanical suite of macro- and microfossils, many of which can be identified with plant genera and families present today in Australia, New Caledonia, New Zealand and New Guinea. The peat-forming environments also preserve evidence of past burning in the form of micro-charcoal as well as macro-charcoal, the latter being evident as regional lenses or layers of fusinite, generally in coals of the darkest colour termed dark lithotypes. The presence of micro-charcoal in dark and some other lighter lithotypes indicated that fires also burnt locally, although they may have been extinguished before regional-scale burning occurred. It is also feasible that some peat mega-swamp plant communities dominated by rainforest angiosperm plants may have been fire excluders and prevented widespread fires from developing. Pollen and macrofossil evidence is presented of a distinctive southern conifer and angiosperm flora with an open canopy, primarily associated with the darkest coals that formed in the wettest parts of the peat-forming environment. Elsewhere, swamp forests with a large rainforest component grew on swamps raised appreciably above the regional groundwater table in a structural context akin to the ombrogenous peats of tropical coastal Sumatra and Sarawak. These vegetation types were not fire prone, but may have occasionally burnt at a local scale or at forest margins. Evidence is presented for the existence of seasonal climatic conditions that would appear to have facilitated a drying-out of the peat swamps in the warmest months of the year. A mesothermal climate was invoked where mean annual precipitation was at least 1500 mm, and possibly as much as 2000 mm, and mean annual temperatures were ~19°C.
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Hollis, J. J., W. R. Anderson, W. L. McCaw, M. G. Cruz, N. D. Burrows, B. Ward, K. G. Tolhurst, and J. S. Gould. "The effect of fireline intensity on woody fuel consumption in southern Australian eucalypt forest fires." Australian Forestry 74, no. 2 (January 2011): 81–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00049158.2011.10676350.
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Bauwens, Maite, Trissevgeni Stavrakou, Jean-François Müller, Isabelle De Smedt, Michel Van Roozendael, Guido R. van der Werf, Christine Wiedinmyer, Johannes W. Kaiser, Katerina Sindelarova, and Alex Guenther. "Nine years of global hydrocarbon emissions based on source inversion of OMI formaldehyde observations." Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 16, no. 15 (August 11, 2016): 10133–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-10133-2016.
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Abstract. As formaldehyde (HCHO) is a high-yield product in the oxidation of most volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by fires, vegetation, and anthropogenic activities, satellite observations of HCHO are well-suited to inform us on the spatial and temporal variability of the underlying VOC sources. The long record of space-based HCHO column observations from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) is used to infer emission flux estimates from pyrogenic and biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) on the global scale over 2005–2013. This is realized through the method of source inverse modeling, which consists in the optimization of emissions in a chemistry-transport model (CTM) in order to minimize the discrepancy between the observed and modeled HCHO columns. The top–down fluxes are derived in the global CTM IMAGESv2 by an iterative minimization algorithm based on the full adjoint of IMAGESv2, starting from a priori emission estimates provided by the newly released GFED4s (Global Fire Emission Database, version 4s) inventory for fires, and by the MEGAN-MOHYCAN inventory for isoprene emissions. The top–down fluxes are compared to two independent inventories for fire (GFAS and FINNv1.5) and isoprene emissions (MEGAN-MACC and GUESS-ES). The inversion indicates a moderate decrease (ca. 20 %) in the average annual global fire and isoprene emissions, from 2028 Tg C in the a priori to 1653 Tg C for burned biomass, and from 343 to 272 Tg for isoprene fluxes. Those estimates are acknowledged to depend on the accuracy of formaldehyde data, as well as on the assumed fire emission factors and the oxidation mechanisms leading to HCHO production. Strongly decreased top–down fire fluxes (30–50 %) are inferred in the peak fire season in Africa and during years with strong a priori fluxes associated with forest fires in Amazonia (in 2005, 2007, and 2010), bushfires in Australia (in 2006 and 2011), and peat burning in Indonesia (in 2006 and 2009), whereas generally increased fluxes are suggested in Indochina and during the 2007 fires in southern Europe. Moreover, changes in fire seasonal patterns are suggested; e.g., the seasonal amplitude is reduced over southeast Asia. In Africa, the inversion indicates increased fluxes due to agricultural fires and decreased maxima when natural fires are dominant. The top–down fire emissions are much better correlated with MODIS fire counts than the a priori inventory in regions with small and agricultural fires, indicating that the OMI-based inversion is well-suited to assess the associated emissions. Regarding biogenic sources, significant reductions in isoprene fluxes are inferred in tropical ecosystems (30–40 %), suggesting overestimated basal emission rates in those areas in the bottom–up inventory, whereas strongly positive isoprene emission updates are derived over semiarid and desert areas, especially in southern Africa and Australia. This finding suggests that the parameterization of the soil moisture stress used in MEGAN greatly exaggerates the flux reduction due to drought in those regions. The isoprene emission trends over 2005–2013 are often enhanced after optimization, with positive top–down trends in Siberia (4.2 % year−1) and eastern Europe (3.9 % year−1), likely reflecting forest expansion and warming temperatures, and negative trends in Amazonia (−2.1 % year−1), south China (−1 % year−1), the United States (−3.7 % year−1), and western Europe (−3.3 % year−1), which are generally corroborated by independent studies, yet their interpretation warrants further investigation.
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Dickman, Christopher R., Pat Hutchings, Brad Law, and Daniel Lunney. "Raking over the ashes: assessing the impact of fire on native fauna in the aftermath of Australia’s 2019–2020 fires." Australian Zoologist 42, no. 2 (April 1, 2022): 643–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.7882/az.2022.037.
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ABSTRACT The 2021 annual forum of the Royal Zoological Society of NSW raked over the ashes of the unprecedented “Black Summer” bushfires of 2019–2020 in eastern and southern Australia to assess how forest ecosystems and their constituent fauna had fared. This paper provides an overview of the 21 studies that were presented at the forum, now as papers in this theme edition of Australian Zoologist. All the authors were unanimous in their agreement about the unparalleled extent and severity of the fires and the magnitude of their ecological impacts. Whereas much of the focus of the 2019–2020 fires was on vertebrates, significant research was also carried out on a diverse range of invertebrate taxa. The studies of the invertebrate groups found that different taxa respond variably to fire and also emphasised the difficulties in judging the full impact of the fires due to taxonomic impediments. An underlying theme in almost all studies was that long-term and broad-scale monitoring of fauna and faunal habitats is essential if we are to build a robust understanding of how animals respond to fire, and in turn how managers can mitigate the impacts of fire in future. Such monitoring will need to incorporate the effects of other disturbance factors, such as habitat fragmentation, drought, salvage logging and longwall mining, that interact with fire, and also trial new methods to track and assist fauna to cope with the changing fire regimes. Several studies advocated the use of novel and emerging technologies to achieve better monitoring of fauna, while others proposed mapping of large scale, as well as micro-refuges, to maximise fire resilience, or the use of supplementary resources such as nest boxes and artificial roosts to replace those lost in fires. We concur with all the authors that a critically important way to protect and manage our native fauna is through expanded and sustained research and monitoring programs, and by making the key results available to managers and policy makers via peer-reviewed publication.
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Brotherhood, JR, GM Budd, AL Hendrie, SE Jeffery, FA Beasley, BP Costin, W. Zhien, MM Baker, NP Cheney, and MP Dawson. "Project Aquarius 3. Effects of Work Rate on the Productivity, Energy Expenditure, and Physiological Responses of Men Building Fireline With a Rakehoe in Dry Eucalypt Forest." International Journal of Wildland Fire 7, no. 2 (1997): 87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/wf9970087.
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Four crews of firefighters built fireline for 7 min periods (with intervening rests), without fire, at self-chosen 'slow', 'normal', and 'fast' rates in Australian eucalypt forests. Individuals differed twofold for energy expenditure (EE, measured as oxygen uptake by the Douglas bag technique) and relative work load (RWL, i.e % of maximum oxygen uptake), and threefold for productivity and efficiency (productivity per unit EE). They maintained their differences in all stages of the test and also while suppressing free-running wildland fires, showing that the work rate adopted was a stable characteristic of the individuals' work behaviour. The technique of raking fireline did not constrain EE but instead allowed firefighters to call upon their maximum work capacity for urgent tasks with no reduction in efficiency. EE, RWL, and heart rate increased linearly with productivity whereas perceived exertion and pulmonary ventilation increased curvilinearly, rising steeply at 'fast' work rates. We suggest that perceived exertion and the ventilatory threshold (the upper limit of comfortable breathing) provide the cues by which firefighters pace themselves at sustainable work rates that balance their fireline productivity against its physiological cost. The findings were highly consistent over four crews, three summers, and two regions and are thus generally applicable to bushfire suppression in southern Australia.
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Greenville, Aaron C., Chris R. Dickman, Glenda M. Wardle, and Mike Letnic. "The fire history of an arid grassland: the influence of antecedent rainfall and ENSO." International Journal of Wildland Fire 18, no. 6 (2009): 631. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/wf08093.
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Implementing appropriate fire regimes has become an increasingly important objective for biodiversity conservation programs. Here, we used Landsat imagery from 1972 to 2003 to describe the recent fire history and current wildfire regime of the north-eastern Simpson Desert, Australia, within each of the region’s seven main vegetation classes. We then explored the relationship between antecedent rainfall and El Niño–Southern Oscillation with wildfire area. Wildfires were recorded in 11 years between 1972 and 2003, each differing in size. In 1975, the largest wildfire was recorded, burning 55% (4561 km2) of the study region. Smaller fires in the intervening years burnt areas that had mostly escaped the 1975 fire, until 2002, when 31% (2544 km2) of the study region burnt again. Wildfires burnt disproportionally more spinifex (Triodia basedowii) than any other vegetation class. A total of 49% of the study area has burnt once since 1972 and 20% has burnt twice. Less than 1% has burnt three times and 36% has remained unaffected by wildfire since 1972. The mean minimum fire return interval was 26 years. Two years of cumulative rainfall before a fire event, rainfall during the year of a fire event, and the mean Southern Oscillation Index from June to November in the year before a fire event could together be used to successfully predict wildfire area. We use these findings to describe the current fire regime.
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Southgate, Richard, and Susan Carthew. "Post-fire ephemerals and spinifex-fuelled fires: a decision model for bilby habitat management in the Tanami Desert, Australia." International Journal of Wildland Fire 16, no. 6 (2007): 741. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/wf06046.
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Seed from post-fire ephemeral plants like Yakirra australiense can form an important component of the diet of the bilby, a threatened arid-dwelling bandicoot. An investigation was conducted to determine the factors affecting the production of Yakirra and fire reoccurrence in the Tanami Desert. A simple decision model was produced to assist managers decide where and when to burn and what to expect regarding Yakirra australiense growth following fire and rainfall. The information used in the model may be derived from existing spatial databases that document rainfall and fire history and could be used to map broad-scale temporal change in total vegetation cover and components of habitat suitability for the bilby. The season and magnitude of rainfall and time-since-fire were the most important variables in the production of Yakirra seed. Rainfall >300 mm within a 2-month period of intense-complete burns could result in >5% Yakirra cover, and >100 mm was required for >1% cover. Negligible Yakirra cover occurred in adjacent long-unburnt plots. Total ground cover and spinifex cover varied substantially in relation to mean annual rainfall, but not in relation to substrate type. Long-unburnt spinifex cover was mostly too sparse to carry a fire in the southern part of the Tanami and the growth of non-spinifex vegetation would be necessary to boost fuel loads sufficiently to carry a fire. Generally, more than 41% cover was required to carry a fire but this was also dependent on weather conditions. Managers should aim to burn in late spring or early summer to improve Yakirra production. Fire management to enhance habitat suitability for the bilby would be of most benefit in the northern part of the Tanami Desert where growth rate of vegetation is greater and there is little existing fire age heterogeneity.
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Rees, Michael, and David Paull. "Distribution of the southern brown bandicoot (Isoodon obesulus) in the Portland region of south-western Victoria." Wildlife Research 27, no. 5 (2000): 539. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/wr99045.
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The southern brown bandicoot (Isoodon obesulus) occurs across the periphery of southern and eastern Australia as a series of isolated regional populations. Historical records and recent surveys conducted for I. obesulus indicate that it has disappeared or decreased significantly from many parts of its former range. Vegetation clearance, habitat fragmentation, feral predators and fire have all been implicated in the decline of the species. This paper examines the distribution of I. obesulus in the Portland region of south-western Victoria. Historical records of I. obesulus were compiled from the specimen collection of Museum Victoria, the Atlas of Victorian Wildlife, Portland Field Naturalists’ Club records and anecdotal sources. Field surveys were conducted to determine the current distribution of I. obesulus in the study area based on evidence of its foraging activity. The historical records reveal limited information: most are clustered around centres of human activity, indicating observational bias. The field surveys demonstrate that I. obesulus occurs in the Portland region as a series of local populations. Each local population is associated with a patch of remnant native vegetation separated from neighbouring patches by dispersal barriers. Within these habitat remnants the occurrence of the species is sporadic. Approximately 69% of the potential habitat is managed by the Forests Service, 31% is managed by Parks Victoria, and less than 0.5% is held under other tenures. Spatial isolation of habitat remnants, fires and feral predators are the main threats to I. obesulus in the Portland region.
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Alvim, Débora Souza, Júlio Barboza Chiquetto, Monica Tais Siqueira D’Amelio, Bushra Khalid, Dirceu Luis Herdies, Jayant Pendharkar, Sergio Machado Corrêa, et al. "Evaluating Carbon Monoxide and Aerosol Optical Depth Simulations from CAM-Chem Using Satellite Observations." Remote Sensing 13, no. 11 (June 7, 2021): 2231. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs13112231.
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The scope of this work was to evaluate simulated carbon monoxide (CO) and aerosol optical depth (AOD) from the CAM-chem model against observed satellite data and additionally explore the empirical relationship of CO, AOD and fire radiative power (FRP). The simulated seasonal global concentrations of CO and AOD were compared, respectively, with the Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) and the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite products for the period 2010–2014. The CAM-chem simulations were performed with two configurations: (A) tropospheric-only; and (B) tropospheric with stratospheric chemistry. Our results show that the spatial and seasonal distributions of CO and AOD were reasonably reproduced in both model configurations, except over central China, central Africa and equatorial regions of the Atlantic and Western Pacific, where CO was overestimated by 10–50 ppb. In configuration B, the positive CO bias was significantly reduced due to the inclusion of dry deposition, which was not present in the model configuration A. There was greater CO loss due to the chemical reactions, and shorter lifetime of the species with stratospheric chemistry. In summary, the model has difficulty in capturing the exact location of the maxima of the seasonal AOD distributions in both configurations. The AOD was overestimated by 0.1 to 0.25 over desert regions of Africa, the Middle East and Asia in both configurations, but the positive bias was even higher in the version with added stratospheric chemistry. By contrast, the AOD was underestimated over regions associated with anthropogenic activity, such as eastern China and northern India. Concerning the correlations between CO, AOD and FRP, high CO is found during March–April–May (MAM) in the Northern Hemisphere, mainly in China. In the Southern Hemisphere, high CO, AOD, and FRP values were found during August–September–October (ASO) due to fires, mostly in South America and South Africa. In South America, high AOD levels were observed over subtropical Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. Sparsely urbanized regions showed higher correlations between CO and FRP (0.7–0.9), particularly in tropical areas, such as the western Amazon region. There was a high correlation between CO and aerosols from biomass burning at the transition between the forest and savanna environments over eastern and central Africa. It was also possible to observe the transport of these pollutants from the African continent to the Brazilian coast. High correlations between CO and AOD were found over southeastern Asian countries, and correlations between FRP and AOD (0.5–0.8) were found over higher latitude regions such as Canada and Siberia as well as in tropical areas. Higher correlations between CO and FRP are observed in Savanna and Tropical forests (South America, Central America, Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia) than FRP x AOD. In contrast, boreal forests in Russia, particularly in Siberia, show a higher FRP x AOD correlation than FRP x CO. In tropical forests, CO production is likely favored over aerosol, while in temperate forests, aerosol production is more than CO compared to tropical forests. On the east coast of the United States, the eastern border of the USA with Canada, eastern China, on the border between China, Russia, and Mongolia, and the border between North India and China, there is a high correlation of CO x AOD and a low correlation between FRP with both CO and AOD. Therefore, such emissions in these regions are not generated by forest fires but by industries and vehicular emissions since these are densely populated regions.
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Sayigh, Ali. "Up-date: Renewable energy and climate change." Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability 6 (2021): 13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/rees/2021004.
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The Climate Change crisis is worsening daily. We must start to-day and not to-morrow limiting CO2 emission globally. The Antarctic is melting with alarming speed and causing sea water levels to rise by 24 inches in the Southern Hemisphere. Central Australia is experiencing its worst ever drought and forest fires causing immense damage; on 55 days in 2019 temperatures rose to 48°C while the ground temperature reached 62 °C. Vast tracts of land have been burned with loss of life, homes, produce and wildlife. Yet government reaction was skeptical of the Climate Change connection. At the same time Europe and England have had extreme rainfall and serious extensive flooding. Nowadays many countries have started to take Climate Change extremely seriously and put together plans to reduce or stop the use of coal and other fossil fuels. Most countries have pledged to stop using fossil fuels by 2030. The transport industry accounts for the major part of air pollution through the use of motor vehicles, ships and air transport. In this paper it is demonstrated that motor car usage contributes more than 3500 million metric tons of CO2 each year. UK in November 2020 pledged to combat Climate Change and reduce the emission of CO2 by 50% by 2030. Recently it has announced a ten- point drive to eliminate fossil fuels in transport, agriculture, industry and homes by 2035.Ajman should follow suit and use UK as an example. This paper will summarize the progress of renewable energy globally with examples. Renewable Energy is now a major source of generating electricity worldwide. It is clean, abundant and low cost.
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Ozaki, Mitsuhiro, Rebecca M. B. Harris, Peter T. Love, Jagannath Aryal, Paul Fox-Hughes, and Grant J. Williamson. "Impact of Vertical Atmospheric Structure on an Atypical Fire in a Mountain Valley." Fire 5, no. 4 (July 20, 2022): 104. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/fire5040104.
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Wildfires are not only a natural part of many ecosystems, but they can also have disastrous consequences for humans, including in Australia. Rugged terrain adds to the difficulty of predicting fire behavior and fire spread, as fires often propagate contrary to expectations. Even though fire models generally incorporate weather, fuels, and topography, which are important factors affecting fire behavior, they usually only consider the surface wind; however, the more elevated winds should also be accounted for, in addition to surface winds, when predicting fire spread in rugged terrain because valley winds are often dynamically altered by the interaction of a layered atmosphere and the topography. Here, fire spread in rugged terrain was examined in a case study of the Riveaux Road Fire, which was ignited by multiple lightning strikes in January 2019 in southern Tasmania, Australia and burnt approximately 637.19 km2. Firstly, the number of conducive wind structures, which are defined as the combination of wind and temperature layers likely to result in enhanced surface wind, were counted by examining the vertical wind structure of the atmosphere, and the potential for above-surface winds to affect fire propagation was identified. Then, the multiple fire propagations were simulated using a new fire simulator (Prototype 2) motivated by the draft specification of the forthcoming new fire danger rating system, the Australian Fire Danger Rating System (AFDRS). Simulations were performed with one experiment group utilizing wind fields that included upper-air interactions, and two control groups that utilized downscaled wind from a model that only incorporated surface winds, to identify the impact of upper air interactions. Consequently, a detailed analysis showed that more conducive structures were commonly observed in the rugged terrain than in the other topography. In addition, the simulation of the experiment group performed better in predicting fire spread than those of the control groups in rugged terrain. In contrast, the control groups based on the downscaled surface wind model performed well in less rugged terrain. These results suggest that not only surface winds but also the higher altitude winds above the surface are required to be considered, especially in rugged terrain.
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Brou, Akahoua D. V. "Numerical Study of the Effect of the Ignition Procedure on the Front of a Surface Fire from a 3D Numerical Model." Fire 6, no. 1 (January 4, 2023): 15. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/fire6010015.
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In instrumented prescribed fires, the ignition procedure requires much attention. In this paper, we investigate the effects of two ignition procedures on the fire head using a 3D numerical model. The first procedure is to ignite the fire from the edges of the fire line towards the centre of the line. The second procedure consists of igniting the fire from the centre of the fire line to the edges of the line. The 3D numerical model used is based on the modelling of the fuel layer from Lagrangian particles, and the fire propagation is based on a two-phase model. The model was tested on an experimental fire in a wheat field in southern Australia. The model predicted the experimental fire front well. Analysis of the impact of the ignition procedure on the fire head showed that the quasi-steady-state rate of fire spread was the same for both procedures. However, before the quasi-stationary state, the front of the first procedure spread faster than that of the second procedure. The fire front in the first procedure was wider than in the second procedure. It was also found that the length of the head fire in the first procedure remained the same as that of the ignition line. In the second procedure, the length of the head fire was one-third of that of the ignition line.
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Levin, Noam, Marta Yebra, and Stuart Phinn. "Unveiling the Factors Responsible for Australia’s Black Summer Fires of 2019/2020." Fire 4, no. 3 (September 4, 2021): 58. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/fire4030058.
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The summer season of 2019–2020 has been named Australia’s Black Summer because of the large forest fires that burnt for months in southeast Australia, affecting millions of Australia’s citizens and hundreds of millions of animals and capturing global media attention. This extensive fire season has been attributed to the global climate crisis, a long drought season and extreme fire weather conditions. Our aim in this study was to examine the factors that have led some of the wildfires to burn over larger areas for a longer duration and to cause more damage to vegetation. To this end, we studied all large forest and non-forest fires (>100 km2) that burnt in Australia between September 2019 and mid-February 2020 (Australia’s Black Summer fires), focusing on the forest fires in southeast Australia. We used a segmentation algorithm to define individual polygons of large fires based on the burn date from NASA’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) active fires product and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) burnt area product (MCD64A1). For each of the wildfires, we calculated the following 10 response variables, which served as proxies for the fires’ extent in space and time, spread and intensity: fire area, fire duration (days), the average spread of fire (area/days), fire radiative power (FRP; as detected by NASA’s MODIS Collection 6 active fires product (MCD14ML)), two burn severity products, and changes in vegetation as a result of the fire (as calculated using the vegetation health index (VHI) derived from AVHRR and VIIRS as well as live fuel moisture content (LFMC), photosynthetic vegetation (PV) and combined photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic vegetation (PV+NPV) derived from MODIS). We also computed more than 30 climatic, vegetation and anthropogenic variables based on remotely sensed derived variables, climatic time series and land cover datasets, which served as the explanatory variables. Altogether, 391 large fires were identified for Australia’s Black Summer. These included 205 forest fires with an average area of 584 km2 and 186 non-forest fires with an average area of 445 km2; 63 of the forest fires took place in southeast (SE) Australia (the area between Fraser Island, Queensland, and Kangaroo Island, South Australia), with an average area of 1097 km2. Australia’s Black Summer forest fires burnt for more days compared with non-forest fires. Overall, the stepwise regression models were most successful at explaining the response variables for the forest fires in SE Australia (n = 63; median-adjusted R2 of 64.3%), followed by all forest fires (n = 205; median-adjusted R2 of 55.8%) and all non-forest fires (n = 186; median-adjusted R2 of 48.2%). The two response variables that were best explained by the explanatory variables used as proxies for fires’ extent, spread and intensity across all models for the Black Summer forest and non-forest fires were the change in PV due to fire (median-adjusted R2 of 69.1%) and the change in VHI due to fire (median-adjusted R2 of 66.3%). Amongst the variables we examined, vegetation and fuel-related variables (such as previous frequency of fires and the conditions of the vegetation before the fire) were found to be more prevalent in the multivariate models for explaining the response variables in comparison with climatic and anthropogenic variables. This result suggests that better management of wildland–urban interfaces and natural vegetation using cultural and prescribed burning as well as planning landscapes with less flammable and more fire-tolerant ground cover plants may reduce fire risk to communities living near forests, but this is challenging given the sheer size and diversity of ecosystems in Australia.
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Guo, Jinyun, Rui Hou, Maosheng Zhou, Xin Jin, Chengming Li, Xin Liu, and Hao Gao. "Monitoring 2019 Forest Fires in Southeastern Australia with GNSS Technique." Remote Sensing 13, no. 3 (January 22, 2021): 386. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs13030386.
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From late 2019 to early 2020, forest fires in southeastern Australia caused huge economic losses and huge environmental pollution. Monitoring forest fires has become increasingly important. A new method of fire detection using the difference between global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-derived precipitable water vapor and radiosonde-derived precipitable water vapor (ΔPWV) is proposed. To study the feasibility of the new method, the relationship is studied between particulate matter 10 (PM10) (2.5 to 10 microns particulate matter) and ΔPWV based on Global Positioning System (GPS) data, radiosonde data, and PM10 data from 1 June 2019 to 1 June 2020 in southeastern Australia. The results show that before the forest fire, ΔPWV and PM10 were smaller and less fluctuating. When the forest fire happened, ΔPWV and PM10 were increasing. Then after the forest fire, PM10 became small with relatively smooth fluctuations, but ΔPWV was larger and more fluctuating. Correlation between the 15-day moving standard deviation (STD) time series of ΔPWV and PM10 after the fire was significantly higher than that before the fire. This study shows that ΔPWV is effective in monitoring forest fires based on GNSS technique before and during forest fires in climates with more uniform precipitation, and using ΔPWV to detect forest fires based on GNSS needs to be further investigated in climates with more precipitation and severe climate change.
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Wrathall, James E. "The hazard of forest fires in southern France." Disasters 9, no. 2 (June 1985): 104–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7717.1985.tb00922.x.
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Miller, Carol, and Dean L. Urban. "Interactions between forest heterogeneity and surface fire regimes in the southern Sierra Nevada." Canadian Journal of Forest Research 29, no. 2 (February 1, 1999): 202–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/x98-188.
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Fire is a major agent of spatial pattern formation in forests, as it creates a mosaic of burned and unburned patches. While most research has focused on landscape-level patterns created by crown fires, millions of hectares of forests in North America are subject to surface fire regimes. A spatially explicit forest gap model developed for the Sierra Nevada was used to evaluate the influence of surface fire regimes on the heterogeneity of forest structure and composition within forest stands. Forest pattern was evaluated for a wide range of topographic positions in Sequoia National Park, California, to determine if repeated surface fires amplify existing spatial patterns. The spatial heterogeneity of some forest characteristics increased under a simulated fire regime relative to scenarios without fire. Although a distinct and regular fire-generated spatial pattern was not detected with an analysis of spatial autocorrelation, simulated surface fires did alter the spatial heterogeneity within a forest stand, primarily by degrading a regular structure that is imposed by competition for light in the absence of fire. The interaction between surface fires and forest pattern may be qualitatively different from that which occurs in forests subject to crown fires. As such, what has been learned about forests dominated by crown fires may not apply to forests subject to surface fire regimes.
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Shen, Ruiyun. "Application of MODIS Data-Based Forest Fire Monitoring and Assessment." Highlights in Science, Engineering and Technology 17 (November 10, 2022): 86–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.54097/hset.v17i.2510.
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Forest fires are uncontrollable fires that spread freely within forest land, causing significant harm and damage, and thus its monitoring and assessment are crucial. There is a wide range of applications of MODIS data in forest fires aspect, but they are mainly targeted to solve regional problems. This study addresses MODIS data technology and examples of its application to forest fires in the Heilongjiang, Australia, Fujian Province, and Daxinganling Mountains, confirming its potential for monitoring and assessing forest fires. MODIS images and fire products contribute significantly to the usefulness and accuracy in the dynamic identification monitoring of forest fires and accurate determination of the ignition place due to their high resolution, excellent calibration, and positioning processing. MODIS and its corresponding product datasets can also be used to construct multiple vegetation and associated indicators to acquire vegetation area changes and to analyze the damage caused by forest fires. It is the ideal data source for monitoring and assessing forest fires.
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Li, Sinuo, Jinghao Xu, and Qiyu Zhang. "Influence of Climate Change on Australia Forest Fire and Future Prevention Strategy Analysis." Highlights in Science, Engineering and Technology 25 (December 13, 2022): 374–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.54097/hset.v25i.3551.
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The problem of Australian forest fires has always captured the world’s attention. Each forest fire will bring huge losses. It can be huge death of animals, leading to more animals becoming endangered species, and it causes a high mortality rate. The study is about the impact of climate change on Australia's forest fires. The study contains information about Australia's current climate change and the analysis of the relationship between climate change and forest fires, finding that climate is the main factor for the increasing possibility of the forest fire. The study also includes the measurement used by governments and suggestions to reduce the cost of forest fires. For example, the wide no-fuel or micro-fuel Asset Protection Zone (APZ) can greatly influence the operation and viability of small lands and public reserves. Reducing the use of flammable matter and house density and building residential areas with fire suppression devices are necessary. The study shows the severity of problems caused by climate change and the necessity of fire prevention.
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Sewak, Reuben, Mehak Vashisth, and Lovleen Gupta. "Forest Fires in India: A Review." Journal of University of Shanghai for Science and Technology 23, no. 07 (July 2, 2021): 247–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.51201/jusst/21/07129.
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A forest fire has become extreme and has increased in frequency worldwide with India being no exception. In view of this, the present-day knowledge about the forest fire condition in India has been reviewed. The forest cover in India is divided into four clusters namely North Himalayan, North-Eastern, Southern, and Central. Of these clusters, it has been found that though the North-Eastern cluster encompasses the maximum area (55%) of all the clusters in India, it accounts for a meager 16% of the burnt forest area. The central cluster has been found to be the most vulnerable to forest fires as ~56% of the total burnt area lies in this region, though it covers only 28% of the forest cover. In North-East fires tend to concentrate in a smaller area that is subject to repeated burns whereas in Central and Southern India they are more expensive. The impacts of forest fires on biodiversity, forest species, climate change, and soil characteristics in India are presented and various strategies adopted by the Indian government in order to detect and control the forest fires are presented. Additionally, the economic impact of forest fires is estimated to be over INR 1101 crore/year.
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Dansereau, Pierre-René, and Yves Bergeron. "Fire history in the southern boreal forest of northwestern Quebec." Canadian Journal of Forest Research 23, no. 1 (January 1, 1993): 25–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/x93-005.
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Age determination of post-fire forests and the analysis of fire scars on surviving trees have allowed for the historical reconstruction and mapping of fires in a forest area of 11 715 ha in northwestern Quebec, south of Lake Abitibi. Most of the study area was burnt by two large fires (>1000 ha) in 1760 and 1923. All the other fires recorded (1797, 1823, 1870, 1907, 1919) were smaller in extent and occurred in a restricted part (1984 ha) of the study area, characterized by the fragmentation of the forest landscape by water bodies. The compilation of data concerning area burnt per type of surficial material confirms that the physical environment exerts a stronger control on the delimitation of these smaller fires. The data do not allow for the estimation of the fire cycle owing to the small size of the study area and possible temporal changes during the observation period. However, methodological observations are formulated for future studies covering a larger area in the bioclimatic region.
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Williams, RJ, AM Gill, and PHR Moore. "Seasonal Changes in Fire Behaviour in a Tropical Savanna in Northern Australia." International Journal of Wildland Fire 8, no. 4 (1998): 227. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/wf9980227.
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In a landscape-scale experiment, fires were lit in replicate catchments 15-20 km2 in area, either early in the dry season (June) or late in the dry season (September) between 1990 and 1994. For each fire, Byram-intensity was determined in representative one ha areas of Eucalyptus miniata – E. tetrodonta open-forest, with a ground stratum dominated by annual grasses. Fuel weights were measured by harvest, fuel heat content was assumed to be constant, and the rate of spread was determined using electronic timers. Fuels consisted primarily of grass and leaf litter, and ranged from 1.5 to 13 t ha-1; in most years, average fuel loads were 2-4 t ha-1. Rates of spread were generally in the range of 0.2-0.8 ms-1. The mean intensity of early dry season fires (2100 kW m-1) was significantly less than that of the late dry season fires (7700 kW m-1), primarily because, in the late dry season, there was more leaf litter, fuels were drier, and fire weather was more extreme. Crown fires, a feature of forest fires of high intensity in southeastern Australia, were not observed in the Kapalga fires. Fire intensity was a very good predictor of both leaf-char height and leaf-scorch height for fires between 100 kW m-1 and 10,000 kW m-1, the range in which the majority of experimental fires fell.
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Ratknic, Tatjana, Mihailo Ratknic, Nikola Rakonjac, Ivana Zivanovic, and Zoran Poduska. "Development of a national index for the purpose of forest fire risk assessments on the example of southern Serbia." Thermal Science 23, no. 6 Part A (2019): 3307–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/tsci190412276r.
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The paper presents the results on the study of the possible application of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index and the Modified Angstrom Index in forest fire risk assessments. The daily values of these indices for the period 2005-2015 were related to the forest fire database. It was found that there is a relatively weak to moderate correlation between forest fires and the values of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index. In order to improve the wildfire risk assessments (including forest fires), the index was modified. The modified index has a significantly greater correlation with the actual events of forest fires and consequently a much wider application in southern Serbia. The modified index can be of great importance in the future concepts of forest fire risk management.
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Weir, JMH, and E. A. Johnson. "Effects of escaped settlement fires and logging on forest composition in the mixedwood boreal forest." Canadian Journal of Forest Research 28, no. 3 (March 1, 1998): 459–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/x98-001.
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The southern edge of the boreal forest in central Saskatchewan, Canada, has had its forest composition changed in the first decades of this century, primarily by logging and escaped fires from adjacent agricultural clearance. Three timber berths were established in 1884 within and immediately adjacent to the present southern half of Prince Albert National Park (established in 1927). These timber berths were selectively logged for saw timber between 1900 and 1918. Between 1907 and 1918, an average of 70 trees per hectare were removed by selective logging. Most of these trees were white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss). Since logging companies were required to remove all merchantable trees with a basal diameter greater than 25 cm, it is estimated that between 28 and 54% of the canopy trees were removed. Between 1883 and 1942, 81% of the timber berths were burned two or more times by crown fires that spread through the study area from adjacent agricultural clearances 30 km or more away. By 1945, agricultural clearance was largely complete and the clearance-caused fires stopped. The changes in tree composition were determined by transition probabilities between forest surveys taken in 1883 and 1994. Forests subjected to short-interval, clearance-caused fires but no logging were significantly reduced in their abundance of sexually reproducing trees such as white spruce, but increased in trees with either vegetative reproduction (i.e., underground stems, not just basal sprouts) or serotinous cones, such as aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) and jack pine (Pinus banksiana Lamb.), respectively. Transition probabilities for forests experiencing both short-interval, clearance-caused fires and logging reveal an even more marked compositional change in this direction.
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Morton, D. C., Y. Le Page, R. DeFries, G. J. Collatz, and G. C. Hurtt. "Understorey fire frequency and the fate of burned forests in southern Amazonia." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 368, no. 1619 (June 5, 2013): 20120163. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0163.
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Recent drought events underscore the vulnerability of Amazon forests to understorey fires. The long-term impact of fires on biodiversity and forest carbon stocks depends on the frequency of fire damages and deforestation rates of burned forests. Here, we characterized the spatial and temporal dynamics of understorey fires (1999–2010) and deforestation (2001–2010) in southern Amazonia using new satellite-based estimates of annual fire activity (greater than 50 ha) and deforestation (greater than 10 ha). Understorey forest fires burned more than 85 500 km 2 between 1999 and 2010 (2.8% of all forests). Forests that burned more than once accounted for 16 per cent of all understorey fires. Repeated fire activity was concentrated in Mato Grosso and eastern Pará, whereas single fires were widespread across the arc of deforestation. Routine fire activity in Mato Grosso coincided with annual periods of low night-time relative humidity, suggesting a strong climate control on both single and repeated fires. Understorey fires occurred in regions with active deforestation, yet the interannual variability of fire and deforestation were uncorrelated, and only 2.6 per cent of forests that burned between 1999 and 2008 were deforested for agricultural use by 2010. Evidence from the past decade suggests that future projections of frontier landscapes in Amazonia should separately consider economic drivers to project future deforestation and climate to project fire risk.
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Veselkin, Denis, Nadezhda Kuyantseva, Liliya Pustovalova, and Aleksandr Mumber. "Trends in Forest Fire Occurrence in the Ilmensky Nature Reserve, Southern Urals, Russia, between 1948 and 2014." Forests 13, no. 4 (March 29, 2022): 528. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/f13040528.
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We analyzed the spatial distribution and temporal dynamics of 1083 forest fires within the Ilmensky Reserve (Southern Urals, Russia) over 1948–2014. We observed a significant increase in the number of forest fires over the studied period, with the locations of the most frequently burned sections of the reserve changing over time. The average number of fires over the whole period increased by a factor of 1.9; there were 0.41 fires per compartment per 10 years in 1948–1970, there were 0.58 fires per compartment per 10 years in 1971–1990, and there were 0.77 fires per compartment per 10 years in 1991–2014. In parallel, the spatial pattern of ignitions became more aggregated. The fire frequency increased across the reserve, with the most pronounced change being observed along the reserve borders. Human-related fires dominate the modern fire activity within the Ilmensky Reserve, which is modulated by the local conditions.
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Tinner, Willy, Britta Allgöwer, Brigitta Ammann, Marco Conedera, Erika Gobet, André F. Lotter, and Markus Stähli. "Ausmass und Auswirkungen der Waldbrände auf die Vegetation der Schweiz im Laufe der Jahrtausende | Relevance and effects of fire disturbance on vegetation in Switzerland during the past millennia." Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur Forstwesen 156, no. 9 (September 1, 2005): 325–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.3188/szf.2005.0325.
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New palaeoecological investigations (pollen, macrofossil, and charcoal analyses) provide important evidence on the fire history and the long-term fire ecology of different regions of Switzerland. The results from the Swiss plateau, the Northern and Central Alps and Southern Switzerland suggest that fire played a different role for the long-term vegetational development in the different regions. In the Northern Alps and Southern Switzerland anthropogenic fires led to the disappearance of entire forest communities. These fires especially affected the fire-sensitive speciesAbies alba. On the Swiss Plateau fire frequencies were markedly lower than in the Southern Alps. Nevertheless, fires probably led to a decline in the occurrence of fire-sensitive taxa such as Ulmus,Fraxinus excelsior or Tilia at lower altitudes (Fagus silvatica-Quercusbelt). First evidences from the Central Alps suggest that forest fires were naturally more frequent in this continental region and that the vegetation might be better fire-adapted than the original(partly or completely vanished) plant communities of the Swiss Plateau, the Northern Alps and Southern Switzerland.
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Živanović, Stanimir. "Influence of forest humidity on the distribution of forest fires in the territory of Serbia." Disaster Advances 14, no. 9 (August 25, 2021): 8–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.25303/149da0814.
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In this study, we examined the dependence of the influence of forest humidity conditions on the variability of forest fires in Serbia. The changes in values of the Forest Aridity Index (FAI) and the De Martonne Drought Index (IDM) in the period 2009-2018 were analyzed, with an emphasis on 2012 and 2014. Data from ground meteorological measurements at 14 main meteorological stations on the territory of Serbia were used. The analysis of the FAI index determines a positive correlation on the activity of forest fires in the territory of Serbia. FAI values indicate marked increases for 2012 and 2017 when the largest number of forest fires was registered in Serbia. The lowest values of this index are for 2014, when we registered the smallest occurrence of forest fires in Serbia. Decrease in the value of the IDM index was observed during 2011, 2012 and 2017 correlated with a larger number of forest fires in the period. The greatest threat to forests from fire is in the administrative district of Kragujevac (region of Šumadija and Western Serbia) and Vranje (region of Southern and Eastern Serbia) and the lowest in the area of Sombor and Kikinda (region of Vojvodina). At nine of the fourteen meteorological stations, the De Martonne Drought Index (IDM) showed stronger connection with the occurrence of forest fires compared to the Forest Aridity Index (FAI).
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Cisneros, Ricardo, Emanuel Alcala, Donald Schweizer, and Nancy Burke. "Smoke complaints caused by wildland fire in the southern Sierra Nevada region, California." International Journal of Wildland Fire 27, no. 10 (2018): 677. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/wf18060.
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Mega-fires are expected to increase in the Western United States. The state of the science suggests that the best mitigation to prevent destructive forest fires is to reintroduce ecologically beneficial fire, but this can only be accomplished with public support. The objective of this study is to identify the concerns of citizens in central California adjacent to the fire-prone Sierra Nevada Mountains who generate formal complaints about smoke exposure from forest fires. Twenty-seven smoke complaints from 2009 to 2013 were analysed from two air pollution control districts operating in this area. The complaints were submitted via email, letter, or phone to their respective air pollution control districts. Complaint transcripts were reviewed using standard qualitative data analysis procedures. The primary concerns recorded were that smoke from the fires caused health problems, required lifestyle change, and negatively impacted the local economy. Complaints often incorporated statements communicating dislike or mistrust of current forest fire policy and management and suggested no amount of smoke was acceptable. For these formal complaints, the solution was an immediate stop to the burning. The findings of this study can be used to develop appropriate communication and educational campaigns.
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Filkov, Alexander I., Thomas J. Duff, and Trent D. Penman. "Frequency of Dynamic Fire Behaviours in Australian Forest Environments." Fire 3, no. 1 (December 18, 2019): 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/fire3010001.
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Wildfires can result in significant social, environmental and economic losses. Fires in which dynamic fire behaviours (DFBs) occur contribute disproportionately to damage statistics. Little quantitative data on the frequency at which DFBs occur exists. To address this problem, we conducted a structured survey using staff from fire and land management agencies in Australia regarding their experiences with DFBs. Staff were asked which, if any, DFBs were observed within fires greater than 1000 ha from the period 2006–2016 that they had experience with. They were also asked about the nature of evidence to support these observations. One hundred thirteen fires were identified. Eighty of them had between one and seven DFBs with 73% (58 fires) having multiple types of DFBs. Most DFBs could commonly be identified through direct data, suggesting an empirical analysis of these phenomena should be possible. Spotting, crown fires and pyro-convective events were the most common DFBs (66%); when combined with eruptive fires and conflagrations, these DFBs comprise 89% of all cases with DFBs. Further research should be focused on these DFBs due to their high frequencies and the fact that quantitative data are likely to be available.
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DeRose, R. Justin, and James N. Long. "Drought-driven disturbance history characterizes a southern Rocky Mountain subalpine forest." Canadian Journal of Forest Research 42, no. 9 (September 2012): 1649–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/x2012-102.
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The view that subalpine forest vegetation dynamics in western North America are “driven” by a particular disturbance type (i.e., fire) has shaped our understanding of their disturbance regimes. In the wake of a recent (1990s) landscape-extent spruce beetle ( Dendroctonus rufipennis Kirby) outbreak in the southern Rocky Mountains, we re-examined the temporal continuity in disturbance types and interactions and the possible role of drought on their occurrence by reconstructing antecedent disturbances for 11 sites across the Markagunt Plateau, southern Utah, USA. Multiple consistent lines of evidence suggested that historic fires were the primary antecedent disturbance, while relatively minor, stand-specific spruce beetle activity occurred later in stand development but prior to the recent outbreak. Unlike the recent outbreak, antecedent fires were spatially and temporally asynchronous over the period examined (~1600–2000). Reconstructed fire events primarily occurred during periods of prolonged drought. Similarly, historic spruce beetle activity, indicated by species-specific tree-ring release, and timing of Engelmann spruce ( Picea engelmannii Parry ex Engelm.) death dates from the recent outbreak were related to drought conditions. Vegetation dynamics on this landscape were strongly driven by historic fires and the recent spruce beetle outbreak, and drought conditions likely influenced the occurrence of both disturbance types.
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Hayasaka, Hiroshi, Koji Yamazaki, and Daisuke Naito. "Weather Conditions and Warm Air Masses in Southern Sakha During Active Forest Fire Periods." Journal of Disaster Research 14, no. 4 (June 1, 2019): 641–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.20965/jdr.2019.p0641.
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Forest fires are a common and destructive natural disaster in Russia. Weather conditions during active forest fire periods in southern Sakha (Eastern Siberia) at high latitudes (58–65°N, 120–140°E) were evaluated. Periods of high fire activity during 2002 to 2016 were identified using MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) hotspot data by considering the number of daily hotspots and their continuity. Weather conditions during the top seven periods of high fire activity were analyzed using atmospheric reanalysis data for upper (500 hPa) and lower levels (925 hPa). Our results showed that active fires occurred under varied weather conditions and it was difficult to find common weather patterns at both upper- and lower-levels during the seven most active fire periods. Furthermore, it was apparent that the northward movement of warm air masses (cTe: continental temperate) from lower latitudes (∼40°N) toward southern Sakha tended to exacerbate fires mainly due to strong wind conditions during the seven most active fire periods. In particular, on peak hotspot days, warm air masses from the south existed commonly near southern Sakha. This northward movement of warm air masses can be used to forecast fire and predict future fires in the region.
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Tariq, Aqil, Hong Shu, Qingting Li, Orhan Altan, Mobushir Riaz Khan, Muhammad Fahad Baqa, and Linlin Lu. "Quantitative Analysis of Forest Fires in Southeastern Australia Using SAR Data." Remote Sensing 13, no. 12 (June 18, 2021): 2386. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs13122386.
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Prescribed burning is a common strategy for minimizing forest fire risk. Fire is introduced under specific environmental conditions, with explicit duration, intensity, and rate of spread. Such conditions deviate from those encountered during the fire season. Prescribed burns mostly affect surface fuels and understory vegetation, an outcome markedly different when compared to wildfires. Data on prescribed burning are crucial for evaluating whether land management targets have been reached. This research developed a methodology to quantify the effects of prescribed burns using multi-temporal Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery in the forests of southeastern Australia. C-band SAR datasets were specifically used to statistically explore changes in radar backscatter coefficients with the intensity of prescribed burns. Two modeling approaches based on pre- and post-fire ratios were applied for evaluating prescribed burn impacts. The effects of prescribed burns were documented with an overall accuracy of 82.3% using cross-polarized backscatter (VH) SAR data under dry conditions. The VV polarization indicated some potential to detect burned areas under wet conditions. The findings in this study indicate that the C-band SAR backscatter coefficient has the potential to evaluate the effectiveness of prescribed burns due to its sensitivity to changes in vegetation structure.
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Conedera, Marco, Gabriele Corti, Paolo Piccini, Daniele Ryser, Francesco Guerini, and Ivo Ceschi. "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 155, no. 7 (July 1, 2004): 263–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.3188/szf.2004.0263.
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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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Guz, Jaclyn, Florencia Sangermano, and Dominik Kulakowski. "The Influence of Burn Severity on Post-Fire Spectral Recovery of Three Fires in the Southern Rocky Mountains." Remote Sensing 14, no. 6 (March 11, 2022): 1363. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs14061363.
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Increased wildfire activity and altered post-fire climate in the Southern Rocky Mountains has the potential to influence forest resilience. The Southern Rocky Mountains are a leading edge of climate change and have experienced record-breaking fires in recent years. The change in post-fire regeneration and forest resilience could potentially include future ecological trajectories. In this paper, we examined patterns of post-fire spectral recovery using Landsat time series. Additionally, we utilized random forest models to analyze the impact of climate and burn severity on three fire events in the Southern Rocky Mountains. Fifteen years following the fires, none of the burned stands fully recovered to their pre-fire spectral states. The results suggested that burn severity significantly impacted post-fire spectral recovery, but that influence may decrease as time since fire increases. The biggest difference in forest recovery was among fire events, indicating that post-fire climate may be influential in post-fire recovery. The mean and minimum growing-season temperatures were more significant to post-fire recovery than the variability in precipitation, which is consistent with field-based analysis. The present study indicated that, as warming continues, there may be changes in forest density where forests are not regenerating to their pre-fire spectral states. Additionally, this study emphasizes how high-elevation forests continue to regenerate after fires, but that regeneration is markedly affected by post-fire climate.
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Ullah, M. R., X. D. Liu, and M. Al-Amin. "Spatial-temporal distribution of forest fires and fire weather index calculation from 2000 to 2009 in China." Journal of Forest Science 59, No. 7 (August 28, 2013): 279–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.17221/8/2013-jfs.
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This paper describes the forest fire dynamics in the city of Sanming in Fujian province, China, from 2000 to 2009 with a view to understand the number of fires and burned areas in different counties. It also includes the spatial-temporal distribution of fires and application of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS). Daily forest fire data was provided by the Department of Wildfire Prevention of Sanming Forestry Bureau. FWI calculator v.7.0.2.76 was used in this study for analysing the weather parameter data. The results showed that a total of 818 fires and burned areas of 8721.16 ha were found during the study period of 10 years. However, the highest and lowest forest fires were found in Youxi county and Sanming district, respectively. Most of the fires with large burned areas occurred at 2 p.m. Moreover, occurrences of fires were found the highest and lowest in March and June, respectively. Based on FWI calculation, the highest danger rating value was found in March, 2009. This study proposes that it would be possible to manage regular forest fire occurrences through the application of CFFDRS. Finally, to plan the fire prevention and management in southern China and other tropical countries, this system has a great opportunity for further implementations.
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Škurić Kuraži, Diana, Ivana Nižetić Kosović, and Ivana Herceg-Bulić. "A review of forest fire research directions." Geofizika 39, no. 1 (March 31, 2022): 1–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.15233/gfz.2022.39.7.
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Forest fires cause environmental and economic damages every year, especially in the southern part of Europe. Approaches to estimate the fire risk vary from practical to scientific, since different professions as firefighters, meteorologists, soldiers and foresters are involved. The Internet of Things enables to connect different sources of information in one place, however, the understanding of usage and processes that caused the disaster sometimes is missing. The aim of this article is to give a comprehensive overview of nowadays possibilities for fighting with the fires and categorization of different methods, techniques and approaches. Considering the timeline of the information about fires we are dealing with, we propose three categories: past which mostly refers to analysis, present which encompasses monitoring and future covering forecasting. Each of the categories is described in detail, confirmed with related work and examples, and enriched with challenges and future directions. Dealing with forest fires is very complex, therefore it is difficult to deal with all proposed categories at the same time. However, due to the growing amount of available information and increasing interest of scientists from different research fields, there are more examples of intertwined areas dealing with forest fires. It is expected that in the future it will be possible, in real time, to handle various sources of data and forecast fire danger and risk with high spatial and temporal resolution.
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Alencar, Ane, Daniel Nepstad, and Mariadel Carmen Vera Diaz. "Forest Understory Fire in the Brazilian Amazon in ENSO and Non-ENSO Years: Area Burned and Committed Carbon Emissions." Earth Interactions 10, no. 6 (February 1, 2006): 1–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/ei150.1.
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Abstract Understory fires, which burn the floor of standing forests, are one of the most important types of forest impoverishment in the Amazon, especially during the severe droughts of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) episodes. However, the authors are aware of no estimates of the areal extent of these fires for the Brazilian Amazon and, hence, of their contribution to Amazon carbon fluxes to the atmosphere. In this paper, the area of forest understory fires for the Brazilian Amazon region is calculated during an El Niño (1998) and a non–El Niño (1995) year based on forest fire scars mapped with satellite images for three locations in eastern and southern Amazonia, where deforestation is concentrated. The three study sites represented a gradient of both forest types and dry season severity. The burning scar maps were used to determine how the percentage of forest that burned varied with distance from agricultural clearings. These spatial functions were then applied to similar forest/climate combinations outside of the study sites to derive an initial estimate for the Brazilian Amazon. Ninety-one percent of the forest area that burned in the study sites was within the first kilometer of a clearing for the non-ENSO year and within the first four kilometers for the ENSO year. The area of forest burned by understory forest fire during the severe drought (ENSO) year (3.9 × 106 ha) was 13 times greater than the area burned during the average rainfall year (0.2 × 106 ha), and twice the area of annual deforestation. Dense forest was, proportionally, the forest type most affected by understory fires during the El Niño year, while understory fires were concentrated in transitional forests during the year of average rainfall. The estimate here of aboveground tree biomass killed by fire ranged from 0.049 to 0.329 Pg during the ENSO and from 0.003 to 0.021 Pg during the non-ENSO year.
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Tsakov, Hristo, Alexandar Alexandrov, Dafina Zoteva, and Olympia Roeva. "FOREST FIRES IN 2020 - ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES." Ecological Engineering and Environment Protection 2021, no. 2/2021 (November 15, 2021): 32–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.32006/eeep.2021.2.3236.
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The continuing climatic anomalies and the changed social realities caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic impose new responsibilities and new solutions for the management and use of forests. Experts have proved that overexploitation of the forests and the annual burning of huge forest areas seriously jeopardize food security on a regional and global scale, the economic stability of communities reduces, and the environmental degradation increases. The fiery hell in Australia in 2020 is one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history. There are more than 115,000 square kilometers of bushes and forests devastated, thousands of homes destroyed, people and over three million wild animals killed. In 2020, 499 fires were registered in the forest territories of Bulgaria with total area of 52455 dka. Deciduous and coniferous vegetation, grasses, border farmland and infrastructure are affected. The paper summarizes the financial damage and resources used to extinguish the fires in the forests of Bulgaria in 2020, regardless of their ownership.
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Wrathall, J. E. "THE MISTRAL AND FOREST FIRES IN PROVENCE-CÔTE D'AZUR, SOUTHERN FRANCE." Weather 40, no. 4 (April 1985): 119–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.1477-8696.1985.tb07493.x.
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