Fire Regime of Landscapes in the Volgograd Region According to Remote Sensing Data

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of fire regime of the Volgograd region's landscapes. The problem of wildfires became especially urgent at the beginning of the 21st century, when climate change and reduced agricultural load created conditions for landscape fires break-out and spread. Research material includes the archive of active fire foci (thermal spots) over the period of 2001-2018 years. Corpora of thermal spots in the context of seasonal, perennial, and landscape features of the region are formed on the basis of spatial analysis and attributive data samples. Landscape, seasonal and spatial regularities of the fire regime of the Volgograd region are revealed. The second decade of the 21st century was marked by a threefold decrease in the total number of active fire foci in the region mainly due to fires in typical steppe and dry-steppe landscapes. The research results provide an opportunity to analyze the implemented and planned fire prevention measures and to propose the ways of improving their efficiency.