Forest fires and adaptation options in Europe

Abstract

This paper presents a quantitative assessment of adaptation options in the context of forest fires in Europe under projected climate change. A standalone fire model (SFM) based on a state-of-the-art large-scale forest fire modelling algorithm is used to explore fuel removal through prescribed burnings and improved fire suppression as adaptation options. The climate change projections are provided by three climate models reflecting the SRES A2 scenario. The SFM's modelled burned areas for selected test countries in Europe show satisfying agreement with observed data coming from two different sources (European Forest Fire Information System and Global Fire Emissions Database). Our estimation of the potential increase in burned areas in Europe under ''no adaptation'' scenario is about 200 % by 2090 (compared with 2000-2008). The application of prescribed burnings has the potential to keep that increase below 50 %. Improvements in fire suppression might reduce this impact even further, e.g. boosting the probability of putting out a fire within a day by 10 % would result in about a 30 % decrease in annual burned areas. By taking more adaptation options into consideration, such as using agricultural fields as fire breaks, behavioural changes, and long-term options, burned areas can be potentially reduced further than projected in our analysis.

Mortality due to Vegetation Fire–Originated PM 2.5 Exposure in Europe—Assessment for the Years 2005 and 2008

“…In Europe, the risk of wildfires has been projected to increase in most regions. Recent estimates for the potential increase in overall area burned by the end of the 21st century vary from 40% to 200% compared with the present situation (Khabarov et al 2016; Migliavacca et al 2013). The absolute increase in burned area is expected to be particularly high in southern and eastern Europe.…”

The Health Effects of Climate Change in the WHO European Region

“…Fire risk is expected to increase most significantly in Greece, Portugal, Spain, and southern Italy [28,69]. The projected increase in fire risk is largely due to reductions in summer precipitation [70]. The total burned area in the EU Mediterranean region is expected to increase by 66% by 2071-2100 under the B2 scenario, and 140% under the A2 scenario [69].…”

Black truffle winter production depends on Mediterranean summer precipitation

“…their hosts-similar to other ectomycorrhizal fungi (Köhler et al 2018), there are several indirect, temperature-induced, factors (Baragatti et al 2019), such as wildfires, pathogens and diseases (Thomas and Büntgen 2019), as well as phenological mismatch in trophic interactions that may disrupt current ecological systems (Renner and Zohner 2018), and cause economic damage. A longer fire season combined with more frequent large fires is expected as a result of increasing summer temperatures, drought and land-use changes (Khabarov et al 2016, Ruffault et al 2016. Forest fires not only kill trees but also impact soil chemistry, which affects ectomycorrhizal fungal communities (Mediaviella et al 2017).…”