Modeling human-caused forest fire ignition for assessing forest fire danger in Austria

Abstract

© iForest -Biogeosciences and Forestry IntroductionFire danger is generally understood as the likelihood of a fire to occur (Chuvieco & Congalton 1989). In fire danger assessments the evaluation of the chances of fire ignition is generally done by identifying the contributing factors and their integration into an index quantifying the level of danger (Chuvieco et al. 2003, Sebastián-López et al. 2008. For the probability of a fire to occur, two agents are identified: natural (predominantly lightning) and anthropogenic causes, which are mainly related to human activities. In this context, the probability of human-caused fire ignition is the result of the direct or indirect presence of human activity in the landscape (Martinez et al. 2009). International studies indicate that roughly 90% of forest fires are human-caused, whereas only a small percentage of forest fires have natural causes, i.e., lightning (Cardille et al. 2001, Grissino-Mayer et al. 2004, Mollicone et al. 2006, Vacik et al. 2011. In Europe, human activities account for the majority of fire ignition (Leone et al. 2002, Catry et al. 2009, Martinez et al. 2009).Various goods and services provided by forests such as water supply, carbon sinks, recreation and protection services are most likely to be impacted by wildfires (Wotton et al. 2003, Grissino-Mayer et al. 2004, Brown et al. 2004, Fried et al. 2004, Catry et al. 2009, Dumas et al. 2008, Weibel et al. 2009). Especially in the densely populated European mountain forests the danger of fire ignition is of high significance for the maintenance of its ecosystem goods and services as these ecosystems are very sensitive to environmental changes (Steininger & WeckHannemann 2002, Lindner et al. 2010. Additionally the economic value of goods and services of the alpine region experiences an increased recognition especially through sporting activities and outdoor recreation (Hall & Page 2009). Furthermore, the alpine region is crossed by important transit and trade routes. They aid in promoting tourism in the mountainous regions across Europe (Gambino & Romano 2003, Nordregio 2004, Brauchle 2006, which is leading to an increased development of touristic infrastructure besides the extensive use by naturebased tourism (Gambino & Romano 2003, Heinrichs et al. 2010). The herewith associated rise in pressure on forests through a growing number of tourists is potentially increasing danger of fire ignition. The increasing significance of transportation for the supply of living goods as well as for the provision of access to services potentially affects fire ignition as well. Several international studies have shown the significance of the distance of forest fires to roads, settlements and infrastructure, or specific land uses or even its abandonment as predisposition for fire ignition (Vega-Garcia et al. 1995, Goldammer 2003, Kalabokidis et al. 2002, Catry et al. 2009, Martinez et al. 2009).Although human factors are relatively important when analyzing forest fire ignition, little attention has been paid to their s...

Understanding forest fire patterns and risk in Nepal using remote sensing, geographic information system and historical fire data

“…Globally, 90% of fires are ignited by humans (Arndt et al 2013) and this also holds true for Nepal (Kunwar and Khaling 2006). Hence, we used proximity of fires to settlements and roads as an indicator for human activities and assigned the third highest weight to these factors.…”

Human-caused fire occurrence modelling in perspective: a review

“…Accepting that fires are rare events and that rarely more than one fire takes place in the temporal and spatial unit under study allows a binary dependent variable to be used. Fire occurrence can be modelled as absence or presence of fire (coded 0 or 1), and most research papers have focused on this binary prediction of wildfires (Andrews et al 2003;Reineking et al 2010;Zhang et al 2010Zhang et al , 2016Arndt et al 2013;Pan et al 2016). Many HCF occurrence models are probabilistic; their output is the probability that 'at least one fire occurs', ranging from 0 to 1.…”

“…The location of human activities is highly dependent on site-related variables that determine the number and distribution of human sources of ignition. Human presence can be analysed from explicit spatial factors such as proximity to, or density of, infrastructure such as roads (Dickson et al 2006;Yang et al 2008Yang et al , 2015Gralewicz et al 2012b;Hegeman et al 2014;Syphard and Keeley 2015;Zhang et al 2016;Mhawej et al 2016;Vilar et al 2016b), tracks (Pew and Larsen 2001;Romero-Calcerrada et al 2008, trails (Syphard et al 2008;Vilar del Hoyo et al 2011;Arndt et al 2013) and railways (Sturtevant and Cleland 2007;Guo et al 2015;Alcasena et al 2016), all of which are associated with an increase in fire occurrence. For example, in Spain (MAGRAMA 2015), the United States (Morrison 2007) and south-eastern Australia (Penman et al 2013), more than half of HCFs start along road systems.…”

Modeling anthropogenic and natural fire ignitions in an inner-alpine valley

“…Human presence usually directly influences fire density and burned area where fire regimes are anthropogenic (Bar Massada et al, 2013), while human-induced landscape fragmentation has a reverse effect on fire where regimes are mostly natural (Parisien et al, 2004). In the Alps, the density of railroads, forest roads, and trails, together with agricultural and forestry developments, contribute significantly to fire danger (Arndt et al, 2013) due to accidental or negligent fires (Catry et al, 2009;Martinez et al, 2009;Vilar et al, 2010;Narayanaraj and Wimberly, 2012;Oliveira et al, 2012).…”

“…(2) What are the most important environmental drivers of summer vs. winter fires in forests, grasslands, and fallow lands? (3) How to solve the "curse of dimensionality" when trying to fit fire ignition models while exploring a highdimensional space of many potentially collinear predictors (Bar Massada et al, 2013)? (4) How sensitive are summer and winter fire ignitions to climate vs. anthropogenic drivers in the study area?…”