Temporal variations and change in forest fire danger  in Europe for 1960–2012

Venäläinen, Ari; Korhonen, Natalia; Hyvärinen, Otto; Koutsias, Nikos; Xystrakis, Fotios; Urbieta, Itziar R.; Moreno, José M.

doi:10.5194/nhess-14-1477-2014

Cited by 74 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 67 publications

(74 reference statements)

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“…Fogarty et al, 1998;de Groot et al, 2005de Groot et al, , 2007Palheiro et al, 2006;Taylor and Alexander, 2006) and for distinguishing periods of high fire activity (e.g. Bedia et al, 2014;Karali et al, 2014;Venäläinen et al, 2014). Furthermore, the FWI System has been found to outperform or at least match the performance of other FDRSs in terms of highlighting high fire activity periods in non-native environments (e.g.…”

Section: The Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Calibration and evaluation of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) System for improved wildland fire danger rating in the United Kingdom

Jong

Wooster

Kitchen

et al. 2016

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Wildfires in the United Kingdom (UK) pose a threat to people, infrastructure and the natural environment. During periods of particularly fire-prone weather, wildfires can occur simultaneously across large areas, placing considerable stress upon the resources of fire and rescue services. Fire danger rating systems (FDRSs) attempt to anticipate periods of heightened fire risk, primarily for earlywarning and preparedness purposes. The UK FDRS, termed the Met Office Fire Severity Index (MOFSI), is based on the Fire Weather Index (FWI) component of the Canadian Forest FWI System. The MOFSI currently provides daily operational mapping of landscape fire danger across England and Wales using a simple thresholding of the final FWI component of the Canadian FWI System. However, it is known that the system has scope for improvement. Here we explore a climatology of the six FWI System components across the UK (i.e. extending to Scotland and Northern Ireland), calculated from daily 2 km × 2 km gridded numerical weather prediction data and supplemented by long-term meteorological station observations. We used this climatology to develop a percentile-based calibration of the FWI System, optimised for UK conditions. We find this approach to be well justified, as the values of the "raw" uncalibrated FWI components corresponding to a very "extreme" (99th percentile) fire danger situation vary by more than an order of magnitude across the country. Therefore, a simple thresholding of the uncalibrated component values (as is currently applied in the MOFSI) may incur large errors of omission and commission with respect to the identification of periods of significantly elevated fire danger. We evaluate our approach to enhancing UK fire danger rating using records of wildfire occurrence and find that the Fine Fuel Moisture Code (FFMC), Initial Spread Index (ISI) and FWI components of the FWI System generally have the greatest predictive skill for landscape fire activity across Great Britain, with performance varying seasonally and by land cover type. At the height of the most recent severe wildfire period in the UK (2 May 2011), 50 % of all wildfires occurred in areas where the FWI component exceeded the 99th percentile. When all wildfire events during the 2010-2012 period are considered, the 75th, 90th and 99th percentiles of at least one FWI component were exceeded during 85, 61 and 18 % of all wildfires respectively. Overall, we demonstrate the significant advantages of using a percentile-based calibration approach for classifying UK fire danger, and believe that our findings provide useful insights for future development of the current operational MOFSI UK FDRS.

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Section: The Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Calibration and evaluation of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) System for improved wildland fire danger rating in the United Kingdom

Jong

Wooster

Kitchen

et al. 2016

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The effect of climatic factors is often represented by components of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System (CFFWIS - Martell et al 1987, Wotton et al 2003, Ager et al 2014, Venäläinen et al 2014. In these studies, the temporal resolution is daily and the spatial resolution is regional, ranging from 1 to several km 2 (except Venäläinen et al 2014). Although CFFWIS was originally developed for Canadian climates and vegetation, it is commonly used for predicting fire occurrence in the Mediterranean (Viegas et al 1999, Camia & Amatulli 2009, Venäläinen et al 2014.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In these studies, the temporal resolution is daily and the spatial resolution is regional, ranging from 1 to several km 2 (except Venäläinen et al 2014). Although CFFWIS was originally developed for Canadian climates and vegetation, it is commonly used for predicting fire occurrence in the Mediterranean (Viegas et al 1999, Camia & Amatulli 2009, Venäläinen et al 2014. Still, this necessitates that the CFFWIS indicators, in order to categorize fire danger level (e.g., low, moderate, high), be adjusted to the specifics of the Mediterranean climates (Moriondo et al 2006, Giannakopoulos et al 2011, Dimitrakopoulos et al 2011, Venäläinen et al 2014.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Probabilistic prediction of daily fire occurrence in the Mediterranean with readily available spatio-temporal data

Papakosta¹,

Straub²

2017

iForest

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The prediction of wildfire occurrence is an important component of fire management. We have developed probabilistic daily fire prediction models for a Mediterranean region of Europe (Cyprus) at the mesoscale, based on Poisson regression. The models use only readily available spatio-temporal data, which enables their use in an operational setting. Influencing factors included in the models are weather conditions, land cover and human presence. We found that the influence of weather conditions on fire danger in the studied area can be expressed through the FWI component of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System. However, the prediction ability of FWI alone was limited. A model that additionally includes land cover types, population density and road density was found to provide significantly improved predictions. We validated the probabilistic prediction provided by the model with a test data set and illustrate it with maps for selected days.

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“…Climate change results in both positive and negative responses on forests, e.g. drought-induced increase of mortality and species range retraction (Allen et al, 2010;Hlásny et al, 2011), increased risk of forest fires (Venäläinen et al, 2014), and increased productivity at higher elevations and latitudes (Jolly et al, 2005). Due to the experienced impacts of the past decades, there is an increased need for the exact knowledge on how and to which extent the factors influence the functioning of the environmental systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tree-Ring Width And Its Interrelation With Environmental Parameters: Case Study In Central Hungary

Ladányi

Blanka

2015

Journal of Environmental Geography

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Tree ring width is influenced by several internal and external factors, among which climate became one of the most dominant due to the altering conditions and patterns of precipitation and temperature. The study aims to analyse the interrelationship between tree ring-width and the dominant environmental parameters in a landscape exposed to water scarcity in the past decades due to climate change and human interventions. Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris), black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) and white poplar (Populus alba) plantations were sampled to reveal their exposure to climatic forcing and water scarcity (different water availability). Correlation and similarity analysis were carried out to compare the calculated ring-width indices to climatic parameters and aridity indices. Tree ring sensitivity was assessed to reveal the impact of water scarcity on yearly ring-growth. Spatial overlapping of significance levels and mean sensitivity with the hydrological changes of the past decades were evaluated to reveal presumable spatial differences of the investigated samples. In the study area (South Danube-Tisza Interfluve) droughts and the deep groundwater table had both impacts on tree growth. The spectacular decrease of ringwidth corresponds to the drought years determined by the investigated aridity indices. The relationship between the climate parameters and the ring-widths varies spatially with the changing site conditions. The highest level of correlation coefficients was experienced in areas with the lowest level of water availability. Ring-width sensitivity assessments showed an increasing tendency of sensitivity when comparing the consecutive decades, except for samples with favorable water availability.

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Temporal variations and change in forest fire danger in Europe for 1960–2012

Cited by 74 publications

References 67 publications

Calibration and evaluation of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) System for improved wildland fire danger rating in the United Kingdom

Calibration and evaluation of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) System for improved wildland fire danger rating in the United Kingdom

Probabilistic prediction of daily fire occurrence in the Mediterranean with readily available spatio-temporal data

Tree-Ring Width And Its Interrelation With Environmental Parameters: Case Study In Central Hungary

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