Forest Fires in Europe: an overview
Paulo Barbosa
Joint Research Centre – European Commission
Institute for Environment and Sustainability
21020 Ispra (VA), Italy
http://natural-hazards.jrc.it
European Forest Fire Information System EFFIS
Objectives:
• Support the existing European Commission regulation Forest Focus on forest fires
Customer/users:
• Customer DGs: DG ENV, DG REGIO• Users: Civil Protection Services, Forest Fire
Services, Environmental Services
Fire Risk
•Cartography
•Tables
•Statistics
Fire Risk
Burnt Areas
Regeneration
Risk zoning
Fuel/Biomass
CO2 emissions
Member States
EC
EP
Modules
Products:Customer and user:
Common CoreDatabase (Forest Focus)
European Forest Fire Information System EFFIS
Common Core Database (since early 80’s)
Existing information on forest fires events collected by the Countries
•Number of fires
•Fire location (commune level)
•Date: start (first alarm) / end
•Time of intervention / Time of extinction
•Burnt area: forest / non-forest
•Cause (unknown, natural, accident, deliberate)
Some Statistics In average around 500 000 ha burn per year throughout Southern
Europe (P, E, F, I, EL). Around 96% of the fires are human caused
> 50% of the fires start between 12:00 and 18:00 h
> 50% of the burnt area is burned in the same period
50% of the fires have a delay of less than 15 minutes between fire detection and initial attack
The average final size of a fire after an initial attack delay of 15 minutes is ~ 8 ha
Burnt are a in the EU Me dite rrane an re gion
0
200000
400000
600000
800000
1000000
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
Ye ar
Bur
nt a
rea
(ha)
Portugal
0
50000
100000
150000
200000
250000
300000
350000
400000
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
Year
Bur
nt a
rea
(ha)
< 5
5-10
10-1
5
15-2
0
20-2
5
25-3
0
30-4
5
45-6
0
60-1
20
120-
180
180-
240
240-
300
300-
360
360-
720
720-
1440
Delay [min]
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%R
elat
ive
fire
fre
qu
ency
EUMed
< 5
5-10
10-1
5
15-2
0
20-2
5
25-3
0
30-4
5
45-6
0
60-1
20
120-
180
180-
240
240-
300
300-
360
360-
720
720-
1440
Delay [min]
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
Rel
ativ
e fi
re f
req
uen
cy
Portugal
< 5
5-10
10-1
5
15-2
0
20-2
5
25-3
0
30-4
5
45-6
0
60-1
20
120-
180
180-
240
240-
300
300-
360
360-
720
720-
1440
Delay [min]
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
Rel
ativ
e fi
re f
req
uen
cy
Italy
< 5
5-10
10-1
5
15-2
0
20-2
5
25-3
0
30-4
5
45-6
0
60-1
20
120-
180
180-
240
240-
300
300-
360
360-
720
720-
1440
Delay [min]
10
20
30
40
Ave
rag
e b
urn
ed a
rea
[ha]
EUMed
1’
•Pre-fire (fuels mapping, risk mapping)
•During fire (Detection, Monitoring, smoke management )
•Post-fire (Burnt Area Mapping, fire emissions)
Forest Fires and Remote Sensing Applications in Europe
Fuel Maps: e.g. Prometheus Fuel Models
1’
Fire Detection and monitoring
AVHRR
ATSR
MODIS
Most of these fire products show a more or less large overestimation of fire detections (false alarms) in Southern Europe
They are only a sample due to reduced number of daily acquisitions
MSG dataChannel
IDBands Wavelength
(µm)Bandwidth
(µm)Range Spatial Res
(Km)EU
HRV Visible&
NIR
0.75 0.6 to 0.9 0 - 459 W/m2 sr µm ~ 2
VIS0.6 0.635 0.56 to 0.71 0 - 533 W/m2 sr µm 4-6
VIS 0.8 0.81 0.74 to 0.88 0 - 357 W/m2 sr µm 4-6
IR 1.6 1.64 1.50 to 1.78 0 - 75 W/m2 sr µm 4-6
IR 3.9 IR / Window 3.92 3.48 to 4.36 0 - 335 K 4-6
IR 8.7 8.70 8.30 to 9.10 0 - 300 K 4-6
IR 10.8 10.80 9.80 to 11.80 0 - 335 K 4-6
IR 12.0 12.00 11.00 to 13.00 0 - 335 K 4-6
IR 6.2 Water vapour 6.25 5.35 to 7.15 0 - 300 K 4-6
IR 7.3 7.35 6.85 to 7.85 0 - 300 K 4-6
IR 9.7 IR / Ozone 9.66 9.38 to 9.94 0 - 310 K 4-6
IR 13.4 IR / CO2 13.40 12.40 to 14.40 0 - 300 K 4-6
Detection time 15 – 20 minutes 15 minutes
Minimum detected fire 50 m2 (0.005 ha) 0.06 – 0.5 ha ?
Geo-location accuracy 300 – 500 meters 0.5 pixels ?
Alarm classification Intensity Fire Radiative Energy
False alarm discrimination 5 – 15 % Diurnal Cycle+ saturation
PROPERTY USER MSGREQUIREMENT
Fire Detection Requirements
Smoke Dispersion
MSG can be used for tracking smoke dispersion
MSG can be used to calibrate smoke dispersion models (SPREAD Project)
Burnt Area Mapping
Landsat TM (> 1ha)
IRS WiFS (> 50 ha)
IRS AWIFS (> 5 ha)
MSG…..?
BURNT AREA AND DAMAGE ASSESSMENT: PORTUGAL 2003
Land useArea burnt (ha) % of total burned
Agriculture 45206 11.9
Forest land 323009 85.2
Barren 8996 2.4
Social 1827 0.5
Total 379038 100.0
Fire emissions
MSG useful for fire emission estimates?
Sugested use of Fire Radiative Energy as a surrogate of Burned Biomass (Flasse, Roberts)
vvv
v ECBA 2CO
Av burned area (m2)
Bv biomass (g m-2)
C burning efficiency (g g-1)
Evemission coefficient for CO2
Regional estimates of CO2 emissions