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