Teaming Drought with Wildfires: EU Researchers Suggest New Data for Forest Weather Index

Teaming Drought with Wildfires: EU Researchers Suggest New Data for Forest Weather Index. Cooney, C. M. 5(2):379533+.

[Excerpt] In the summer of 2003, 18 people died and more than 500,000 acres of forests and farmland were destroyed in fires in Portugal, marking the country's worst fire season on record. These fires raged on the heels of an extreme heat wave - one meteorologists called a 500-year event - that swept over Europe and took the lives of more than 70,000. [\n] Forest fires in the European Union (EU) kill up to 20 people a year on average, including firefighters and civilians who can't escape the flames, says Jesús San-Miguel-Ayanz, [...] EU's Joint Research Centre (JRC). These infernos cause significant economic damage by destroying homes, businesses and other structures, and create health risks for people with respiratory problems. The environmental impact from fires is significant as well: Burned forests have negative impacts on animal and plant biodiversity, on soils, and on water resources, San-Miguel-Ayanz said. [...] [Adding drought to fire data] McInerney, along with Hugo Carrao, a researcher with the JRC's Institute for Environment and Sustainability; and Barbara Hofer, now an assistant professor at the University of Salzburg, Austria; conducted the study showing that drought data can improve existing forest fire index data. [...] [\n] The scientists used data collected in 2009 during fires on the Iberian Peninsula. The Peninsula's forest fire season ranges from July 1 through Sept. 30. The summer-time Mediterranean climate of high temperatures and almost no rain puts plants under extreme stress: When their moisture derceases their flammability increases, the team wrote in their paper. They applied this data to an analysis of the current Fire Weather Index (FWI) to test their hypothesis that information on drought conditions that occur outside the summer's fires season would improve forest fire risk assessment. [...] [\n] The researchers based their findings on three data sets: the burned areas mapped by the EFFIS Rapid Damaged Assessment for this region, the EFFIS FWI, and the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). [\n] The FWI is a composite index that provides information on the wetness of the vegetation derived from the accumulated precipitation of the previous 24 hours, as well as data on the temperature, wind speed, relative humidity and rain. Fire managers rely on the FWI to tell them when to expect that conditions will favor fire. SPI, on the other hand, measures the intensity of monthly deviations in accumulated rainfall changes, making this a second tool for fire managers on the lookout for conditions that can support a fire. [\n] For every month in 2009, the researchers gauged the relationship between the location of the burned areas and the water supply conditions when the fire raged. Looking at the SPI-24, the results showed that nearly 70 percent of all forest fires took place in areas with extremely dry conditions. When they added ” moderately dry” areas from SPI-24 to their analysis, they found that the percentage of burned areas under dry conditions zoomed to almost 90 percent. [\n] Finally, the analysis showed that only 0.5 percent of forest fires happened in areas where the SPI-24 values indicated wet conditions. ” This is an important insight,” the scientists wrote, because it indicates that these fires were automatically excluded from potential forest fire danger when using SPI data for short time scales. [\n] Going a step further in their analysis, the team calculated the SPI-24 values for the months outside the summer fire season - particularly in March and October. The FWI for these months, (based on the wetness and other climatic conditions over the past 24 hours), showed fire danger to be low to moderate in the burned areas. In contrast, the SPI-24 values in the burned areas stayed at almost the same pattern over time, showing severely to moderately dry conditions. [\n] The researchers concluded that incorporating SPI-24 data to EU fire danger assessments would be a more accurate determinant of what the fire manager can expect. [\n] [...]

@article{cooneyTeamingDroughtWildfires2012,
  title = {Teaming Drought with Wildfires: {{EU}} Researchers Suggest New Data for {{Forest Weather Index}}},
  author = {Cooney, Catherine M.},
  date = {2012},
  journaltitle = {IEEE Earthzine},
  volume = {5},
  pages = {379533+},
  url = {https://tinyurl.com/r4vn9e2},
  abstract = {[Excerpt] In the summer of 2003, 18 people died and more than 500,000 acres of forests and farmland were destroyed in fires in Portugal, marking the country's worst fire season on record. These fires raged on the heels of an extreme heat wave - one meteorologists called a 500-year event - that swept over Europe and took the lives of more than 70,000.

[\textbackslash n] Forest fires in the European Union (EU) kill up to 20 people a year on average, including firefighters and civilians who can't escape the flames, says Jesús San-Miguel-Ayanz, [...] EU's Joint Research Centre (JRC). These infernos cause significant economic damage by destroying homes, businesses and other structures, and create health risks for people with respiratory problems. The environmental impact from fires is significant as well: Burned forests have negative impacts on animal and plant biodiversity, on soils, and on water resources, San-Miguel-Ayanz said. [...]

[Adding drought to fire data]

McInerney, along with Hugo Carrao, a researcher with the JRC's Institute for Environment and Sustainability; and Barbara Hofer, now an assistant professor at the University of Salzburg, Austria; conducted the study showing that drought data can improve existing forest fire index data. [...]

[\textbackslash n] The scientists used data collected in 2009 during fires on the Iberian Peninsula. The Peninsula's forest fire season ranges from July 1 through Sept. 30. The summer-time Mediterranean climate of high temperatures and almost no rain puts plants under extreme stress: When their moisture derceases their flammability increases, the team wrote in their paper. They applied this data to an analysis of the current Fire Weather Index (FWI) to test their hypothesis that information on drought conditions that occur outside the summer's fires season would improve forest fire risk assessment. [...]

[\textbackslash n] The researchers based their findings on three data sets: the burned areas mapped by the EFFIS Rapid Damaged Assessment for this region, the EFFIS FWI, and the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI).

[\textbackslash n] The FWI is a composite index that provides information on the wetness of the vegetation derived from the accumulated precipitation of the previous 24 hours, as well as data on the temperature, wind speed, relative humidity and rain. Fire managers rely on the FWI to tell them when to expect that conditions will favor fire. SPI, on the other hand, measures the intensity of monthly deviations in accumulated rainfall changes, making this a second tool for fire managers on the lookout for conditions that can support a fire.

[\textbackslash n] For every month in 2009, the researchers gauged the relationship between the location of the burned areas and the water supply conditions when the fire raged. Looking at the SPI-24, the results showed that nearly 70 percent of all forest fires took place in areas with extremely dry conditions. When they added ” moderately dry” areas from SPI-24 to their analysis, they found that the percentage of burned areas under dry conditions zoomed to almost 90 percent.

[\textbackslash n] Finally, the analysis showed that only 0.5 percent of forest fires happened in areas where the SPI-24 values indicated wet conditions. ” This is an important insight,” the scientists wrote, because it indicates that these fires were automatically excluded from potential forest fire danger when using SPI data for short time scales.

[\textbackslash n] Going a step further in their analysis, the team calculated the SPI-24 values for the months outside the summer fire season - particularly in March and October. The FWI for these months, (based on the wetness and other climatic conditions over the past 24 hours), showed fire danger to be low to moderate in the burned areas. In contrast, the SPI-24 values in the burned areas stayed at almost the same pattern over time, showing severely to moderately dry conditions.

[\textbackslash n] The researchers concluded that incorporating SPI-24 data to EU fire danger assessments would be a more accurate determinant of what the fire manager can expect.

[\textbackslash n] [...]},
  keywords = {*imported-from-citeulike-INRMM,~INRMM-MiD:c-12073578,droughts,effis,europe,fire-weather-index,forest-fires,forest-resource-information,forest-resources,integration-techniques,precipitation,standardized-precipitation-index,wildfires},
  number = {2}
}

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[\\n] Forest fires in the European Union (EU) kill up to 20 people a year on average, including firefighters and civilians who can't escape the flames, says Jesús San-Miguel-Ayanz, [...] EU's Joint Research Centre (JRC). These infernos cause significant economic damage by destroying homes, businesses and other structures, and create health risks for people with respiratory problems. The environmental impact from fires is significant as well: Burned forests have negative impacts on animal and plant biodiversity, on soils, and on water resources, San-Miguel-Ayanz said. [...] [Adding drought to fire data] McInerney, along with Hugo Carrao, a researcher with the JRC's Institute for Environment and Sustainability; and Barbara Hofer, now an assistant professor at the University of Salzburg, Austria; conducted the study showing that drought data can improve existing forest fire index data. [...] [\\n] The scientists used data collected in 2009 during fires on the Iberian Peninsula. 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