Analysis of Forest Fire Camages in Natura 2000 Sites During the 2007 Fire Season

This report presents the assessment of the damages caused by the forest fires in the EU Mediterranean countries (Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain) during the fire season of 2007, with special emphasis on the impact of these fires in Natura 2000 sites. It presents an overall short summary for the whole region and a detail analysis for each of the EU Mediterranean countries. For each country the report describes the tendency in the areas burnt by fires in the country during the last 27 years using the EU Fire database of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS); in the case of Cyprus the report is limited to the last 8 years. Maps of burnt areas obtained through the processing of satellite imagery in EFFIS are presented next to the list of Natura 2000 sites affected by the fires. Lastly, the report includes the list of plant and animal species of special interest in the Natura 2000 that were likely affected by the forest fires.JRC.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

Forest fire danger extremes in Europe under climate change: variability and uncertainty

Forests cover over a third of the total land area of Europe. In recent years, large forest fires have repeatedly affected Europe, in particular the Mediterranean countries. Fire danger is influenced by weather in the short term, and by climate when considering longer time intervals. In this work, the emphasis is on the direct influence on fire danger of weather and climate. For climate analysis at the continental scale, a daily high-emission scenario (RCP 8.5) was considered up to the end of the century, and a mitigation scenario that limits global warming to 2 °C was also assessed. To estimate fire danger, the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) system was used. FWI provides a uniform numerical rating of relative fire potential, by combining the information from daily local temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, and precipitation values. The FWI is standardised to consider a reference fuel behaviour irrespective of other factors. It is thus well suited to support harmonised comparisons, to highlight the role of the varying climate in the component of fire danger that is driven by weather. RESULTS. Around the Mediterranean region, climate change will reduce fuel moisture levels from present values, increasing the weather-driven danger of forest fires. Furthermore, areas exhibiting low moisture will extend further northwards from the Mediterranean, and the current area of high fuel moisture surrounding the Alps will decrease in size. Projected declines in moisture for Mediterranean countries are smaller with mitigation that limits global warming to 2 °C, but a worsening is still predicted compared with present. There is a clear north-south pattern of deep fuel moisture variability across Europe in both climate change scenarios. Areas at moderate danger from forest fires are pushed north to central Europe by climate change. Relatively little change is expected in weather-driven fire danger across northern Europe. However, mountain systems show a fast pace of change. ADAPTATION OPTIONS. Key strategies to be considered may include vegetation management to reduce the likelihood of severe fires, as well as fuel treatments to mitigate fire hazard in dry forests. These measures should be adapted to the different forest ecosystems and conditions. Limited, preliminary knowledge covers specific but essential aspects. Evidence suggests that some areas protected for biodiversity conservation may be affected less by forest fires than unprotected areas, despite containing more combustible material. Specific typologies of old-growth forests may be associated with lower fire severity than densely stocked even-aged young stands, and some tree plantations might be more subject to severe fire compared with multi-aged forests. Particular ecosystems and vegetation associations may be better adapted for post-fire recovery, as long as the interval between fires is not too short. Therefore, deepening the understanding of resistance, resilience and habitat suitability of mixtures of forest tree species is recommended. Human activity (accidental, negligent or deliberate) is one of the most common causes of fire. For this reason, the main causes of fire should be minimized, which includes analysing the social and economic factors that lead people to start fires, increasing awareness of the danger, encouraging good behaviour and sanctioning offenders. LIMITATIONS. Bias correction of climate projections is known to be a potential noticeable source of uncertainty in the predicted bioclimatic anomalies to which vegetation is sensitive. In particular, the analysis of fire danger under climate change scenarios may be critically affected by climatic modelling uncertainty. This work did not explicitly model adaptation scenarios for forest fire danger because ecosystem resilience to fire is uneven and its assessment relies on factors that are difficult to model numerically. Furthermore, a component of the proposed climate-based characterization of future wildfire potential impacts may be linked to the current distribution of population, land cover and use in Europe. The future distribution of these factors is likely to be different from now.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Investigating Over Critical Thresholds of Forest Megafires Danger Conditions in Europe Utilising the ECMWF ERA-Interim Reanalysis

The European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) has been established by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Directorate General for Environment (DG ENV) of the European Commission (EC) to support the services in charge of the protection of forests against fires in the EU and neighbour countries, and also to provide the EC services and the European Parliament with information on forest fires in Europe. Within its applications, EFFIS provides current and forecast meteorological fire danger maps up to 6 days. Weather plays a key role in affecting wildfire occurrence and behaviour. Meteorological parameters can be used to derive meteorological fire weather indices that provide estimations of fire danger level at a given time over a specified area of interest. In this work, we investigate the suitability of critical thresholds of fire danger to provide an early warning for megafires (fires > 500 ha) over Europe. Past trends of fire danger are analysed computing daily fire danger from weather data taken from re-analysis fields for a period of 31 years (1980 to 2010). Re-analysis global data sets coming from the construction of high-quality climate records, which combine past observations collected from many different observing and measuring platforms, are capable of describing how Fire Danger Indices have evolved over time at a global scale. The latest and most updated ERA-Interim dataset of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) was used to extract meteorological variables needed to compute daily values of the Canadian Fire Weather Index (CFWI) over Europe, with a horizontal resolution of about 75x75 km. Daily time series of CFWI were constructed and analysed over a total of 1,071 European NUTS3 centroids, resulting in a set of percentiles and critical thresholds. Such percentiles could be used as thresholds to help fire services establish a measure of the significance of CFWI outputs as they relate to levels of fire potential, fuel conditions and fire danger. Median percentile values of fire days accumulated over the 31-year period were compared to median val- ues of all days from that period. As expected, the CWFI time series exhibit different values on fire days than on all days. In addition, a percentile analysis was performed in order to determine the behaviour of index values corresponding to fire events falling into the megafire category. This analysis resulted in a set of critical thresholds based on percentiles. By utilising such thresholds, an initial framework of an early warning system has being established. By lowering the value of any of these thresholds, the number of hits could be increased until all extremes were captured (resulting in zero misses). However, in doing so, the number of false alarms tends to increase significantly. Consequently, an optimal trade-off between hits and false alarms has to be established when setting different (critical) CFWI thresholds.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

Forest Fires in Europe 2006

This is the seventh Forest Fires in Europe report published by the European Commission. The report is normally published in summer of the following year in order to allow the different countries to compile official statistics of the fire season regarding the total number of forest fires and burned area. The fire season of 2006 can be defined as a relatively mild season, and if the total number of fires was still relatively high, the total burned area was definitely well below the average. In general there were not many extreme fire events and only the large fires that devastated Galicia (Spain) in the first two weeks of August, were object of great concern. The Forest Fires in Europe 2006 report describes the latest developments in terms of support to forest fires fire prevention activities in the European Union, presents historical statistics in terms of number of fires and burned area, and describes the fire season in each of the contributing countries as well as the results from the European Forest Fire Information System: EFFIS Danger Forecast, that provides daily the 1, 2, and 3 day fire danger forecasts, EFFIS Rapid Damage Assessment, that performs the mapping and evaluation of land cover damages caused by fires of at least 50 ha, and includes also a summary of the impact of forest fires in Natura2000 areas in Galicia, Spain, in 2006.JRC.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

Stability of Atmospheric Flow and Low-Level Jets Influencing Forest Fire Behaviour - An EFFIS Report

During the past years, there have been a considerable number of occasions that a forest fire burns with such strong intensity that seems far out of proportion to apparent burning conditions. This proved to be the case for the Sweden fire “blow-up” that took place during 4 August 2014 between Sala and Surahammar municipalities. The fire broke out after an unusual spell of hot, dry summer weather in northern Europe and proved to be the Sweden's largest wildfire in 40 years encompassing an area of ~15,000 hectares. The fire was declared a national emergency. Close investigation of fire weather parameters revealed the existence of an upper-air trough linked to a dissolving warm front on the previous day (3 August) providing low stability values over the fire centroid and the approach of a cold front from southwest further lowering the stability of the atmosphere. But above all, the air dryness and the prevailing of strong surface wind gusts due to a Secondary Low-Level Jet (SLLJ) at 950 hPa accompanied by a short-wave trough most pronounced at 700 hPa (the level of the main LLJ’s kernel of max winds) made ideal conditions for such an extreme event. In such a case, the left entrance area of SLLJ would have allowed an ageostrophic circulation to feed dry air the fire by a direct downward current during the critical hours of 4 August. The time that the SLLJ was crossing and intensifying over and to the east of fire centroid found to be in agreement with the position and movement of the area of maximum instability as defined by the very high (and at times “saturated”) values of Haines Index (HI) being combined with almost “saturated” Fire Weather Index (FWI) values. The HI gives an indication about the potential for a fire "blow­-up” due to low stability values of the atmosphere whereas FWI provides a description of the fire suppression difficulty. It should be noted that a fire blow-­up would lead to erratic/extreme fire behavior. Most of the initial simulations utilising ECMWF instantaneous wind speed values, as driving terms for EFFIS (European Forest Fires Information System) fire evolution models, namely FireSim and FARSITE, were inaccurate due to errors in the intensity and gustiness of true prevailing winds. By introducing model gust factor values (GFs) instead of instantaneous wind speeds (WSs) significant improvement in accuracy was accomplished in all fire evolution simulations. In such distinct unstable environment and under the presence and influence of both LLJ and SLLJ the utilization of model gust factors instead of instantaneous winds found to be more appropriate for simulating fire evolution behavior. Overall, it seems quite important to consider the concept of atmospheric stability, dryness and the presence of LLJs/SLLJs as key elements in the forest fire management system particularly in circumstances conducive to interactions within the PBL (Planetary Boundary Layer).JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

Forest Fires in Europe 2007

The long time series of forest fire data available for these 5 southern countries (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece) justifies a separate analysis as it has been the case in previous reports. During 2007, fires in these 5 countries burned a total are of 574 361 hectares, which is well above the average for the last 28 years. On the other hand, the number of fires that occured (42 259) is below the average for the last 28 years (see Table 1 for details). Figure 1a shows the total burnt area per year in the five Southern Member States since 1980. The statistics vary considerably from one year to the next, which clearly indicates how much the burnt area depends on seasonal metereological conditions.JRC.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

Forest Fires in Europe, Middle East and North Africa 2011

This is the 12th “Forest Fires in Europe” report published by the European Commission. The area covered by the report has been enlarged to include also Middle East and North Africa countries, thus also the title of the report has been changed accordingly. The report contains a summary of the 2011 fire season in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa with official statistics on the number of fires and burnt areas compiled by the contributing countries. In addition to country reports with a summary of the past fire season provided by the countries, the report Forest Fires in Europe, Middle East and North Africa informs about the latest developments in terms of forest fire prevention and initiatives of the European Commission to support forest fires fire protection activities in the European Union. Furthermore it provides the results of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) operating during the fire season, with special emphasis on the EFFIS Danger Forecast, providing daily maps of meteorological fire danger forecast of EU, and the EFFIS Rapid Damage Assessment, performing the daily mapping and assessment of main land cover and Natura2000 areas affected by fires of at least 40 ha during the fire season..JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

Forest Fires in Europe 2009

When huge parts of nature are burning as a result of a combination of weather conditions, fuel accumulation, and human intervention and this becomes a recurrent issue, we should find ways together to counteract. This is particularly true as regards protected forest areas for which so many efforts have been undertaken by the Member States with EU support, especially for protecting biodiversity-rich land. The present report is the tenth of the series and is based on the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) which delivers, inter alia, all the data needed to forecast forest fire danger in Europe, to assess the damages caused by forest fires and to analyze their causes. The development of EFFIS has been supported by the Commissioners in charge of Environment and Research through the close collaboration of the Directorate General Environment and the Joint Research Centre. EFFIS has become a vehicle to further support the ¿forest fire community¿ in the Member States. The system is an example of how Member States and the Commission can work together on a purely voluntary basis and we would like to thank the competent national authorities for their active contribution. The year 2009 is subject of the present report. 2009 has been a rather unspectacular year as regards forest fire damages in Europe. Despite this, and recognizing the relevance of the forest fire issue, during that period several Commission services were again involved in promoting EU actions aiming at mitigating damages caused by forest fires to human beings and the environment. New initiatives have been taken focusing on an enhanced forest fire prevention and on adapting our forests to challenges resulting from climate change. In these fields, the European Council issued two Council conclusions on ¿forest fires prevention¿ and ¿preparing our forest to climate change¿ during the first semester of 2010, the Commission adopted the ¿Green Paper on forest protection and information¿ and the Parliament took initiatives in the field of forest fire prevention. The Commission recognizes and appreciates the active involvement of the Member States and hope that further common ground can be found to safeguard European forests which are an essential element of our cultural heritage. The Commission services working in the field of forest fires count on the support of all Member States, including those for which forest fires are not yet a priority. The collaboration of all involved services in the EU and the Member States will help in finding ways and efficient solutions to avoid burning land with all its negative consequences on our environment.JRC.DDG.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

Forest Fires in Europe 2010

This is the 11th “Forest Fires in Europe” report published by the European Commission. The report contains a summary of the 2010 fire season in Europe, with official statistics on number of fires and burned areas compiled by the contributing countries. In addition to country reports with a summary of the past fire season provided by the countries, the report Forest Fires in Europe informs about the latest developments in terms of forest fire prevention and initiatives of the European Commission to support forest fires fire protection activities in the European Union. Furthermore it provides the results of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) operating during the fire season, with special emphasis on the EFFIS Danger Forecast, providing daily maps of meteorological fire danger forecast of EU, and the EFFIS Rapid Damage Assessment, performing the daily mapping and assessment of main land cover and Natura2000 areas affected by fires of at least 40 ha during the fire season.JRC.DDG.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

Forest Fires in Europe Middle East and North Africa 2013

This is the 14th “Forest Fires in Europe” report published by the European Commission. The report contains a summary of the 2013 fire season in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa with official statistics on the number of fires and burnt areas compiled by the contributing countries. In addition to country reports with a summary of the past fire season provided by the countries, the report Forest Fires in Europe, Middle East and North Africa informs about the latest developments in terms of forest fire prevention and initiatives of the European Commission to support forest fires fire protection activities in the European Union. Furthermore it provides the results of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) operating during the fire season, with special emphasis on the EFFIS Danger Forecast, providing daily maps of meteorological fire danger forecast of EU, and the EFFIS Rapid Damage Assessment, performing the daily mapping and assessment of main land cover and Natura2000 areas affected by fires of at least 40 ha during the fire season.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat