Perspectives on protected area and wildfire management in the Black Sea region

Protected areas are necessary for the conservation and enhancement of biodiversity. Wildfires are major threats to forests and other natural areas, because they may cause irreversible damages. The aim of this study was to analyze the perspective of experts (N = 284), from six countries of the Black Sea, on the current status and problems of protected areas and wildfires. Understanding their points of view could enhance future management on these issues in the region. Data collection was carried out for 9 months, using a web-based questionnaire. Wildfires were perceived as a serious problem in Turkey, Armenia and Greece but as a substantially less serious problem in Romania, Ukraine and Moldova. In Greece, Armenia, and especially Ukraine, the current designated protected areas are considered sufficient to maintain biodiversity, while in Romania, Turkey, and especially Moldova, more areas should be designated as protected. A major need in all countries (except for Turkey) is the increased use of information and communication technologies for both wildfire suppression and protected area management. Experts were divided on whether wildfire suppression and management of protected areas are interconnected. However, there is growing awareness of the adverse impacts of climate change in protected areas and the frequency of wildfires in the future. The most frequently suggested measures to alleviate these impacts were: changes in forest management and increasing public awareness for wildfire suppression, along with changes in forest management and increased staff training to enhance protected area conservation.EU INTERREG IV "Black Sea Basin Joint Operational Programme 2007-2013" framework, Black Sea Basin Programme, European Union (EU)

Innovative and sustainable use of stream water to suppress fires in protected areas: overview of the streams-2-suppress-fires project

Establishing protected areas to maintain biodiversity is a priority worldwide. Protected areas can have minimal management practices that can lead to the intensive accumulation of fire fuel. Fires are major threats for all protected areas that cause irreversible damages to them or impacts that last for decades or even centuries. The impending climate change impacts will increase the potential of large fires even in regions with minimal fires in the past. The emphasis of this project is in the Black Sea region with six pilot areas in six different countries. The first action involves the establishment of a Neighborhood Network regarding fire suppression around the region. The network includes institutions that are responsible for mitigating forest fires and managing protected areas from the Black Sea region. Another important action taken is to understand the fire behavior and locating the areas with the greatest fire risk. When considering fire suppression it is essential to know the available water resources (stream water). Since fires occur during the summer, the runoff and stream flow during this period needs to be accurately predicted. Based on the fire behavior and water resources data, the number, dimensions of the reservoirs required to suppress forest fires will be estimated for the pilot areas. Finally, specialized software will provide the optimal locations of the reservoirs and the best routes for the fire vehicles to reach the reservoirs. Overall the use of innovative mechanisms will lead to the more cost-effective management that will allow the sustainable development and protection of natural protected areas

Assessment of carbon emissions due to landscape fires in Ukraine during war in 2022

The russian military aggression and the related socio-economic and environmental consequences have significantly affected the climate and production of ecosystem services through damage to forests, ecosystems, landscape fires and emissions of gases into the atmosphere. The study aims to estimate carbon dioxide emissions due to landscape fires in Ukraine during the year 2022. The OroraTech wildfire monitoring technology was used to detect fires, while perimeters of burned areas were delineated with Sentinel 2 time series. The Copernicus Dynamic Land Cover map was used to extract burned land covers. Emissions were calculated based on the intensity of fires (dNBR) with the share of burned biomass in different types of land cover. Biomass models were selected considering the dominant tree species within a specific region and the species structure of the sown areas of croplands. The volume of biomass losses was estimated as a result of fires of different severities. It was estimated that during in 2022, landscape fires burned 749.5 thousand hectares thereof: croplands – 419.1 thousand hectares; other natural vegetation – 273.8 thousand hectares; conifer forests – 31.1 thousand hectares; other forests – 25.5 thousand hectares. The impact of the war on landscape fires is confirmed by the large proportion of fires in the 60-kilometre buffer zone along the frontline – 68.9% of the total area of fire. Among all fires, 42.5% of fires occurred in the occupied territory. Total CO2 emissions from all types of landscape fires reached 5.20 million tons and other greenhouse gases – 0.28 million tons. It is the first detailed mapping of landscape fires with an analysis of each polygon for the whole territory of Ukraine. The results provide important information for assessing the loss of ecosystem services and estimating carbon dioxide emissions as well as for confirming the impact of hostilities on landscape fire

Просторово-часовий розподіл пожеж у природних ландшафтах Рівненської області

Integrated fire management during the epoch of climate and land use change need to be organized on landscape level on the basis of strong vertical and horizontal co-operation between forestry and emergency agencies and local communities and requires clear understanding of fire regime and factors that it determined both in temporal and spatial aspects. For this purpose, fire regimes of natural and cultural landscapes of Rivne Oblast, Ukraine, for the period of 2001–2018 were studied based on remote sensing data. For getting better understanding of long-term pathways of wildfire regimes of natural landscapes of Rivne Oblast of Ukraine, we used data about hotspots from MOD14/MYD14 for number of fires, data about contours and areas of fires from MCD64A1and Landsat 8 OLI with classification of all fires on different levels of intensity and landcover type and data from three local meteorological stations on the fire weather danger level. The study showed that in Rivne Oblast for the period 7 fire maximums occurred, in particularly in 2002, 2009, 2012, 2015 and 2018. Official statistical data presents essentially underestimated area of fires: 257 ha in 2002 (while this study shows 750 ha based on RS data or 143 ha in 2015 (563 ha based on RS data). On average during the period, 190 wildfires with a total area of 12.6 thousand hectares occurred annually in landscapes of Rivne Oblast. The highest amount of fires occurred in the north part of the region – Rokytnivskii (62 000 ha burned), Dubrovitskii (26 000 ha), Kostopilskii (19 400 ha), Zarichnenskii (14 900 ha), Volodymyretskii (10 300 ha) districts. The main driver of fires is drought periods: 54.3 % of days in fire season determined as highest emergency level fire weather class – V, 15.3 % days – IV class, 18.5 % – III class. High level of fire weather danger in the region and permanent presence of ignition sources of human origin determine seasonal patterns of burning. Seasonal fire peaks occur in March (80 000 ha burned)-April (87 300 ha burned or 29.6 % of the average number of wildfires), August (32.2 %) and September (19.9 %) – totally 127 000 ha burned, when the maximum level of preparedness of fire-fighting brigades should be provided. Long-term dynamic showed increase of the average annual fire area for the period from 7.4 to 17.8 thousand hectares. The increase of annual amount of days with high and emergency fire whether levels from 24 to 62 during last 13 years is detected. Shortcomings of the existing system of statistical data collection on wildfires as an important component of fire management are discussed.Аналіз історичної динаміки пожеж та встановлення їх просторово-часових особливостей є основою для розроблення плану управління пожежами та стратегічного розміщення протипожежних сил і засобів на місцевості, а також здійснення попереджувальних заходів. Використовуючи дані дистанційного зондування Землі, отримано основні показники горючості природних територій Рівненської області за період з 2001 по 2018 рр. та виконано їх аналіз. Щорічно на території області відбувається в середньому 190 випадків пожеж на загальній площі 12,6 тис. га. Усереднені дані свідчать про тенденцію до зростання показників горючості території, зокрема середньорічна площа пожеж за період з 2001 по 2018 рр. зросла від 7,4 до 17,8 тис. га. За результатами дослідження встановлено, що найбільше пожеж стається у березні-квітні (29,6 %), серпні (32,2 %) та вересні (19,9 %), що повинно бути основою для максимальної готовності протипожежних служб у ці періоди. Виконано аналіз погодно-кліматичних показників за багаторічний період та досліджено їх зв'язок з основними показникам горючості. Зроблено висновки щодо проблеми пожеж у природних ландшафтах Рівненської області. Наведено недоліки наявної системи моніторингу пожеж як важливої складової системи охорони природних територій від пожеж

Open fires in Greenland in summer 2017: transport, deposition and radiative effects of BC, OC and BrC emissions

Highly unusual open fires burned in western Greenland between 31 July and 21 August 2017, after a period of warm, dry and sunny weather. The fires burned on peatlands that became vulnerable to fires by permafrost thawing. We used several satellite data sets to estimate that the total area burned was about 2345&thinsp;ha. Based on assumptions of typical burn depths and emission factors for peat fires, we estimate that the fires consumed a fuel amount of about 117&thinsp;kt&thinsp;C and emitted about 23.5&thinsp;t of black carbon (BC) and 731&thinsp;t of organic carbon (OC), including 141&thinsp;t of brown carbon (BrC). We used a Lagrangian particle dispersion model to simulate the atmospheric transport and deposition of these species. We find that the smoke plumes were often pushed towards the Greenland ice sheet by westerly winds, and thus a large fraction of the emissions (30&thinsp;%) was deposited on snow- or ice-covered surfaces. The calculated deposition was small compared to the deposition from global sources, but not entirely negligible. Analysis of aerosol optical depth data from three sites in western Greenland in August 2017 showed strong influence of forest fire plumes from Canada, but little impact of the Greenland fires. Nevertheless, CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization) lidar data showed that our model captured the presence and structure of the plume from the Greenland fires. The albedo changes and instantaneous surface radiative forcing in Greenland due to the fire emissions were estimated with the SNICAR model and the uvspec model from the libRadtran radiative transfer software package. We estimate that the maximum albedo change due to the BC and BrC deposition was about 0.007, too small to be measured. The average instantaneous surface radiative forcing over Greenland at noon on 31 August was 0.03–0.04&thinsp;W&thinsp;m−2, with locally occurring maxima of 0.63–0.77&thinsp;W&thinsp;m−2 (depending on the studied scenario). The average value is up to an order of magnitude smaller than the radiative forcing from other sources. Overall, the fires burning in Greenland in the summer of 2017 had little impact on the Greenland ice sheet, causing a small extra radiative forcing. This was due to the – in a global context – still rather small size of the fires. However, the very large fraction of the emissions deposited on the Greenland ice sheet from these fires could contribute to accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet if these fires become several orders of magnitude larger under future climate.</p

Impact of Disturbances on the Carbon Cycle of Forest Ecosystems in Ukrainian Polissya

Climate change continues to threaten forests and their ecosystem services while substantially altering natural disturbance regimes. Land cover changes and consequent management entail discrepancies in carbon sequestration provided by forest ecosystems and its accounting. Currently there is a lack of sufficient and harmonized data for Ukraine that can be used for the robust and spatially explicit assessment of forest provisioning and regulation of ecosystem services. In the frame of this research, we established an experimental polygon (area 45 km2) in Northern Ukraine aiming at estimating main forest carbon stocks and fluxes and determining the impact caused by natural disturbances and harvest for the study period of 2010–2015. Coupled field inventory and remote sensing data (RapidEye image for 2010 and SPOT 6 image for 2015) were used. Land cover classification and estimation of biomass and carbon pools were carried out using Random Forest and k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN) method, respectively. Remote sensing data indicates a ca. 16% increase of carbon stock, while ground-based computations have shown only a ca. 1% increase. Net carbon fluxes for the study period are relatively even: 5.4 Gg C·year−1 and 5.6 Gg C C·year−1 for field and remote sensing data, respectively. Stand-replacing wildfires, as well as insect outbreaks and wind damage followed by salvage logging, and timber harvest have caused 21% of carbon emissions among all C sources within the experimental polygon during the study period. Hence, remote sensing data and non-parametric methods coupled with field data can serve as reliable tools for the precise estimation of forest carbon cycles on a regional spatial scale. However, featured land cover changes lead to unexpected biases in consistent assessment of forest biophysical parameters, while current management practices neglect natural forest dynamics and amplify negative impact of disturbances on ecosystem services

War drives forest fire risks and highlights the need for more ecologically-sound forest management in post-war Ukraine

Since 24 February 2022, Ukraine has experienced full-scale military aggression initiated by the Russian Federation. The war has had a major negative impact on vegetation cover of war-affected regions. We explored interactions between pre-war forest management and the impacts of military activities in three of the most forested Ukrainian areas of interest (AOI), affected by the war. These were forests lying between Kharkiv and Luhansk cities (AOI 'East'), forests along the Dnipro River delta (AOI 'Kherson'), and those of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (AOI CEZ). We used Sentinel satellite imagery to create damaged forest cover masks for the year 2022. We mapped forests with elevated fire hazard, which was defined as a degree of exposure to the fire-supporting land use (mostly an agricultural land, a common source of ignitions in Ukraine). We evaluated the forest disturbance rate in 2022, as compared to pre-war rates. We documented significant increases in non-stand replacing disturbances (low severity fires and non-fire disturbances) for all three of the AOIs. Damaged forest cover varied among the AOIs (24,180 ± 4,715 ha, or 9.3% ± 1.8% in the 'East' AOI; 7,293 ± 1,925 ha, or 15.7% ± 4.1% in the 'Kherson' AOI; 7,116 ± 1,274 ha, or 5.0% ± 0.9% in the CEZ AOI). Among the forests damaged in 2022, the 'Kherson' AOI will likely have the highest proportion of an area with elevated fire hazard in the coming decades, as compared to other regions (89% vs. 70% in the 'East' and CEZ AOIs respectively). Future fire risks and extensive war-related disturbance of forest cover call for forest management to develop strategies explicitly addressing these factors