The European Fire Database: technical specifications and data submission

The European Fire Database is an important component of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), the EC focal point of information on forest fires established by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Directorate General for Environment to provide up to date and harmonized information on forest fires in Europe. As of 2014 EFFIS is part of the Forest Information System for Europe (FISE), following the new EU Forest Strategy adopted in 2013. The Fire Database is the largest repository of information on individual fire events in Europe and is the end product of a long collaboration between European countries and the European Commission on forest fires. It contains forest fire information compiled by member countries of the EFFIS network. Fire data provided each year by national authorities are checked, stored and managed by JRC within the fire database. Each country has its own internal rules of reporting on individual fire events which is in most cases done mainly for administrative purposes. To widen the exploitation potential of the national fire data within the European Fire Database and to enhance data harmonization and data quality control, the common data set up has been gradually modified over the years. A common and in depth understanding of latest definitions and data specifications is of paramount importance. This report intends contributing to these efforts illustrating in detail the data stored in the European Fire Database, their definitions, the formats required for country data submission and the process of data validation and storage carried out at JRC.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

The Global Forest Trade Model - GFTM

A meaningful assessment of policy options within the forest-based bioeconomy presupposes the capability to model market implications. To this end, an economic forest-based sector model, the Global Forest Trade Model (GFTM), is being developed at the Forest Resources and Climate unit of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES). The GFTM is an equilibrium trade-based model for the forest sector with the aim of providing projections of production and trade of wood-based products and pellets for 48 countries/sub-regions of the world, with a focus on EU. This technical report describes the set-up of the model.The study outlines the theoretical framework, the programming of the model in MatLab, data collection, parameters used, and the calibration of the model. Presented test runs with GFTM indicates that the model behaves in a logically consistent way, all in all well in line what can be expected from economic theory. The next steps in the development process entail trying out linkages with a forest resource model and a dedicated energy model.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

Assessment of Forest Fire Risk in European Mediterranean Region: Comparison of Satellite-Derived and Meteorological Indices

Forest fires are a major hazard to Mediterranean forests where, on average, half a million hectares of forested areas are burned every year. It is for this reason that the assessment of fire risk lies at the heart of fire prevention policies in the region. Often, the estimation of forest fire risk involves the integration of meteorological and other fuel-related variables leading to an index that assesses the different levels of risk. Two indices that are frequently used to estimate the level of fire risk are the Fire Weather Index (FWI) and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Although the correlation between the number of fires and the level of risk determined by the indices has been demonstrated; however the analysis that lead to this conclusion considered only the areas where the fires took place. The present paper analyzes the behaviour of these fire risk indices both in areas where fires took place and in those where fires did not occur. It analyzes and compares the potential of the two indices to discriminate different levels of fire risk over large areas using quantitative and graphical methods. The analysis is performed considering a dataset of 10 years of fire events, satellite data and meteorological data for Spain. The results show a better performance of the FWI over NDVI in identifying areas at risk of fires.JRC.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

Reporting of Biomass Burning under the LULUCF sector. Comparative assessment of data reported under the UNFCCC and EFFIS.

The land use, Land use Change and forestry (LULUCF) sector is one of the six sector included in the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventories that Annex I Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol (KP) must submit annually. The sector covers anthropogenic emissions of GHGs and their removals by terrestrial carbon pool: living biomass, dead organic matter and soil organic carbon, disaggregated into six main land use categories: Forest land, Cropland, Grassland, Wetlands, Settlements and Other land. Moreover, additional sources of emissions - as those resulting from Biomass burning have also to be reported. The GHG inventories prepared by the Parties should use comparable methodologies provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the information provided should be Transparent, Accurate, Comparable, Consistency and Complete. In addition, the IPCC Guidelines considers, as integral parts of the GHG inventory process, the implementation of quality control / quality assurance (QA/QC) and verification procedures that are intended to establish the reliability of the information contained in the inventory. This reports contains a comparative assessment of Biomass burning data reported to the UNFCCC by 5 selected Member States with the information contained in the European Forest Fires Information System (EFFIS). The aim is to verify data reported to UNFCCC and to test the utility and feasibility of the use of EFFIS as a tool for the verification of EU MS GHG inventories. Noticeable differences among the data reported in the data sets were found and they would need to be explained. But, in overall, the findings raised in this report suggest that EFFIS data has a good potential as a tool for developing verification procedures of the Biomass burning data and even, it may be used to support the estimates of burned areas in the case that this information is not available at country level.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

Harmonized classification scheme of fire causes in the EU adopted for the European Fire Database of EFFIS

The information on the causes of forest fires is of paramount importance to support the environmental and civil protection policies and design appropriate prevention measure. At the European level a simple common scheme with 4 fire causes classes (deliberate, accident/negligence, natural and unknown) has been used to record information on fire causes since 1992. European countries use national schemes which in most cases are much more detailed than the simple 4 common classes, but they are not harmonized and detailed cross country comparisons are difficult. The need for a new EU scheme, more detailed than the 4 basic categories and harmonized across European countries, to be recorded in the Fire Database of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), has been identified to improve the information level and the common knowledge on the origin of forest fires in Europe. The new scheme has been conceived to be applicable with limited changes to the previous country settings, preserving as much as possible the historical data series of each country and exploiting at the same time as much as possible the level of detail of the information available. This report provides a detailed description of the new scheme, its main features with precise definition of each cause class and the mapping of the historical national systems to the new harmonized system. The scheme is hierarchical and is made of 29 fire cause classes, 8 groups and 6 categories. The explicit statement on the level of certainty in the attribution of the cause to a fire event has been introduced as a key element in the new scheme. This harmonized fire cause classification scheme is expected to be adopted by the countries participating to the EFFIS network in the coming years, and therefore be recorded in the European Fire Database, with a significant added value for the knowledge about the origin of forest fires in Europe.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

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 Damage in Natura 2000 sites 2000-2012

Forest fires are a threat for the forest and natural areas in Europe. Over 65 000 fires take place every year in the European Union, burning, on average, half a million hectares of the European landscape. Economic losses due to forest fires in the European Union territory are estimated in over 2 billion Euro every year. Areas protected under the Natura 2000 scheme are no exception to the damage caused by forest fires. Every year, approximately 80 000 ha are burned within the Natura 2000 sites. In the study period of this report, between the years 2000 and 2012, 1 044 917 ha of Natura 2000 protected areas were burnt, corresponding to 3.28% of the total Natura 2000 area in the affected countries. The environmental and economic damage of these fires is difficult to estimate, since often fires affect protected and endangered species living in these protected habitats. The current report analyses the impact of forest fires in Natura 2000 sites during the period 2000 to 2012. Special emphasis is put on the analysis of damages caused by large fires in the EU Mediterranean region, where most of these fires occur.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

Evaluation of BioSoil Demonstration Project: Forest Biodiversity - Analysis of biodiversity module

The BioSoil demonstration Project was initiated under the Forest Focus-Scheme (Regulation (EC) Nr. 2152/2003) concerning the monitoring of forests and environmental interactions in the Community, and aimed to broaden the scope of previous forest monitoring activities (on atmospheric pollution and forest fires) to the fields of soil characteristics and biodiversity indicators. The results presented here are from the Biodiversity module in which various aspects of forest biodiversity, including species composition, structural elements and deadwood, were assessed over 3379 plots in Europe. As a test of practical indicators of forest biodiversity the project was successful, and the project has produced a common baseline on forest biodiversity information where changes over time and space can be monitored in the future. This is of particular relevance to the EU biodiversity policy and for the assessment of the new 2020 biodiversity goals. A number of recommendations can be made regarding the simplification and streamlining of procedures for future similar surveys.JRC.DDG.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

Wildfires in the Amazon region 2019

Analysis of wildfire trends in the Amazon regionJRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen