The effect of road networks on the forest wildfires ‘size

Forest roads are crucial to forest conservation. They can be perfect barriers against forest wildfires if they maintained appropriately and firefighting equipment were provided. This paper discusses the effect of forest roads in context of forest transportation and fire fighting in Czech Republic forestry. The results prove that, the wildfire sizes are reduced if the fire brigade can reach the fires more rapidly.  In other words, the wildfire sizes were evaluated from a function of the distances to roads. Increasing road density can decrease wildfire size. Enhancement of the road network can decrease the future wildfire problems as attack times strongly effects on wildfire sizes. This motivates the location of some firefighting stations close to the forest areas. Furthermore, the importance of road density, road quality and other infrastructure to attack time and efficiency, such as bridges and water reservoirs, may be enhanced. In case forest management methods, infrastructure and the capacities of fire brigades are not updated to the new climate, larger areas destroyed by wildfires can be predicted.

Keywords: attack time, forest roads, forest management, forest wildfires, Czech Republic forestry.