ITS5.1/BG8.5
The socio-ecological dynamics of Anthropocene wildfire regimes

ITS5.1/BG8.5

EDI
The socio-ecological dynamics of Anthropocene wildfire regimes
Co-organized by NH7
Convener: Haleema MisalECSECS | Co-conveners: Oliver PerkinsECSECS, Michel ValetteECSECS, James Millington, Olivia HaasECSECS
Presentations
| Fri, 27 May, 15:10–16:28 (CEST)
 
Room N1

Presentations: Fri, 27 May | Room N1

Chairpersons: Haleema Misal, Oliver Perkins, Olivia Haas
15:10–15:16
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EGU22-13420
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Virtual presentation
Bibiana Alejdanra Bilbao

Under the current changing climate and social governance conditions, wildfires occurrence in Latin America has become a critical issue, trespassing academic and technical disputes, and reaching sensible socio-political arenas. Developing a new vision and capacities for the integral and intersectoral management of wildfires instead of only fighting them requires the inclusion of multiple perspectives, actors and the rescue of the adaptive knowledge and practices of local communities that inhabit natural spaces. This paper summarizes the main results and advances achieved during more than 20 years of learning and working with the Pemón Indigenous peoples in northern Amazonia and the escalation towards new fire management policies in Venezuela. Our results reveal a sophisticated Indigenous knowledge system on using fire in the main subsistence activities, especially shifting cultivation and collaborative burning practices at the savanna-forests transition to protect forests from catastrophic wildfires. In addition, long-term fire experiments demonstrated that fire exclusion practices promote more severe wildfires by fuel accumulation, enhanced by the drier and warmer weather conditions. Through the inclusion of Indigenous peoples, firefighters, public officials and academics in field research and joint experimentation, as well as in debates and dialogues on socio-ecological aspects, a paradigm shift was successfully negotiated of fire that values the relevance of the ancient Pemón culture in Venezuela in the sustainable management of resources, as well as adaptation and mitigation capacity to climate change. Currently, these experiences are being capitalized to create a national integrated fire management policy preserving the same participatory, intercultural and intersectoral principles. 

How to cite: Alejdanra Bilbao, B.: Experiences and lessons learned in the construction of a new paradigm of integrated fire management in Venezuela., EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-13420, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-13420, 2022.

15:16–15:22
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EGU22-13433
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ECS
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Presentation form not yet defined
Cultures of Fire Suppression: An ethnographic analysis of socio-ecological interactions on California firefighting crews
(withdrawn)
Jordan Thomas
15:22–15:28
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EGU22-13459
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ECS
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On-site presentation
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Simona Dossi, Birgitte Messerschmidt, Luis Mario Ribeiro, Miguel Almeida, and Guillermo Rein

Inhabited areas adjacent to wildland, known as the wildland-urban interface (WUI), often experience wildfire damage. Although knowledge on external fire protection of buildings has greatly advanced through post-fire inspections and experimental studies, the intercomparison between studies in different regions is lacking. Here we quantitatively compare two large post-fire building damage inspection databases: the 2013-2017 California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection damage inspection in the USA, and the 2017 Pedrógão Grande Fire Complex post-fire investigation in Portugal. We compare the relationship between different building features and wildfire damage, and propose the Wildfire Resistance Index (WRI), a preliminary wildfire risk index applied to rural buildings. Results indicate that exterior walls, windows, and vent screens have the strongest correlation to damage level in California, and exterior walls and preservation level in Portugal. The correlation strength indicates each feature’s relative importance in protecting the building from wildfire damage. The WRI value corresponds to the building’s net number of fire-resistant features and has an inversely proportional relationship to the percent of destroyed buildings. In California 93% of buildings with a WRI of -0.4 were destroyed, compared to 73% of buildings with WRI of 1; in Portugal 75% of buildings with WRI of 0.5 were highly damaged or destroyed, decreasing to 44% of buildings with a WRI of 1. Results indicate that the amount of fire-resistant building features directly relates to the building’s damage probability, and that the WRI can be used to quantify building wildfire resistance.

How to cite: Dossi, S., Messerschmidt, B., Ribeiro, L. M., Almeida, M., and Rein, G.: Relationships Between Building Features and Wildfire Damage in California, USA and Pedrógão Grande, Portugal, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-13459, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-13459, 2022.

15:28–15:34
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EGU22-5927
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ECS
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On-site presentation
Erika Piroli

Previous studies have suggested that the behaviour of policymakers can be influenced either for personal gain or for electorate pleasing. However, politicians’ role and incentives in the determination of fire regimes have been largely ignored in research advocating for the adoption of effective fire adaptation and prevention strategies. In this context, understanding the drivers of wildfires is pivotal for developing and promoting effective fire prevention strategies. This empirical analysis investigates whether there is a significant change in wildfire occurrence around the gubernatorial election years and whether the change is consistent with the incumbent candidate running for re-election. To assess the impact of electoral cycles on wildfire occurrence, I estimate a Quasi-Maximum Likelihood (QML) Poisson fixed-effects model.

How to cite: Piroli, E.: Do politicians’ reelection incentives affect wildfires occurrence?, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-5927, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-5927, 2022.

15:34–15:40
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EGU22-13091
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ECS
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Virtual presentation
Felicia Liu, Vernon Yian, John Holden, and Thomas Smith

Widespread burning of tropical peatlands across regions of Malaysia and Indonesia is now considered to be an annual event in equatorial Southeast Asia. The fires cause poor air quality (‘haze’) across the region, affecting the health of millions, and leading to transboundary disputes between places that burn and the places downwind that suffer the smoke plumes from the burning. We seek to investigate the emerging social construction of a new season in the region – the ‘haze season’.

Seasons are a social construct that enables societies to organise their livelihoods around the expectation of recurring phenomena. They are not defined ‘objectively’ by observed patterns of relevant variables (e.g. satellite fire detections or air quality indices), but are instead the product of deliberation and contestation of which phenomena to observe, and how to normalise such phenomena to reflect and serve matters of concern to particular societies.

The emergence of a new season may imply the normalisation of the phenomena, which may carry both positive and negative implications for progress towards adapting to and/or mitigating haze and the fires that drive the pollution crisis – a good example of a socio-environmental feedback. In this paper, we seek to answer three research questions:

  • When is the ‘haze season’ (onset, duration)?
  • How is ‘haze season’ portrayed in the media? and
  • What role does the haze ‘seasonality’ play in shaping people’s behaviour towards haze? Does the new season play a role in normalisation (e.g. densensitisation), adaptation (e.g. wearing masks, indoor activities) and mitigation (e.g. fighting haze, activism) behaviours?

To answer these questions, we analysed news articles published in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore through the Factiva database.

First, we identified the monthly distribution of newspaper articles mentioning ‘haze’ and ‘haze season’. Then, we identified keywords associated with ‘haze’ and ‘haze season’ by comparing the words found in the articles mentioning each concept with a corpus of words drawn from general usage in the year 2020. This is followed by a keyness analysis between two corpora of articles, namely articles that mention only ‘haze’ and articles that mention ‘haze season’. By doing so, we compare the differences between two distinct textual corpora in order to discover divergent themes. Finally, we used structural topic modelling (STM) to identify topic clusters. 

We find a strong distinction between the themes of articles that are written about the ‘haze season’ and articles that simply refer to the haze problem alone. Articles that mention ‘haze’, but not ‘haze season’ focus on the root causes of the haze crisis – peatland fires in Indonesia, oil palm plantations, deforestation – as well as geopolitical cooperation to prevent fires (e.g. through ASEAN). Both our keyness and STM analysis revealed that the ‘haze season’ articles have strong association with the effects of the haze crisis, particularly during the haze season months – poor air quality, pollution standards, mask-wearing, air filtration – suggesting that seasonality plays a role in adaptation behaviour. Outside of the haze season months, articles mentioning the new season focus more on haze mitigation and associated political action.

How to cite: Liu, F., Yian, V., Holden, J., and Smith, T.: Seasonality in the Anthropocene: On the construction of Southeast Asia’s 'haze season' in the media, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-13091, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-13091, 2022.

15:40–15:46
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EGU22-6811
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ECS
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Virtual presentation
Janice Ser Huay Lee, Yuti Ariani Fatimah, Stuart William Smith, Nur Estya Rahman, Laely Nurhidayah, Budi Wardhana, Asmadi Saad, Zaenuddin Prasojo, Feroz Khan, Maple Sifeng Wu, Xingli Giam, Kwek Yan Chong, Laura Graham, and David Lallemant

Fire represents a mainstay for rural communities managing tropical landscapes. However, increasing uncontrolled fires in tropical landscapes because of land use and climate change pose a major threat to livelihoods, public health, and ecosystems. Peatlands in Southeast Asia are one such example of tropical landscapes that experience high flammability due to clearance of forests and excessive drainage for agriculture and forestry. The degradation of tropical peatland ecosystems increases their susceptibility to landscapes fires, which in turn increase the vulnerability of people and peatland conditions to future fires. To identify locations of tropical peatlands and surrounding communities that are vulnerable to fires, we conducted a socio-ecological vulnerability assessment and mapped the socio-ecological vulnerability of tropical peatlands to fires. We used an inductive approach to conceptualize and operationalize vulnerability and its associated dimensions of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity through empirical case studies in the literature, with a focus on tropical peatlands and fires in Indonesia. We present preliminary results of our mapped social and ecological vulnerability of Indonesia’s tropical peatlands to peat landscape fires. This would allow policymakers to identify places which display both high ecological and social vulnerability to fires and channel aid and mitigation efforts where they are most urgently needed.

How to cite: Lee, J. S. H., Fatimah, Y. A., Smith, S. W., Rahman, N. E., Nurhidayah, L., Wardhana, B., Saad, A., Prasojo, Z., Khan, F., Wu, M. S., Giam, X., Chong, K. Y., Graham, L., and Lallemant, D.: Mapping socio-ecological vulnerability of tropical peat landscape fires, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-6811, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6811, 2022.

15:46–15:52
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EGU22-7970
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ECS
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Virtual presentation
Andreas Magerl, Simone Gingrich, Sarah Matej, Christian Lauk, Geoffrey Cunfer, Cody Yuskiw, Matthew Forrest, Stefan Schlaffer, and Karlheinz Erb

Human-fire interactions have always played an important role in the United States of America. Important processes include land clearing with fires in the course of agricultural expansion and development of the West during the 19th century, large-scale fire suppression in the first half of the 20th century and recent “mega-fire” events in California. Strong regional divergences occurred: Fire regimes in the Eastern U.S. were significantly altered due to settlement and land-use changes over the past 100 years, resulting in reduced severity of fire events. In the West the area extent and severity of wildfires has increased, especially in recent decades, arguably due to more frequent climatic extreme events. Although the historical fire narrative in the U.S. has been studied in numerous publications, the links between these developments and changes in the socio-metabolic system i.e., changes in resource use, and consumption, are to our knowledge less well understood.

In this study we investigate the influence of anthropogenic alteration of fire regimes on forest biomass Carbon stocks in comparison to forest uses, i.e., the extraction of woody biomass and forest grazing on multiple spatial scales. We develop a long-term reconstruction of biomass burned in forests on the national, regional, and state level based on statistical and remote-sensing data. We describe and examine historical differences between fire regimes in the Eastern and Western United States in connection with human use of forest for the period 1940-2017. Using panel data analysis, we investigate the diverse connection between forest change, socio-metabolic processes, natural disturbances (i.e., wildfires), and associated human fire control on various spatial and temporal scales. With this study we aim to contribute to a better understanding of the underlying socio-metabolic drivers and accompanying processes of altered forest fire regimes.

How to cite: Magerl, A., Gingrich, S., Matej, S., Lauk, C., Cunfer, G., Yuskiw, C., Forrest, M., Schlaffer, S., and Erb, K.: Dynamics of fires, harvest and carbon stocks in U.S. forests 1926-2017, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-7970, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-7970, 2022.

15:52–15:58
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EGU22-7515
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ECS
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Virtual presentation
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Sarah Meier, Eric Strobl, Robert J.R. Elliott, and Nicholas Kettridge

 We estimate the country-level risk of extreme wildfires defined by burned area (BA) for Mediterranean Europe and carry out a cross-country comparison. To this end we avail of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) geospatial data from 2006-2019 to perform an extreme value analysis. More specifically, we apply a point process characterization of wildfire extremes using maximum likelihood estimation. By modeling covariates, we also evaluate potential trends and correlations with commonly known factors that drive or affect wildfire occurrence, such as the Fire Weather Index as a proxy for meteorological conditions, population density, land cover type, and seasonality. We find that the highest risk of extreme wildfires is in Portugal (PT), followed by Greece (GR), Spain (ES), and Italy (IT) with a 10-year BA return level of 50'338 ha, 33'242 ha, 25'165 ha, and 8'966 ha, respectively. Coupling our results with existing estimates of the monetary impact of large wildfires suggests expected losses of 162-230 million € (PT), 81-96 million € (ES), 41-126 million € (GR), and 18-34 million € (IT) for such 10-year return period events.

How to cite: Meier, S., Strobl, E., Elliott, R. J. R., and Kettridge, N.: Cross-Country Risk Quantification of Extreme Wildfires in Mediterranean Europe*, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-7515, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-7515, 2022.

15:58–16:04
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EGU22-4847
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ECS
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Virtual presentation
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Santiago Valencia, Diver E. Marín, Juliana Mejía-Sepúlveda, Jerónimo Vargas, Natalia Hoyos, Juan F. Salazar, and Juan Camilo Villegas

Tropical savannas are the biome with the highest fire occurrences worldwide and play a key role in fire carbon emissions dynamics at regional to global scales. During the past decades, however, climate change and land use management have altered their fire regimes via fire suppression or ignition related to conservation and agricultural practices, and extreme weather conditions, among others. In particular, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has modified human activities in both urban and rural environments, and thus provides an opportunity to study the interactions between socio-economic and biophysical drivers of fires. Using satellite-based observations, we analyze the spatio-temporal patterns of active fires (AF, from MODIS-MCD14ML) in the Llanos ecoregion (northern South America between Colombia and Venezuela) during the COVID-19 lockdown period (mid-March to December 2020). We also examine fire carbon emissions (from GFED4s) as well as monthly precipitation (from CHIRPS), maximum temperature, and vapor pressure deficit (VPD, from TerraClimate). Our results show that 2020 was the year with the highest number of AF (>60%) and fire carbon emissions (>50%) compared to the 2001 to 2019 average. We found that these increases occur mainly during the peak of the fire season (March and April), which corresponds to the beginning of the lockdown period in Venezuela (March 17) and Colombia (March 20). Pixels (at 0.05° resolution) with significant positive AF anomalies (p<0.05) occur primarily in Venezuela and over grassland and agricultural land covers. A large proportion of these pixels interact with significant positive anomalies (p<0.05) in VPD (>70% of pixels) and maximum temperature (>50%) in March and April. Furthermore, our results highlight that the increase of AF could be associated not only with potential changes in land use management but also with weather patterns anomalies during the lockdown period in the Llanos ecoregion. 

How to cite: Valencia, S., Marín, D. E., Mejía-Sepúlveda, J., Vargas, J., Hoyos, N., Salazar, J. F., and Villegas, J. C.: Active fires during the COVID-19 lockdown period in the Llanos ecoregion, northern South America, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-4847, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-4847, 2022.

16:04–16:10
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EGU22-451
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ECS
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Presentation form not yet defined
Vishal Kataria, Ankit Yadav, Al Jasil Chirakkal, Praveen Kumar Mishra, Sanjeev Kumar, and Anoop Ambili

Delineating the impact of various natural and anthropogenic drivers on the environment is a
paramount challenge in paleoenvironmental reconstruction. In the present study, we used faecal
biomarker (coprostanol) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the lake sediments
alongside population census and meteorological parameters from Central Himalayas to delineate
the anthropogenic and natural signals of environmental changes for the past ~70 years (1950-
2018 AD). The resulting stress from the human activities is evident by an abrupt increase in the
coprostanol (0.1-5.5 mg/g) and pyrolytic PAHs concentration (1422-32077 ng/g) in the
sediments. Further, with the metric of population rise, economic and infrastructural development,
the composition of PAHs in the sediments has changed: the proportion of heavy molecular
weight PAHs increased from 57% to 86%, whereas low molecular weight PAHs decreased from
43% to 14% indicating an increase in the proportion of fossil fuels combustion and a decrease in
biomass burning sources. Based on reanalysis datasets, the computed temporal variation of
annual precipitation and annual temperature over the region clearly indicated that natural drivers
have no direct influence on the PAHs concentration and other biogeochemical parameters. In
addition, the hysplit back trajectory analysis provided evidences of the atmospheric deposition of
black carbon from the countryside biomass burning and petrogenic pollution from the nearby
megacities.

How to cite: Kataria, V., Yadav, A., Chirakkal, A. J., Mishra, P. K., Kumar, S., and Ambili, A.: The influence of anthropogenic perturbations on the accumulation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in a lake system of Central Himalayas, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-451, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-451, 2022.

16:10–16:16
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EGU22-5221
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ECS
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Virtual presentation
Judit Carrillo, Juan Carlos Pérez, Francisco Javier Expósito, Juan Pedro Díaz, and Albano González

The frequency and intensity of wildfires will be aggravated by climate change. Small islands are more vulnerable to these events due to their greater number of endemic species, little territory, and the isolation of their firefighting systems, among others. Climate projections of Fire Weather Index (FWI) have been accomplished using as boundary conditions the results provided by the CMIP5 initiative, using Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, with a spatial resolution of 3x3km, until the end of the century, and two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), 4.5 and 8.5. The length of the fire season is expected to increase up to 74 days per year and the area with high risk could increase by 43%. In addition, FWI is projected to increase with altitude, mainly due to increasing temperature and decreasing precipitation, which are more pronounced at higher elevations.

How to cite: Carrillo, J., Pérez, J. C., Expósito, F. J., Díaz, J. P., and González, A.: Climate change impact on wildfires in the Canary Islands, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-5221, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-5221, 2022.

16:16–16:22
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EGU22-6879
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ECS
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On-site presentation
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Sifeng Wu and Janice Ser Huay Lee

Fire plays an important role in the earth system. While some aspects of fire including burnt area and fire frequencies have been extensively studied; fire carbon emissions, which could exert significant influence on the carbon cycle and a wide range of geophysical processes relating to ecosystem services and human well-being, are relatively understudied in terms of its global trends and drivers. We investigated fire emission trends from 2001 to 2019 at global and regional scales using total carbon emission data from the fourth generation Global Fire Emission Database (GFED4s). We identified geophysical and anthropogenic drivers for fire emission trends for regions defined by geographical regions and biomes with a causal model; and quantified driver importance with machine learning models by estimating their impact on fire emissions. We observed an insignificant global fire emission trend; mainly caused by conflicting fire emission trends in tropical savanna/grasslands and boreal forests. The two biomes were the largest sources for global fire emissions. Tropical savanna/grasslands contributed 60% to global fire emissions and showed a decreasing fire emission trend at a rate of -9.7±1.4 ×1012 gC/year; boreal forests contributed around 8% and increased at a rate of 7.4±2.2 × 1012 gC/year (rates estimated by Huber robust regression). At the regional scale, we found that fire emission trends were driven by geophysical factors for all regions. Anthropogenic interventions only caused changes in fire emissions in limited regions, including all biomes in Africa, and some biomes in Boreal Asia, Central Asia and North America. Decreasing fire emission trends in tropical savanna/grasslands mainly occurred in Africa; and the most dominant drivers were anthropogenic interventions, namely agriculture expansion and the subsequent declines in vegetation. Increasing fire emissions from boreal forests largely came from Boreal Asia, where anthropogenic interventions were also important drivers, and climatic drivers relating to moisture, drought, and temperature played a vital role as well, especially moisture. Vegetation indices were also identified as drivers for this region but were the least important ones. Our results suggested future fire emission trend for boreal forests in Boreal Asia could be highly vulnerable to climate change. It is possible that fire emissions in this region continue to increase if the climate becomes drier since drivers relating to moisture were highly important. On the other hand, further decrease for fire emissions in African savanna/grasslands is limited by the already shrunk vegetation. Therefore, at the global scale, risks of increasing fire carbon emissions are rather high. Increasing carbon emissions and the slow recovery of carbon sink capacity in burnt forests imply long-term net carbon source from boreal forests, which could be challenging for climate mitigation.

How to cite: Wu, S. and Lee, J. S. H.: Geophysical and anthropogenic drivers for global and regional fire emission trends from 2001 to 2019, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-6879, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6879, 2022.

16:22–16:28
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EGU22-9354
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On-site presentation
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Manolis G. Grillakis, Apostolos Voulgarakis, Anastasios Rovithakis, Konstantinos Seiradakis, Aristeidis Koutroulis, Robert Field, Matthew Kasoar, Athanasios Papadopoulos, and Mihalis Lazaridis

Wildfires are integral parts of ecosystems but at the same time they consist a threat for manmade and natural environments. Variability in the area burned by wildfires has been largely attributed to weather and climate drivers, hence fire danger indices such as the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) uses solely climate variables. The FWI uses four climate variables (precipitation, temperature, wind and relative humidity), to estimate two sub-indices, one for the wildfire initial spread danger - the initial spread index, and one that accounts for the longer-term drought effects on the fire danger - the buildup index, from which the FWI is finally assessed. Here, we establish correlations between the individual climate variables, FWI and its subindices, with observed GFED monthly burned area, for each one of the 14 GFED pyrographic region, at a global scale. The correlations are established on aggregated by the size of burned area data, to reduce the effect of other smaller scale climate effects, as well as other socioeconomic factors such as fire suppression activities, etc. The established correlations are then used to estimate the relative sensitivity of the area burned, to each climate variable and FWI component. The analysis is repeated for different burned area land use types, i.e. forest areas, non-forest areas as well as their combination. Our results indicate the relative importance of the four climate variables, as well as the two sub-indices of FWI index, for each GFED region. The results highlight the significance of temperature and relative humidity to the variability of area burned, in many regions, globally. This work contributes to a better understanding of the climate drivers of global wildfire activity.

 

This work is supported by CLIMPACT - National Research Network on Climate Change and its Impacts project, financed by the Public Investment Program of Greece and supervised by General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT); and by the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment, and Society through the Leverhulme Trust, grant number RC-2018-023.

How to cite: Grillakis, M. G., Voulgarakis, A., Rovithakis, A., Seiradakis, K., Koutroulis, A., Field, R., Kasoar, M., Papadopoulos, A., and Lazaridis, M.: Ranking the sensitivity of climate variables and FWI sub-indices to global wildfire burned area, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-9354, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-9354, 2022.