Wildfires and the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index system for the Daxing'anling region of China

Tian, Xin; McRae, Douglas J.; Jin, J.; Shu, Li; Zhao, Fenfang; Wang, Mingyu

doi:10.1071/wf09120

Cited by 62 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Nogueira et al () report moderate to strong correlations between several fire danger indices, including FWI and FFDI, and monthly BA for four biomes in Brazil. Tian et al () however, found that FWI, or the FFMC, explained only a small fraction of variation in BA in forests of the Daxing'anling region of northern China. Clearly, there is substantial regional variation in the response of BA or other fire activity metrics to the common fire danger indices, potentially causing confusion and uncertainty among fire management agencies and the public about the practical meaning of the different fire danger categories.…”

Section: Forest Fire Hazard Prediction For Risk Mitigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing Weather Extremes Call for Early Warning of Potential for Catastrophic Fire

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Changing frequencies of extreme weather events and shifting fire seasons call for enhanced capability to forecast where and when forested landscapes switch from a nonflammable (i.e., wet fuel) state to the highly flammable (i.e., dry fuel) state required for catastrophic forest fires. Current forest fire danger indices used in Europe, North America, and Australia rate potential fire behavior by combining numerical indices of fuel moisture content, potential rate of fire spread, and fire intensity. These numerical rating systems lack the physical basis required to reliably quantify forest flammability outside the environments of their development or under novel climate conditions. Here, we argue that exceedance of critical forest flammability thresholds is a prerequisite for major forest fires and therefore early warning systems should be based on a reliable prediction of fuel moisture content plus a regionally calibrated model of how forest fire activity responds to variation in fuel moisture content. We demonstrate the potential of this approach through a case study in Portugal. We use a physically based fuel moisture model with historical weather and fire records to identify critical fuel moisture thresholds for forest fire activity and then show that the catastrophic June 2017 forest fires in central Portugal erupted shortly after fuels in the region dried out to historically unprecedented levels.

show abstract

Section: Forest Fire Hazard Prediction For Risk Mitigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing Weather Extremes Call for Early Warning of Potential for Catastrophic Fire

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We found for this region that when FFMC > 85, conditions are critical for fire initiation and spread. Values of FFMC = 75 (Cheney and Sullivan, 2008), FFMC = 81-83.3 (De Groot et al, 2005), FFMC > 82 (Amiro et al, 2004) and FFMC ≥ 85 (Tian et al, 2011) were defined in other ecosystems as thresholds for fire spread. The FFMC value corresponding to the upper-limit of the lower category defined for the fire danger scale can be related with the results of Dentoni et al, (2006), who analyzed a total of 1882 hot-spots occurred during eleven seasons (1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005) in the Andean Patagonian ecosystems.…”

Section: Surface Dead Fuels Ignition In Native Patagonian Forests 135mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, dead fuels gain and lose water according to the same physical principles, and fire behavior respond in the same way all over the world to variations in fuel conditions, weather, and topography (Taylor and Alexander, 2006). These facts made that these moisture codes were adapted, used, and successfully implemented as relative indicators of fuel moisture in many different ecosystems throughout the world, such as in Canada, USA, New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Mexico, Portugal, and various other countries of southern Europe (Alexander and Cole, 2001;Raínha and Fernandes, 2002;Taylor and Alexander, 2006;De Groot et al, 2006;Tian et al, 2011).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ignition probability of fine dead surface fuels of native Patagonian forests or Argentina

Bianchi

Defossé

2014

For. syst.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Aim of study: The Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) is being implemented all over the world. This index is being adapted to the Argentinean ecosystems since the year 2000. With the objective of calibrating the Fine Fuel Moisture Code (FFMC) of the FWI system to Patagonian forests, we studied the relationship between ignition probability and fine dead surface fuel moisture content (MC) as an indicator of potential fire ignition.Area of study: The study area is located in northwestern Patagonia, Argentina, and comprised two main forest types (cypress and ñire) grown under a Mediterranean climate, with a dry summer and precipitations during winter and autumn (~500-800 mm per year).Material and Methods: We conducted lab ignition tests fires to determine the threshold of fine dead fuel ignition at different MC levels. Moisture content of dead fine surface fuels in the field was measured every 10-15 days from November to March for three seasons. We calculated the FFMC during these seasons and correlated it with the measured MC by applying a logistic regression model. We combined the results of the ignition tests and of the regressions to suggest FFMC categories for estimating fire danger in Patagonian forests.Main results: The ignition threshold occurred at MC values of 21.5 and 25.0% for cypress and ñire sites, respectively. The MC measured varied from 7.3 to 129.6%, and the calculated FFMC varied between 13.4 and 92.6. Highly significant regressions resulted when FFMC was related to MC. The ignition threshold corresponded to a FFMC=85. We proposed to divide the FFMC scale in three fire danger categories: Low (FFMC≤85), High (85<FFMC≤89) and Extreme (FFMC>89).Research highlights: Our results provide a useful tool for predicting fire danger in these ecosystems, and are a contribution to the development of the Argentinean Fire Danger Rating and a reference for similar studies in other countries where the FWI is being implemented.Keywords: Austrocedrus chilensi; Nothofagus antarctica; wildfire; fire behavior; fuel moisture; fire weather index.

show abstract

“…As such, the annual burned forest area within this region ranks the first in all of China, making it the most serious forest fire hazard area in the country. Taking records in the 20 years from 1987 to 2006 as examples (Tian et al 2011 ), 1059 fires occurred in this period, with a total burned area of 2.81 £ 10 6 ha, including 1.36 £ 10 6 ha of forest area. Tian and colleagues (2011) further indicated that, on average, each fire burned an area of 2660 ha, 1324 ha of which was ever covered by forest.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping a burned forest area from Landsat TM data by multiple methods

Chen

Moriya

Sakai

et al. 2014

Geomatics, Natural Hazards and Risk

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Forest fire is one of the dominant disturbances in boreal forests. It is the primary process responsible for organizing the physical and biological attributes of the boreal biome, shaping landscape diversity and influencing biogeochemical cycles. The Greater Hinggan Mountain of China is rich in forest resources while suffers from a high incidence of forest fires simultaneously. In this study, focusing on the most serious forest fire in the history of P. R. China which occurred in this region, we made use of two Landsat-5 TM (Thematic Mapper) images, and proposed to map the overall burned area and burned forest area by multiple methods. During the mapping, the fire perimeter, as well as rivers, roads and urban areas were first extracted and masked visually, and then four indices of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Enhanced Vegetation Index, Vegetation Fractional Cover and Disturbance Index were calculated. For each index, the optimal threshold for separating burned from unburned forest area was determined using their histograms. For comparison, threshold segmentation using single-band reflectance was performed, in addition to a Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC) based supervised classification of all features and forest area alone; their accuracies were also evaluated and analysed. Among all the methods compared here, mapping by EVI threshold segmentation proved to be optimal by the comparisons of overall accuracy (99.78%) and the kappa coefficient (0.9946). Finally, the calculated burned area and burned forest area were compared with the values from official statistics. Compared with the classical methods used to report official statistics on burned areas, the remote sensing-based mapping is more objective and efficient, less labour-and time-consuming, and more repeatable.

show abstract

Wildfires and the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index system for the Daxing'anling region of China

Cited by 62 publications

References 12 publications

Changing Weather Extremes Call for Early Warning of Potential for Catastrophic Fire

Changing Weather Extremes Call for Early Warning of Potential for Catastrophic Fire

Ignition probability of fine dead surface fuels of native Patagonian forests or Argentina

Mapping a burned forest area from Landsat TM data by multiple methods

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About