Assessing wildfires in Europe:

Are fire regimes changing?

Jesús San-Miguel-Ayanz
(jesus.san-miguel@ec.europa.eu)
& the EFFIS Team
(jrc-effis@ec.europa.eu)

European Commission Joint Research Centre

Directorate E: Space, Security and Migration
Disaster Risk Management Unit, Ispra (VA), Italy

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 Outline:
1. EFFIS at the basis of wildfire monitoring in Europe

2. The 2017 wildfire season

3. Spatial distribution of wildfires

4. Fire size in relation to burnt area in the EU

5. Trends of burnt areas and fires in the EU

6. Impact of wildfires in Europe: 2000 to 2017

7. Megafires?

8. Drivers of wildfires: weather, ignitions, fuel management

9. Conclusions

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 EFFIS Network
European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) Network of 41 Countries
Extension to MENA countries in collaboration with FAO

EU Countires

European non-EU countries

North Africa & Middle East

PT, ES, FR, UK, IT, CH, DE, SE, NO, BE, CZ, AT, SI, HR,FI, PL, SK, HU, MK,
GR, EE, LV, LT, RO, BG, TR, CY, IE, MA, LB, ME, BS, KO, AL, RU, ALG, LEB, MOR, TUN, IL, GE

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 EFFIS Current Situation

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 EFFIS - Fire Danger Forecast

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 Active fire and burnt area mapping

How to face Megafires in Europe, Gulbenkian Foundation, Space effis@jrc.ec.europa.eu

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 Active fire and burnt area mapping

How to face Megafires in Europe, Gulbenkian Foundation, Space effis@jrc.ec.europa.eu

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 2017 - Spatial distribution of large fires

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 Burnt areas by fire size class: EU Mediterranean countries

Fire size class CY ES FR GR HR IT PT Total: % of Total:

<100 ha 32.8 9,639.2 2,582.0 1,327.9 1,669.4 25,419.7 10,385.5 51,056.5 5.4%

>=100 and <500 ha 639.6 20,942.0 5,015.3 4,250.6 11,691.4 66,906.0 28,136.6 137,581.5 14.6%

>=500 and < 1000 ha 0.0 16,543.8 2,812.0 2,983.3 12,201.6 15,454.4 30,103.7 80,098.8 8.5%

>=1000 ha 0.0 83,264.3 10,214.4 11,217.6 41,800.3 33,645.3 495,164.6 675,306.5 71.5%

Total: 672.4 130,389.3 20,623.7 19,779.4

672.4 67,362.8 141,425.4 563,790.3 944,043.3 100.0%

20,623.7
130,389.3
19,779.4

67,362.8

563,790.3 141,425.4

CY ES FR GR HR IT PT

Corresponds to over 95% of total burnt area mapped by EFFIS in the EU in 2017

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 2017 - Burned area by mapped in the EU countries*

* JRC preliminary EFFIS report for the 2017 wildfire

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 Weekly burnt area mapped by EFFIS
in the most affected European countries (2017)*
400000

350000

300000

250000

200000

150000

100000

50000

04 Aug
11 Aug
18 Aug
25 Aug
14 Jan
21 Jan
28 Jan
11 Feb
18 Feb
25 Feb

07 Apr
14 Apr
21 Apr
28 Apr

01 Sep
08 Sep
15 Sep
22 Sep
29 Sep

03 Nov
10 Nov
17 Nov
24 Nov
03 Mar
10 Mar
17 Mar
24 Mar
31 Mar

05 May
12 May
19 May
26 May
02 Jun
09 Jun
16 Jun
23 Jun
30 Jun
07 Jul
14 Jul
21 Jul
28 Jul

06 Oct
13 Oct
20 Oct
27 Oct
ES FR GR HR IT PT RO

* JRC preliminary EFFIS report for the 2017 wildfire

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 2017 – Weekly mapping of fires and burnt areas in EU countries*

2017 Burnt Areas Weekly Evolution – EU Countries

* JRC preliminary EFFIS report for the 2017 wildfire

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 Burnt area in Natura 2000 sites
90,000 5.0

80,000 4.5

4.0
70,000
3.5
60,000
3.0
50,000
2.5
40,000
2.0
30,000
1.5
20,000
1.0

10,000 0.5

0 0.0

Burnt area (Ha) % of Natura2000 burned

Nearly 25% of the total burnt area in the EU occurred in Natura 2000 sites

Joint Meeting of the Standing Forestry Committee and Space effis@jrc.ec.europa.eu

the CDG Forestry and Cork, 05.12.2017
 Impact of wildfires in the EU in 2017

•Area burnt: approx. 1.2 Million ha

•Firefighters and civilians killed by wildfires: 127 people
•Economic losses: 9.8 Billion Euro

Estimation of economic losses from wildfires in the EU: Report by the

European Forest Fire Information System, 2017 (in press).

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 About 43000
Approx. wildfires
480,000 hectaresoccur every
burned year in
per year inEU
the EU

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Fire size vs burnt areas

How to face Megafires in Europe, Gulbenkian Foundation, Space effis@jrc.ec.europa.eu San-Miguel-Ayanz et al., 2013, Forest Ecology and
Lisbon, 15-16.02.2018 Management, 294, 11-22.
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 EU number of fires and burnt area

San-Miguel-Ayanz et al., 2017, Forest Fires in

Europe, Middle East and North Africa 2016.

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 Trends in the number of fires (by size) in Europe

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 2017 – Megafires?

Wildfires 2017 – clustering of wildfires in time and space

200

180

160

140

120

100

80

60

40

20

0
07 21 04 18 03 17 31 14 28 12 26 09 23 07 21 04 18 01 15 29 13 27 10 24 08 22 31
Jan Jan Feb Feb Mar Mar Mar Apr Apr May May Jun Jun Jul Jul Aug Aug Sep Sep Sep Oct Oct Nov Nov Dec Dec Dec

BG CY CZ DE DK EE ES FI FR GR HR HU IE IT LV PT RO SE SI UK

EU - Support to countries by other Member States via the Union Civil Protection Mechanism

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 Impact of wildfires in the EU in the period 2000-2017

•Area burnt: 8.5 Million ha (about the size of Austria), approx.

480000 ha/year
•Firefighters and civilians killed by wildfires: 611 people, equiv. to
nearly 34 people every year
•Economic losses: over 54 Billion Euro, approx. 3000 Million per
year

Estimation of economic losses from wildfires in the EU: Report by the

European Forest Fire Information System, 2017 (in press).

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 Drivers of wildfires
Weather conditions
Burnt areas vs fire danger (seasonal severity rating)
EUMed Countries (PT, ES, FR, IT, GR)
Burned area & Seasonal Severity Rating 1980 - 2005

1,200,000 10
9
1,000,000
8
7
Burned area (ha)

800,000
6

SSR
600,000 Burned
5 area vs Monthly Severity Rating in EUMed
4 (June to October 1985-2005)
400,000
3
500,000
450,000 2
y = 2199.1e0.4099x
200,000
R1 square – 87%
R2 = 0.7551
area (ha)

400,000
- 350,000 0
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005 300,000
Monthly burned

250,000
Burned area SSR 200,000
150,000
100,000
50,000
-
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Amatulli et al. 2013
MSR

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22
 Drivers of wildfires
Weather conditions
Burnt areas vs fire danger (seasonal severity rating)

Number of large fires (>500 ha) and FWI values

700

600

500
NUmber of large fires

Burned area in large fires (>500 ha) by FWI ranges

Burned area (ha)
1,400,000
400

1,200,000
300

1,000,000
200

SizeClass
100 800,000 >20,000
10,000-20,000
5,000-10,000
0 600,000 1,000-5,000
500-1,000
<5 5-10 10-15 15-20 20-25 25-30 30-40 40-50 >50
FWI ranges
400,000

200,000

-
<10 10-20 20-30 30-40 40-50 >50
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FWIclass
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 Fire Danger Projections under Climate Change scenarios
(Drought Code)

Under future climate scenarios, annual losses from wildfires

may increase to over 5 Billion Euro per year
JRC Peseta II and III reports, (2017, 2018)

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 Drivers of forest fires
Fire ignitions and fuel management
95.3% of fires (of known cause) in the European Mediterranean region are
caused by humans
 55.8 % fires deliberately caused
 39.5 % fires unintentionally caused

Lack of proper fuel management and landscape planning in fire prone areas is
increasing the risk of critical fires
 Abandonment of rural areas

 Fuel accumulation – lack of forest management in low productivity

forests

 Continuity of fuel layers due to lack of proper landscape planning and

fuel reduction programs

 Increase of Wildland Urban Interfaces (WUI)

• urban expansion
• second residence homes

From Gantaume et al., 2013, Environmental

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Management, 51, 651-662.
Are fire regimes changing?

• Wildfires are a recurrent phenomenon in Europe, resulting in the loss of human lives and
large environmental and economic damages.

• Megafires, which are frequent events, result from the concentration of large fires in space
and time, leading to the inability of efficient wildfire control and extinction.

• Short term analysis of wildfires in Europe (approx. 30 years) shows an increase in the
length of wildfire season, with critical fires within and on the edge of the traditional fire
season June-September (e.g. Portugal, Spain, Italy, France...)

• Climate change is already noticeable; it will lead to an increase of the level of wildfire risk
and the expansion of the areas at risk in Europe.

• The area at risk of wildfires is continuously expanding as a result of land abandonment

and the increase of the wildland-urban interface in Europe

• However, despite the above, wildfires in Europe are human-caused; the focus should be
on prevention/planning, awareness and education of the population, while being ready for
fire fighting.

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 Global Wildfire Information System

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 Global Wildfire Information System - Emissions

NASA GEO GWIS projects:

•Fire Danger Rating and Applications in Indonesia, R. Field

•Multi-sensor global active fire data set, L. Giglio &W. Schroeder
•Using the NASA polar orbiting fire product record to enhance and
expand GWIS, L. Boschetti & D. Roy

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 Thank you

jrc-effis@jrc.ec.europa.eu

http://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu
http://gwis.jrc.ec.europa.eu

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