Comment on essd-2022-475

Abstract

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> Wildfire behaviour depends on complex interactions between fuels, topography and weather, over a wide range of scales, being important for fire research and management applications. To allow for a significant progress towards better fire management, the operational and research communities require detailed open data on observed wildfire behaviour. Here, we present the Portuguese Large Wildfire Spread Database (PT-FireSprd) that includes the reconstruction of the spread of 80 large wildfires that occurred in Portugal between 2015 and 2021. It includes a detailed set of fire behaviour descriptors, such as rate-of-spread (ROS), fire growth rate (FGR), and fire radiative energy (FRE). The wildfires were reconstructed by converging evidence from complementary data sources, such as satellite imagery/products, airborne and ground data collected by fire personnel, official fire data and information in external reports. We then implemented a digraph-based algorithm to estimate the fire behaviour descriptors and combined it with MSG-SEVIRI fire radiative power estimates. A total of 1197 observations of ROS and FGR were estimated along with 609 FRE estimates. The extreme fires of 2017 were responsible for the maximum observed values of ROS (8956 m/h) and FGR (4436 ha/h). Combining both descriptors, we defined 6 fire behaviour classes that can be easily communicated to both research and management communities and support a wide number of applications. Analysis also showed that the area burned by a wildfire is mostly determined by its FGR rather than by its forward speed. Finally, we explored a practical example to show the PT-FireSprd database can be used to study the dynamics of individual wildfires and build robust case studies for training and capacity building. The PT-FireSprd is the first open access fire progression and behaviour database in Mediterranean Europe, dramatically expanding the extant information. Updating the PT-FireSprd database will require a continuous joint effort by researchers and fire personnel. Updating the PT-FireSprd database will require a continuous joint effort by researchers and fire personnel. PT-FireSprd data are publicly available through <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7495506" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7495506</a> (last access: 30th December 2022) and have a large potential to improve current knowledge on wildfire behaviour and support better decision-making (Benali et al. 2022).