Abstract
The Sichuan province is a key area for forest and grassland fire prevention in China. Forest resources contribute significantly not only to the biological gene pool in the mid latitudes but also in reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases and slowing down global warming. To study and forecast forest fire change trends in a grade I forest fire danger zone in the Sichuan province under climate change, the dynamic impacts of meteorological factors on forest fires in different climatic regions were explored and a model between them was established by using an integral regression in this study. The results showed that the dominant factor behind the area burned was wind speed in three climatic regions, particularly in Ganzi and A’ba with plateau climates. In Ganzi and A’ba, precipitation was mainly responsible for controlling the number of forest fires while it was mainly affected by temperature in Panzhihua and Liangshan with semi-humid subtropical mountain climates. Moreover, the synergistic effect of temperature, precipitation and wind speed was responsible in basin mid-subtropical humid climates with Chengdu as the center and the influence of temperature was slightly higher. The differential forest fire response to meteorological factors was observed in different climatic regions but there was some regularity. The influence of monthly precipitation in the autumn on the area burned in each climatic region was more significant than in other seasons, which verified the hypothesis of a precipitation lag effect. Climate warming and the combined impact of warming effects may lead to more frequent and severe fires.
Highlights
Published: 12 July 2021Fire is one of the most important disturbances on the earth affecting most terrestrial ecosystems [1] and it plays a key role in determining the landscape structure and plant community composition [2]
According to above-mentioned studies, precipitation, wind speed, relative humidity and temperature have proved to be the main meteorological factors affecting forest fires; most of the results identified correlations between single factors and forest fires based on the linear correlation over the entire research period
The results have described the relationship between forest fires and meteorological factors on an annual scale and proved that meteorological conditions are significantly important factors in Sichuan province forests, which impact on forest fires [32]
Summary
Published: 12 July 2021Fire is one of the most important disturbances on the earth affecting most terrestrial ecosystems [1] and it plays a key role in determining the landscape structure and plant community composition [2]. The evidence suggests that since the last glaciation there have been substantial interactions between fire and the stand structure [3], the fuel characteristics [4,5,6], biological invasion [7], human activities [8,9], the terrain conditions [10,11], changes in land uses [9,12] and the climate [1,13,14,15,16]. The climate is considered to be a key factor attributed to medium and large scale forest fires [14,15,16]. Mathematical modeling is an effective method for studying a forest fire response to climate change, at large scales, and has provided many resources for forest fire ecology and it has accelerated the relevant research as well. Chen et al (2015) analyzed the link between forest fire occurrence and the climatic variables in the Yunnan province by using a logistic equation and found that the precipitation
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