Forest fire history of Poland

Abstract

Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) covers around 60% of Poland's forests. Pine stands are considered as fire prone, which exposes a large area of forests to the risk of fire ignition and spread. This is confirmed by the statistics, among which Poland belongs to the group of European countries where forest fires occur most often. In addition, the most common cause of fires is deliberate arson. The contemporary fire pattern in lowland forests in Poland is characterised by a large number of fires with a small burnt area. Understanding historical fire regime is important for the correct assessment of contemporary phenomena. However, compared to boreal or Mediterranean biomes, the characteristics of historical forest fires in Poland are not well researched. To fill this knowledge gap, a review of national thematic literature and historical documents was carried out. There is a limited literature describing a historical fire situation and just few studies have quantified the historical frequency of forest fires. Documentary records are often incomplete, both in time and space. In our research, to better understand the forest fire history paradigm, we took a holistic approach, integrating data from archives, historical sources (research literature and handbooks), press reports, scientific papers, and existing fire databases. An attempt to reconstruct the history of forest fires was carried out for Poland, considering that the modern borders were established in 1945. The reconstruction of fire event chronology and statistics (annual number of fires and burnt area) is presented, which will give a picture of this phenomenon in its various aspects, including periodisation in the decades, with particular emphasis on the 20th and 21st centuries. This research allowed for the reconstruction of fire statistics in the period from 1920 to the present day. Due to historical conditions, the data for the period 1920-1945 are incomplete, mainly the information on the number of fires is unavailable. The available data show that at least 210,000 ha of forests were burnt during this period. In the years 1946-2020 in Polish forests 342,204 fires occurred, as a result of which 407,093 ha were burnt. The largest number of forest fires (17,088) was recorded in 2003, while the largest area was burnt in 1992 (43,755 ha). On an annual average, in the years 1946-2020 there were 4,562 fires on an area of 5,428 ha, and the area of a single fire was 1.19 ha. In the analysed period, it was observed that the largest number of fires occurred in the decade of 2001-2010 (approx. 9.4 thousand per year), and the largest area of fires in the decade of 1991-2000 (approx. 11 thousand ha per year). The average area of a single fire decreased from 2.35 ha in the decade of 1951-1960 to 0.44 in the last decade. It is the first such complete study of the history of fires in Poland and it may establish the basis for further work on understanding the fire regime of Central European lowland forests.