Forest fires and adaptation options in Europe

Nikolay Khabarov,Mirco Migliavacca,Andrey Krasovskii,Rob Swart,Andrea Camia,Michael Obersteiner,Tracy Durrant,Jesús San-Miguel-Ayanz,Alessandro Dosio

doi:10.1007/s10113-014-0621-0

Abstract

This paper presents a quantitative assessment of adaptation options in the context of forest fires in Europe under projected climate change. A standalone fire model (SFM) based on a state-of-the-art large-scale forest fire modelling algorithm is used to explore fuel removal through prescribed burnings and improved fire suppression as adaptation options. The climate change projections are provided by three climate models reflecting the SRES A2 scenario. The SFM’s modelled burned areas for selected test countries in Europe show satisfying agreement with observed data coming from two different sources (European Forest Fire Information System and Global Fire Emissions Database). Our estimation of the potential increase in burned areas in Europe under “no adaptation” scenario is about 200 % by 2090 (compared with 2000–2008). The application of prescribed burnings has the potential to keep that increase below 50 %. Improvements in fire suppression might reduce this impact even further, e.g. boosting the probability of putting out a fire within a day by 10 % would result in about a 30 % decrease in annual burned areas. By taking more adaptation options into consideration, such as using agricultural fields as fire breaks, behavioural changes, and long-term options, burned areas can be potentially reduced further than projected in our analysis.

Highlights

Introduction and backgroundAdaptation to climate change becomes increasingly important for the scientific community and decision-makers
This paper presents a quantitative assessment of adaptation options in the context of forest fires in Europe under projected climate change
With standalone fire model (SFM), we investigated possible impacts of climate change and respective adaptation options based on projections provided by different Global Climate Models (GCMs) reflecting the SRES A2 scenario (Nakicenovic and Swart 2000) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Summary

Introduction

Introduction and backgroundAdaptation to climate change becomes increasingly important for the scientific community and decision-makers. With respect to forest fires, the impacts of warmer and drier weather observed in the past are expected to become stronger in the future under projected climate change (Pechony and Shindell 2010; Rego et al 2010; Schelhaas et al 2010; San-Miguel-Ayanz et al 2013b). Fire is required for the natural seeding of plant species in some (e.g. Mediterranean) ecosystems (Velez 1990), the aggregate consequences of large-scale destruction are overwhelmingly negative: fires devastate the carbon storage of forests and can lead to large economic damages and loss of life (San-Miguel-Ayanz and Camia 2010). In Europe, human activities including negligence and arson cause more than 95 % of European forest fires (Ganteaume et al 2012; San-Miguel-Ayanz et al 2012). Overall trends are closely linked to weather conditions (Rogelj et al 2012), and climatic, socio-economic, and landscape fire drivers should be considered together to better understand inter-annual variations in burned areas (Costa et al 2010)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion