Abstract
Climate determines the spatiotemporal distribution pattern of forest fires by affecting vegetation and the extent of drought. Thus, analyzing the dynamic change of the forest fire season and its response to climate change will play an important role in targeted adjustments of forest fire management policies and practices. In this study, we studied the spatiotemporal variations in forest fire occurrence in Fujian Province, China using the Mann–Kendall trend test and correlation analysis to analyze Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data from 2001 to 2016 and meteorological data. The results show that forest fire occurrence rose first and then declined over the years, but the proportion of forest fires during the fire prevention period decreased. The forest fires increased significantly in spring and summer, exceeding the forest fires occurring in the fire prevention period in 2010. The spatial distribution of forest fires decreased from northwest to southeast coastal areas, among which the number of forest fires in the northwest mountainous areas was large in autumn and winter. The fire risk weather index was strongly and positively correlated with forest fire occurrence across various sites in the province. The findings accentuate the need for properly adjusting the fire prevention period and resource allocation, strengthening the monitoring and early warning of high fire risk weather, and publicizing wildfire safety in spring and summer. As the forest fire occurrence frequency is high in the western and northwest mountainous areas, more observation towers and forest fire monitoring facilities should be installed.
Highlights
Forest fires pose significant threats to ecosystems, communities, and human life [4] as strongly evidenced by successive extreme forest fires in the United States and Australia [5,6]
The study was conducted at nine sites in Fujian Province, which is located on the southeast coast of China (23◦33 –28◦20 N, 115◦50 –120◦40 E; Figure 1), with a forest area of 9267 ha and a coverage rate of 66.80%, ranking first in China
From 2001 to 2016, there were 27,839 forest fires in Fujian Province, of which 24,542 forest fires occurred in the fire prevention period, all showing a rising trend first and decreasing
Summary
Forest fires play an important role in terrestrial carbon circulation and are an integral part of the global ecosystem [1]. They are a natural disturbance prevalent in forests, and a disturbance caused by humans, especially in agricultural–forest systems that consider fire a production tool [2,3]. An NRT disturbance detection method named the Jumps Upon Spectrum and Trend (JUST) and a remote sensing-based model for forecasting forest fire danger conditions (FFFDC) have been proposed [15,16]. Both methods are part of the underlying enhanced algorithm of MODIS series products. Many studies have employed a MODIS-derived variable or detective method for deriving a meaningful research conclusion
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