Investigation on recent tendency of frequent large forest fires and development of analysis method for fire behavior using hot spot data

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

In this research, recent wildfire activity in Alaska, Sakha (Siberia), Mongolia, and Indonesia was characterized by considering recent weather conditions during a period of rapid climate change. Forest fire data from various government forest agencies, hotspot data obtained from satellite, and weather records were analyzed to clarify the relationship between fire activity and weather. Results showed that level of wildfire activity in all four locations was strongly affected by lower precipitation and increased temperatures. Thus, weather conditions coincident with rapid climate change may allow occurrence of large-scale fires and create a positive feedback loop to climate warming by the release of greenhouse gasses from forest fires. It is notable that increased temperature and lower precipitation led to increases in wildfire in four widely different ecosystems from the boreal to the tropical. Wildland fires in boreal and tropical forests are important as potential carbon sources because they accumulate large amounts of carbon in their forest floors and emit large amounts of not only carbon oxide (CO_2) but also other greenhouse gases such as methane (CH_4) after large-scale fires and clear cuttings. Recent large-scale wildland fires in these four regions should be considered one of the most important ecological disasters mainly caused by human activity or man-made climate change. Analysis of the four regions and level of wildfire activity under rapid climate condition are done by using newly developed analysis method for fire behavior using hot spot data.