Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.

de
1
How well do meteorological indices explain forest
fire occurrence in Germany?
Holsten A.
1
, Dominic A. R.
2
, Costa L.
1
, Kropp J .
1
1
Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research
2
Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development
Foto: Andrea Booher/ FEMA News Photo
Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.de
2
Fire process
Processes of
Forest fires:
Luis Costa /PIK, adapted from Badeck et al. 2007
Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.de
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important tools in evaluating
regional fire risk potential over time
Ability to provide quantitative
estimates on the chance of forest
fire occurrence
Most of them only capture the
meteorological risk (no human
factor)
Some have a simple, some a
complex algorithm
But their performance varies
between regions
Fire indices as proxies for fire ocurrence
Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.de
4
Forest Fires in Germany
Filling the existing knowledge gaps on the relations between fire
occurrences and climate conditions in Germany by:
1. Providing a comprehensive comparison of the monthly performance of
multiple forest fire indices for 13 states
2. Test the explanatory power of fire indices against their raw input
variables
3. Evaluate performance on a daily level (for state of Brandenburg)
Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.de
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Data
Holsten et al. (accepted)
Monthly statistics from German Federal
Agency for Agriculture and Food (BLE)
(1993-2010).
Daily data for Brandenburg from Forest
Office in Brandenburg
Daily data from the German Weather
Service (DWD) (Mar - Oct)
Climate projections using STAtistical
Resampling Scheme (STARS)
Missing data replaced by aproximations.
e.g (snow cover - days with minimum
temperature below 0 C and prec. > 0mm)
Aggregation of fire index to month scale
using forest weighting and to danger
classes
Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.de
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Forest Fires in Germany
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
Number of Fires
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
4500
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Number of Fires
Annually:
Monthly:
Fire season
Fire data from
1993-2010
(unified Germany)
Data: BLE
Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.de
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Applied Fire indices
Holsten et al. (accepted)
Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.de
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Performance test
Holsten et al. (accepted)
Mean index value vs. counts of classes (are classes better because
they capture the extremes?)
Index values vs. raw weather variables (indices should be superior to
their input variables)
Does the German modified M-68 index perform best?
Performance in this context refers to the Spearman's rank correlation
coefficient between meteorological variables (index/raw weather) and the
fire statistics (nr. fires/area burnt)
Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.de
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Correlation results
Holsten et al. (accepted)
Correlalation values for number of fires (Note: Absolute corr. values)
Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.de
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Correlation results
Holsten et al. (accepted)
Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.de
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Correlation results Brandenburg (daily)
Holsten et al. (u. revision)
Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.de
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Monthly fires in Brandenburg
Relative
humidity
(reverse!)
Official fire
statistics
FWI
(Canadian)
2 best
performing
proxies for
Brandenburg
Holsten et al. (accepted)
Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.de
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Relative: humidity increase in fire risk for all scenarios
M68 - heterogeneous pattern of risk. e.g lower in May under all scenarios, above for remaining months.
Spring fire risk remains more or less same, but strong increase in summer fire risk
Projection for Germany until 2060
Holsten et al. (accepted)
Rel. hum. Modified M-68 index
Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.de
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Large implications of forest fires call for a sound evaluation of danger indices
their role as management/warning tools (especially under a changing climate)
At monthly level for Germany we found no statistical difference between complex
fire indices and some raw input variables, namely RH.
RH proved to be a consistent proxy for number of fires across investigated
German states at monthly scales.
For Brandenburg RH alone was robust indicator at daily scales both for number
of fires and area burnt.
It remains unclear why indices that incorporate additional parameters in addition
to RH do not suffer a boost in performance.
More complex indices do not (always) imply better descriptive power!
Conclusions
Anne Holsten, holsten@pik-potsdam.de
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Foto: Andrea Booher/ FEMA News Photo
For more information see:
Holsten A., Dominic A. R., Costa L., Kropp J . (accepted): Evaluation of the
Performance of Meteorological Forest Fire Indices for German Federal States,
Forest Ecology and Management
And do not hesitate to contact us!
Foto: Andrea Booher/ FEMA News Photo