Cargando…

Regional variation in fire weather controls the reported occurrence of Scottish wildfires

Fire is widely used as a traditional habitat management tool in Scotland, but wildfires pose a significant and growing threat. The financial costs of fighting wildfires are significant and severe wildfires can have substantial environmental impacts. Due to the intermittent occurrence of severe fire...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Davies, G. Matt, Legg, Colin J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5101601/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27833814
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2649
_version_ 1782466309536088064
author Davies, G. Matt
Legg, Colin J.
author_facet Davies, G. Matt
Legg, Colin J.
author_sort Davies, G. Matt
collection PubMed
description Fire is widely used as a traditional habitat management tool in Scotland, but wildfires pose a significant and growing threat. The financial costs of fighting wildfires are significant and severe wildfires can have substantial environmental impacts. Due to the intermittent occurrence of severe fire seasons, Scotland, and the UK as a whole, remain somewhat unprepared. Scotland currently lacks any form of Fire Danger Rating system that could inform managers and the Fire and Rescue Services (FRS) of periods when there is a risk of increased of fire activity. We aimed evaluate the potential to use outputs from the Canadian Fire Weather Index system (FWI system) to forecast periods of increased fire risk and the potential for ignitions to turn into large wildfires. We collated four and a half years of wildfire data from the Scottish FRS and examined patterns in wildfire occurrence within different regions, seasons, between urban and rural locations and according to FWI system outputs. We used a variety of techniques, including Mahalanobis distances, percentile analysis and Thiel-Sen regression, to scope the best performing FWI system codes and indices. Logistic regression showed significant differences in fire activity between regions, seasons and between urban and rural locations. The Fine Fuel Moisture Code and the Initial Spread Index did a tolerable job of modelling the probability of fire occurrence but further research on fuel moisture dynamics may provide substantial improvements. Overall our results suggest it would be prudent to ready resources and avoid managed burning when FFMC > 75 and/or ISI > 2.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-5101601
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2016
publisher PeerJ Inc.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-51016012016-11-10 Regional variation in fire weather controls the reported occurrence of Scottish wildfires Davies, G. Matt Legg, Colin J. PeerJ Biodiversity Fire is widely used as a traditional habitat management tool in Scotland, but wildfires pose a significant and growing threat. The financial costs of fighting wildfires are significant and severe wildfires can have substantial environmental impacts. Due to the intermittent occurrence of severe fire seasons, Scotland, and the UK as a whole, remain somewhat unprepared. Scotland currently lacks any form of Fire Danger Rating system that could inform managers and the Fire and Rescue Services (FRS) of periods when there is a risk of increased of fire activity. We aimed evaluate the potential to use outputs from the Canadian Fire Weather Index system (FWI system) to forecast periods of increased fire risk and the potential for ignitions to turn into large wildfires. We collated four and a half years of wildfire data from the Scottish FRS and examined patterns in wildfire occurrence within different regions, seasons, between urban and rural locations and according to FWI system outputs. We used a variety of techniques, including Mahalanobis distances, percentile analysis and Thiel-Sen regression, to scope the best performing FWI system codes and indices. Logistic regression showed significant differences in fire activity between regions, seasons and between urban and rural locations. The Fine Fuel Moisture Code and the Initial Spread Index did a tolerable job of modelling the probability of fire occurrence but further research on fuel moisture dynamics may provide substantial improvements. Overall our results suggest it would be prudent to ready resources and avoid managed burning when FFMC > 75 and/or ISI > 2. PeerJ Inc. 2016-11-02 /pmc/articles/PMC5101601/ /pubmed/27833814 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2649 Text en ©2016 Davies and Legg http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Biodiversity
Davies, G. Matt
Legg, Colin J.
Regional variation in fire weather controls the reported occurrence of Scottish wildfires
title Regional variation in fire weather controls the reported occurrence of Scottish wildfires
title_full Regional variation in fire weather controls the reported occurrence of Scottish wildfires
title_fullStr Regional variation in fire weather controls the reported occurrence of Scottish wildfires
title_full_unstemmed Regional variation in fire weather controls the reported occurrence of Scottish wildfires
title_short Regional variation in fire weather controls the reported occurrence of Scottish wildfires
title_sort regional variation in fire weather controls the reported occurrence of scottish wildfires
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5101601/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27833814
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2649
work_keys_str_mv AT daviesgmatt regionalvariationinfireweathercontrolsthereportedoccurrenceofscottishwildfires
AT leggcolinj regionalvariationinfireweathercontrolsthereportedoccurrenceofscottishwildfires