1. Forest Fires in Europe: an overview Paulo Barbosa Joint Research Centre – European Commission Institute for Environment and Sustainability 21020 Ispra (VA), Italy http://natural-hazards.jrc.it

2. European Forest Fire Information System EFFIS Objectives: Support the existing European Commission regulation Forest Focus on forest fires Customer/users: Customer DGs: DG ENV, DG REGIO Users: Civil Protection Services, Forest Fire Services, Environmental Services

3. Fire Risk Cartography Tables Statistics Fire Risk Burnt Areas Regeneration Risk zoning Fuel/Biomass CO2 emissions Member States EC EP Modules Products: Customer and user: Common Core Database (Forest Focus) European Forest Fire Information System EFFIS

4. Common Core Database (since early 80’s) Existing information on forest fires events collected by the Countries Number of fires Fire location (commune level) Date: start (first alarm) / end Time of intervention / Time of extinction Burnt area: forest / non-forest Cause (unknown, natural, accident, deliberate)

5. Some Statistics In average around 500 000 ha burn per year throughout Southern Europe (P, E, F, I, EL). Around 96% of the fires are human caused > 50% of the fires start between 12:00 and 18:00 h > 50% of the burnt area is burned in the same period 50% of the fires have a delay of less than 15 minutes between fire detection and initial attack The average final size of a fire after an initial attack delay of 15 minutes is ~ 8 ha

12. 1’ Pre-fire (fuels mapping, risk mapping) During fire (Detection, Monitoring, smoke management ) Post-fire (Burnt Area Mapping, fire emissions) Forest Fires and Remote Sensing Applications in Europe

13. Fuel Maps: e.g. Prometheus Fuel Models

14. 1’

16. Fire Detection and monitoring AVHRR ATSR MODIS Most of these fire products show a more or less large overestimation of fire detections (false alarms) in Southern Europe They are only a sample due to reduced number of daily acquisitions

17. MSG data Channel ID BandsWavelength (µm) Bandwidth (µm) RangeSpatial Res (Km)EU HRVVisible & NIR 0.750.6 to 0.9 0 - 459 W/m2 sr µm ~ 2 VIS0.60.6350.56 to 0.71 0 - 533 W/m2 sr µm 4-6 VIS 0.80.810.74 to 0.88 0 - 357 W/m2 sr µm 4-6 IR 1.61.641.50 to 1.78 0 - 75 W/m2 sr µm 4-6 IR 3.9IR / Window3.923.48 to 4.360 - 335 K4-6 IR 8.78.708.30 to 9.100 - 300 K4-6 IR 10.810.809.80 to 11.800 - 335 K4-6 IR 12.012.0011.00 to 13.000 - 335 K4-6 IR 6.2Water vapour6.255.35 to 7.150 - 300 K4-6 IR 7.37.356.85 to 7.850 - 300 K4-6 IR 9.7IR / Ozone9.669.38 to 9.940 - 310 K4-6 IR 13.4IR / CO213.4012.40 to 14.400 - 300 K4-6

18. Detection time15 – 20 minutes15 minutes Minimum detected fire50 m 2 (0.005 ha)0.06 – 0.5 ha ? Geo-location accuracy300 – 500 meters0.5 pixels ? Alarm classificationIntensityFire Radiative Energy False alarm discrimination 5 – 15 %Diurnal Cycle+ saturation PROPERTYUSERMSG REQUIREMENT Fire Detection Requirements

19. Smoke Dispersion MSG can be used for tracking smoke dispersion MSG can be used to calibrate smoke dispersion models (SPREAD Project)

20. Burnt Area Mapping Landsat TM (> 1ha) IRS WiFS (> 50 ha) IRS AWIFS (> 5 ha) MSG…..?

21. BURNT AREA AND DAMAGE ASSESSMENT: PORTUGAL 2003 Land use Area burnt (ha)% of total burned Agriculture 4520611.9 Forest land 32300985.2 Barren 89962.4 Social 18270.5 Total 379038100.0

22. Fire emissions MSG useful for fire emission estimates? Sugested use of Fire Radiative Energy as a surrogate of Burned Biomass (Flasse, Roberts)

23. A v burned area (m 2 ) B v biomass (g m -2 ) C burning efficiency (g g -1 ) E v emission coefficient for CO 2 Regional estimates of CO2 emissions