Abstract
This paper presents estimates of forest mortality from fires that occurred in the northern territories in the 21st century, based on the analysis of fire burning intensity obtained from MODIS instruments installed on satellites Terra and Aqua. A brief analysis of fire distribution and forest mortality resulting therefrom is also presented in the paper both by year and by different territories (countries). The analysis shows that from 2002 to 2021, 70 659 fires were registered in Zone 60 (the area north of 60° N) and 5997 fires were registered in Zone AC (the area north of the Arctic Circle). Moreover, 33 892 fires in Zone 60 were registered from 2002 to 2011 and 36 767 fires from 2012 to 2021; 2395 fires were registered in Zone AC from 2001 to 2011 and 3602 fires from 2012 to 2021. Between 2002 and 2021, 102 million ha of forest land were covered by fires in Zone 60 and 8 million ha in Zone AC. At the same time, more than 22 million ha of forests died in Zone 60 (they received the fifth grade of the average weighted category state in the final fire year), and over 2 million ha died in Zone AC. Over 2002–2011, 7 015 000 ha of forests died in Zone 60 (1.2 % of all forest vegetation in the zone; an average of 19.6% of the area affected by fire) and 15 372 000 ha of forests over 2012–2021 (2.6 and 23.3%, respectively); over 2002–2011, 641 thousand ha of forests died in Zone AC (2.8 and 23.7%, respectively) and 1 379 000 ha of forests over 2012–2021 (1.9 and 26.5%, respectively). The paper also presents information on forest death by territories (countries) in the analyzed zones. The presented data made it possible to draw the following preliminary conclusions: over recent decades, there have been no significant changes in the number of fires in Zone 60. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that, in 2019–2020, the number of fires in Zone AC increased drastically in Russia; in the second decade of the analyzed period, an increase in forest death from fires in the analyzed zones in Russia was observed; over the study period, no trends were observed in the ratio of the area of dead forests and total forest area in the analyzed countries; the average percentage of dead forests for the entire study period is comparable in Russia, the United States, and Canada, though it is significantly lower in Northern European countries; the same picture is observed in the ratio of dead forest area and fire affected area.
Notes
These figures are averages for the period from 2002 to 2021.
The vegetation types of the MODIS Land Cover Type Product map are used [12]: (1) evergreen needleleaf forests, (3) deciduous needleleaf forests, (5) mixed forests, (8) woody savannas.
Here and below, fires are understood not as individual places where there is fire, but as groups of places where there is fire united in space and time (places where there is fire the centers of which lie at a distance of less than 0.5 km and the registration time of which differs by no more than 5 days).
REFERENCES
Bartalev, S.A., Stytsenko, F.V., Egorov, V.A., and Loupian, E.A., Satellite-based assessment of Russian forest fire mortality, Lesovedenie, 2015, no. 2, pp. 83–94.
Bartalev, S.A., Egorov, V.A., Zharko, V.O., Loupian, E.A., Plotnikov, D.E., Khvostikov, S.A., and Shabanov, N.V., Sputnikovoe kartografirovanie rastitel’nogo pokrova Rossii (Land Cover Mapping over Russia using Earth Observation Data), Moscow: IKI RAN, 2016, 208 p. [in Russian].
Galeev, A.A., Proshin, A.A., Ershov, D.V., Tashchilin, S.A., and Mazurov, A.A., Forest fires satellite monitoring data storage management, Sovrem. Probl. Distantsionnogo Zondirovaniya Zemli Kosmosa, 2005, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 367–371.
Loupian, E.A., Proshin, A.A., Burtsev, M.A., Kashnitskii, A.V., Balashov, I.V., Bartalev, S.A., Konstantinova, A.M., Kobets, D.A., Mazurov, A.A., Marchenkov, V.V., Matveev, A.M., Radchenko, M.V., Sychugov, I.G., Tolpin, V.A., and Uvarov, I.A., Experience of development and operation of the “IKI-Monitoring” center for collective use of systems for archiving, processing and analyzing satellite data, Sovrem. Probl. Distantsionnogo Zondirovaniya Zemli Kosmosa, 2019, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 151–170. https://doi.org/10.21046/2070-7401-2019-16-3-151-170
Loupian, E.A., Stytsenko, F.V., Senko, K.S., Balashov, I.V., and Mazurov, A.A., Burnt area assessment using MODIS Collection 6 active fire data, Sovrem. Probl. Distantsionnogo Zondirovaniya Zemli Kosmosa, 2021, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 178–192. https://doi.org/10.21046/2070-7401-2021-18-4-178-192
Loupian, E.A., Lozin, D.V., Balashov, I.V., Bartalev, S.A., and Stytsenko, F.V., Study of the dependence of forest fire damage degree on burning intensity based on satellite monitoring data, Sovrem. Probl. Distantsionnogo Zondirovaniya Zemli Kosmosa, 2022, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 217–232. https://doi.org/10.21046/2070-7401-2022-19-3-217-232
Ponomarev, E.I., Shvetsov, E.G., and Usataya, Yu.O., Registration of wildfire energy characteristics in siberian forests using remote sensing, Issled. Zemli Kosmosa, 2017, no. 4, pp. 3–11. https://doi.org/10.7868/S0205961417040017
Rukovodstvo po provedeniyu sanitarno-ozdorovitel’nykh meropriyatii, utverzhdennye prikazom Rosleskhoza (Guidelines for the implementation of sanitary and recreational activities, Annex 2 to the order of Rosleskhoz), no. 523, December 29, 2007.
Stytsenko, F.V., Bartalev, S.A., Egorov, V.A., and Loupian, E.A., Post-fire forest tree mortality assessment method using MODIS satellite data, Sovrem. Probl. Distantsionnogo Zondirovaniya Zemli Kosmosa, 2013, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 254–266.
Boschetti, L. and Roy, D.P., Strategies for the fusion of satellite fire radiative power with burned area data for fire radiative energy derivation, J. Geophys. Res., 2009. vol. 114, p. D20302. https://doi.org/10.1029/2008JD011645
Bowman, D.M.J.S., Balch, J.K., Artaxo, P., Bond, W.J., Carlson, J.M., Cochrane, M.A., D’Antonio, C.M., DeFries, R.S., Doyle, J.C., Harrison, S.P., Johnston, F.H., Keeley, J.E., Krawchuk, M.A., Kull, C.A., Marston, J.B., Moritz, M.A., Prentice, I.C., Roos, C.I., Scott, A.C., Swetnam, T.W., van der Werf, G.R., and Pyne, S.J., Fire in the Earth system, Science, 2009, vol. 324, pp. 481–484.
Friedl, M. and Sulla-Menashe, D., MCD12Q1 MODIS/Terra+Aqua Land Cover Type Yearly L3 Global 500m SIN Grid V006, NASA EOSDIS Land Processes DAAC, 2019. https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MCD12Q1.006
Giglio, L., Schroeder, W., and Justice, C.O., The collection 6 MODIS active fire detection algorithm and fire products, Remote Sensing of Environment, 2016, vol. 178, pp. 31–41.
Heward, H., Alistair M.S., Smith, D., Roy, P., Wade, T., Tinkham, C., Hoffman, M., Morgan, P., and Lannom, K.O., Is burn severity related to fire intensity? Observations from landscape scale remote sensing, Int. J. Wildland Fire, 2013, vol. 22, no. 7, pp. 910–918. https://doi.org/10.1071/WF12087
Kumar, S.S., Roy, D.P., Boschetti, L., and Kremensand, R., Exploiting the power law distribution properties of satellite fire radiative power retrievals: A method to estimate fire radiative energy and biomass burned from sparse satellite observations, J. Geophys. Res., 2011, vol. 116, p. D19303. https://doi.org/10.1029/2011JD015676
Li, X.-Y., Jin, H.-J., Wang, H.-W., Marchenko, S.S., Shan, W., Luo, D.-L., He, R.-X., Spektor, V., Huang, Ya.D., Li, X.-Yu, and Jia, N., Influences of forest fires on the permafrost environment: A review, Advances in Climate Change Research, 2021, vol. 12, Issue 1, pp. 48–65.
Morgan, P., Hardy, C.C., Swetnam, T.W., Rollins, M.G., and Long, D.G., Mapping fire regimes across time and space: Understanding coarse and fine-scale fire patterns, Int. J. Wildland Fire, 2001, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 329–342.https://doi.org/10.1071/WF01032
Mottram, G.N., Wooster, M.J., Balster, H., George, C., Gerrard, F., and Beisley, J., The use of MODIS-derived Fire Radiative Power to characterise Siberian boreal forest fires, Proc. 31st Int. Symp. Remote Sensing of Environment, St. Petersburg, 2005.
Ryan K.C., Dynamic interactions between forest structure and fire behavior in boreal ecosystems, Silva Fennica, 2002, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 13–39.
Stocks, B.J., Wotton, B.M., Flannigan, M.D., Fosberg, M.A., Cahoon, D.R., and Goldammer, J.G., Boreal forest fire regimes and climate change, Remote Sensing and Climate Modeling: Synergies and Limitations, 2001, pp. 233–246. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-48149-9_10
Wooster, M.J., Zhukov, B., and Oertel, D., Fire radiative energy for quantitative study of biomass burning: Derivation from the BIRD experimental satellite and comparison to MODIS fire products, Remote Sensing of Environment, 2003, vol. 86, pp. 83–107.
Funding
The work was carried out with the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (theme “Monitoring,” state registration no. 122042500031-8). The study was carried out using the resources of the “IKI-Monitoring” Center for Collective Use [4] (http://ckp.geosmis.ru/).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
The authors of this work declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note.
Pleiades Publishing remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lozin, D.V., Loupian, E.A., Balashov, I.V. et al. Estimation of Northern Burnt Forest Mortality in the 21st Century Based on MODIS Data on Fire Intensity. Cosmic Res 61 (Suppl 1), S118–S124 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0010952523700600
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0010952523700600