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Forecasting the Danger of the Forest Fire Season in North-West Patagonia, Argentina

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Applied Geomorphology and Contemporary Issues

Part of the book series: Geography of the Physical Environment ((GEOPHY))

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Abstract

An average of 1300 forest fires are officially reported in Argentina annually, triggered either by natural or intentional causes. Once an outbreak has started, topographic and vegetation (fuel) conditions and the weather situation determine the fire behavior. The general evolution of fire danger can be monitored through the Fire Weather Index (FWI), part of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS). This indicator was successfully implemented in Argentina since the beginning of 2000. It is based on temperature, relative humidity, wind intensity, and precipitation. Among its advantages, it allows evaluating the possibility of fire ignition, intensity, and spreading. The objective of this work is to achieve a characterization of the danger of the different forest fire seasons in the northern Argentinean Patagonian mountain range, based on Bariloche station data, using the FWI and find a method to forecast the danger. For this purpose, the index was related to atmospheric circulation and sea surface temperature patterns that dominate the region before and during the fire season, using the correlation method. It allowed defining predictors that were used to generate some statistical models, to predict the dangerousness of the future seasons. Sea surface temperatures, anomalies of wind, and the Antarctic Oscillation were the best predictors for this purpose. Some derived statistical models are very useful tools to improve the decision-making regarding the coming fire seasons in this particular area. The incorporation of non-linear techniques seems to improve the efficiency of linear regression models.

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Acknowledgements

Meteorological data to calculate were provided by the National Meteorological Service of Argentina. Large scale variables were obtained from the NCEP-NCAR reanalysis. Images were provided by the NOAA/ESRL Physical Sciences Laboratory, Boulder Colorado from their Web site at http://psl.noaa.gov/. This research was supported by UBACYT 2020-2022 20020190100090BA and UBACYT 2017-2019 20020160100009BA projects.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Servicio Nacional de Manejo del Fuego, Ministerio de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible de la Nación, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Ezequiel A. Marcuzzi

  2. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Departamento de Ciencias de la Atmósfera y los Océanos, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Marcela Hebe González

  3. Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA), CONICET—Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Marcela Hebe González

  4. CNRS-IRD-CONICET-UBA, Instituto Franco-Argentino para el Estudio del Clima y sus Impactos (UMI 3351 IFAECI), Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Marcela Hebe González

  5. UNPSJB—Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia San Juan Bosco, Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina

    Ezequiel A. Marcuzzi & María del Carmen Dentoni

Authors
  1. Ezequiel A. Marcuzzi
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  2. Marcela Hebe González
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  3. María del Carmen Dentoni
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marcela Hebe González .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Diamond Harbour Women’s University, Diamond Harbour, West Bengal, India

    Sujit Mandal

  2. Department of Geography and Environment Management, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal, India

    Ramkrishna Maiti

  3. Department of Hydrology and Hydrodynamics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland

    Michael Nones

  4. Department of Geography, Environment of Science and Planning, University of Swaziland, Swaziland, Eswatini

    Heinz R. Beckedahl

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Marcuzzi, E.A., González, M.H., del Carmen Dentoni, M. (2022). Forecasting the Danger of the Forest Fire Season in North-West Patagonia, Argentina. In: Mandal, S., Maiti, R., Nones, M., Beckedahl, H.R. (eds) Applied Geomorphology and Contemporary Issues. Geography of the Physical Environment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04532-5_13

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