The chapter presents the results of research in the Republic of Buryatia, where the number and area of fires have increased over the past 20 years due to the rise in temperature and aridity. Most of the fires are registered in the large river valleys where pine forests are formed, which have low soil moisture capacity. Fewer fires occurred on the Eastern Sayans, Khamar-Daban ridges, and the Stanovoye Highlands, where the precipitation maximum falls. A correlation analysis was carried out between meteorological parameters and fires in climate-contrasting forests. The lack of precipitation at the end of the previous summer, combined with the hot and dry spring weather of the current year, have a significant impact on fires in the arid ecosystems of the Transbaikal middle mountains. In the humid coastal climate of the Eastern Baikal region, the high temperature of the air determines the fires, but there is no precipitation.
TopIntroduction
A forest fire is a spontaneous, uncontrolled spread of fire across forest areas. Fires have serious negative consequences not only for the biosphere and the ecology of the Earth, but also for human health (Teakles et al., 2017). They destroy forest (Wastl et al., 2013, Barbero, Abatzoglou, Larkin, Kolden, & Stocks, 2015, De Vicente & Crespo, 2012), burning a huge mass of organic matter, emit a significant amount of smoke (Yao et al, 2018), combustion gases (Adame et al., 2018) and aerosols (Zhao, Kooperman, Pritchard, Russell, & Somerville, 2014), thereby increasing the “greenhouse effect.” Besides the fact that fires adversely affect the biota covered, they can change the physicochemical characteristics of the soil (Kelly, Montgomery, & Reid, 2008) and cause significant economic damage (San-Miguel-Ayanz, Moreno, Camia, 2013).
The problem of forest fires has a global scale. The study of this problem has attracted the attention of scientists from Spain (Bedia, Herrera, & Gutierrez, 2014, De la Cueva, Quintana, & Canellas, 2012), Greece (Papadopoulos, Paschalidou, Kassomenos, & McGregor, 2013, Koutsias et al., 2013), Switzerland (Wastl, Schunk, Leuchner, Pezzatti, & Menzel, 2012), Portugal (Parente, Pereira, Amraoui, & Fischer, 2018), India (Kale et al., 2017), Bolivia (Heyer, Power, Field, & van Marle, 2018), South Africa (Strydom & Savage, 2017), USA and Canada (Feltman, Straka, Post, & Sperry, 2012, Shabbar, Skinner, & Flannigan, 2011, Girardin, 2010), Germany (Holsten, Dominic, Costa, & Kropp, 2013), South Korea (Won, S. Lee, M. Lee, & Ohga, 2010), China (Liu et al., 2016), of course, Russia (Zdereva, & Vinogradova, 2009) and others.
Recently, there has been a surge of extremely devastating fires with corresponding social upheavals and significant economic costs. Although most fires are anthropogenic in nature (Kale et al., 2017, Heyer et al., 2018), favorable conditions are necessary for ignition. The occurrence of fires most often falls on the warm period of the year. For a relevant fire danger assessment, data on temperature and relative air humidity (Matsoukis, Kamoutsis, & Chronopoulos, 2018), precipitation, dry days (Kale et al., 2017), heat waves (Parente et al, 2018), wind (Rolinski et al., 2016), and, in addition, soil drought (Zink et al., 2016) is necessary. A favorable combination of these parameters can provide forest dry fuel and necessary conditions for fire, often caused by lightning of dry thunderstorms (Liu et al., 2016) and anthropogenic impact (Guo et al., 2015).
Thus, the weather is the most volatile and the biggest driving force before the occurrence and spread of fires (Abatzoglou, & Kolden, 2013). The optimal conditions for fires are hot weather, dry fuel and sources of ignition (Moritz, Morais, Summerell, Carlson, & Doyle, 2005).