Climate change driven changes of vegetation fires in the Czech Republic
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Climate change driven changes of vegetation fires in the Czech Republic Martin Mozny 1,2 & Miroslav Trnka 2,3 & Rudolf Brázdil 2,4 Received: 18 April 2019 / Accepted: 15 October 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract With rising temperatures and decreasing soil water, the frequency of vegetation fires is increasing globally. We analyzed the impact of climate change on the frequency of vegetation fires that required intervention by the Czech Fire Rescue Service in the Czech Republic between 1971 and 2015. We analyzed spatial patterns across administrative regions and evaluated the role of climate and other contributing factors that could explain spatiotemporal shifts during the study period. Our study has shown that the frequency of vegetation fires has increased most in the warmest and driest areas of the Czech Republic countryside. The increase between 1991 and 2015 is about 70% in comparison with the 1971–1990 period. In all administrative regions, a statistically significant relationship of the frequency of vegetation fires and weather conditions has been demonstrated. In all regions of the study area, extreme occurrences of vegetation fires were due to a combination of drought and heat waves. We conclude that population growth at the wildland-urban interface causes a greater frequency of vegetation fires. However, the main reason for the statistically significant increase in the frequency of vegetation fires is the ongoing climate change, manifested by an increase in values of the Fire Danger Index and heat wave occurrence.
1 Introduction Vegetation fires (considered in this study as any uncontrolled vegetation fires) in countryside and forested areas represent an immense worldwide problem. Global maps of vegetation fires (Giglio et al. 2006) show large-scale widespread fire zones throughout the world (Hayasaka et al. 2016). Between 1997 and 2011, these fires burned approximately 301 to 377 Mha of vegetation (Giglio et al. 2013). Vegetation fires occur frequently in periods of drought, high temperatures, low humidity, and windy weather. The risk of such fires is significantly affected by the type of vegetation and conditions for their ignition. Weather condition has been * Martin Mozny [email protected] 1
Doksany Observatory, Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, Doksany 105, 411 82 Doksany, Czech Republic
2
Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Bělidla 986/4b, 603 00 Brno, Czech Republic
3
Institute of Agrosystems and Bioclimatology, Mendel University in Brno, Zemědělská 1, 613 00 Brno, Czech Republic
4
Institute of Geography, Masaryk University, Kotlářská 2, 611 37 Brno, Czech Republic
the most important variable and largest driver of regional burned areas (Flannigan and Harrington 1988; Pook and Gill 1993; Bessie and Johnson 1995; Flannigan et al. 2005; Littell et al. 2009; Abatzoglou and Kolden 2013). Increasing air temperatures and greater frequency of regional droughts in the recent decades have elevated the risk
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