Influence of Environmental Conditions on the Susceptibility of the Territories to the Occurence of Forest Fires: Forest Fire Danger

Introduction

Forests are to be an important element of a country's natural resource potential and play a diverse role. The Russian Federation accounts for over a quarter of all world timber reserves (82 billion m3), more than two thirds of its territory is covered by forests of various composition.

Annually, forest fires occur in various regions of the Federation, posing a danger to people, settlements, animals and birds. Fires cover large areas, often hundreds of thousands of hectares, leading to the burning of millions of hectares of forest, including those covered with valuable coniferous species. In the massive fires there is a large-scale smoke, which disrupts the operation of air, water and road transport. Smoky clouds slow the ripening of crops. There is a burnout of settlements. Appealing to ambulance is increasing, and the mortality rate rises sharply. All this causes enormous economic, environmental and social damage to regions and countries.

Several thousand people from the Ministry of Emergency Situations and Forest Protection and hundreds of different vehicles, including aviation, are involved in the fight against fire. With the transfer of the forest fund to tenants, the involvement of forest areas into economic circulation, the increasing of number of loggers, expeditions, tourists and collectors of forest products there is an increase in fire danger in all federal districts of Russia. Therefore, the task of identifying the main factors of predisposition of the territory to the occurrence of forest fires and the development of new methods of prevention are particularly relevant for the foreseeable future. The reduction of ecosystems' burning becomes a major contribution of researchers to the preservation of forest resources and the protection of nature of the Russian Federation.

The aim of the research is to identify the common global and regional patterns of the forest fires’ occurrence and course.

To achieve this goal, the following tasks are solved to:

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  Determine the number and types of forest fires, the burned-out area at different territorial levels (country, region, administrative region)

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  Reveal the role of the regional environmental conditions on the predisposition of the territory to forest fires

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  Differentiate the regional and seasonal pyrogenic situation of the region, its temperature, the amount of precipitation and wind strength

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  Assess the environmental consequences and financial losses from fires

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  Propose some modern preventive measures for the burning forests reduce, worsen the state of forest stands, increasing their productivity, sustainability and diversity

The object of our research is the statistical material as for the forest fires, presented on the official websites of different countries. Information on the forest fund and fires that have been obtained from forestry’s inventory materials of all the 85 subjects of the Russian Federation. The forest fund of the Russian Federation, which amounts to 1172 million ha, is characterized by a timber stock of 81.3 billion m3 and an average of annual growth, that is about 931 million m3 (Kovyazin, Romanchikov, Pasko, 2015). Information as for the forest management gives an idea of ​​the country's forest complex, it is updated every 10 years and is placed in special collections (Moved from below).

Research methods: collection of statistical information on forest fires from the official websites of countries and regions of Russia; structural and comparative analysis of statistical data; literary sources and media materials review; studying the reports of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Ministry of Defense and the Russian Guard of Russia and the main forestry’s documents as for the fires in Tomsk Region - “Books of forest fires”.