Wildfires

What is wildfire?

Wildfires are unplanned fires that occur in wildlands such as forest, rangelands or grasslands. They can occur naturally (ignited by lightning), or be caused by human activities such as campfires, faulty power lines, and burning crop residues. Other than those ignition sources, wildfires also need fuels and the proper meteorological condition to start and spread.

Fuels refer to anything that can burn, trees, bushes, grasses, fallen leaves. The availability of fuel is determined in large part by management practices and ecosystem processes and . For example, deforestation leaves behind slash, which are highly inflammable. Expansion of fire-resistant invasive annual grasses is one of the dominant factor in largely increasing the number, frequency, and severity of rangeland wildfires in the Northwest.

Meteorological conditions, specifically high temperature, low humidity, and wind play a significant role in triggering and sustaining a fire.

• Low Humidity: Low humidity levels dry out vegetation, making it more susceptible to ignition and promoting the rapid spread of fires.
• High Temperatures: Hot temperatures contribute to the drying of vegetation, creating favorable conditions for fires.
• Wind: Wind can carry embers over long distances, accelerate the spread of flames, and make firefighting efforts more challenging.

Wildfires under climate change

Wildfire activities have significantly increased in the past decades in Alaska and the western United States. Statistics show that the number of large fire occurrences, fire extent, fire severity, and fire season length have all increased since 1980. These changes are closely related to climate change both directly and indirectly.

Climate change drives increase in fire activity directly by inducing higher temperatures, reduced winter snowpack, earlier snowmelt, decreased summer precipitation, and increased evaporation. These conditions creates a more favorable condition for the start and spread of wildfires.

Indirectly, climate change drives those changes in wildfire by changing the ecosystems. For example, climate change degrades forest, creates conditions that favor the expansion of fire-resistant invasive species, and promotes beetle outbreaks that have killed millions of acres of trees and resulted in more flammable fuels.

As climate change continues, we can expect wildfire activity to increase, with rising temperatures and persistent droughts affecting wildland ecosystems​.

Impacts of wildfire

Wildfires have significant impacts on environment, human health, and infrastructure. (Drought has extensive impacts across multiple sectors, affecting ecosystems, agriculture, water resources, energy production, commerce, public health, and infrastructure stability.)

• Public Health Wildfire smoke, which contains various air pollutants, poses a major public health risk, primarily due to particulate matter (PM2.5). Inhalation of smoke and this fine particulate matter produced by wildfires causes respiratory issues. These issues can range from irritation of the respiratory system (nose, mouth, throat, and lungs) to serious problems like bronchitis or asthma. The lack of oxygen from inhaling smoke, humans can experience serious cardiovascular issues, including heart attack or heart failure, because of wildfires.
• Ecosystem and Biodiversity Wildfires will likely change the forests composition. Frequent fires can hinder the regeneration of certain tree species, allowing shrubs and grasses to dominate for extended periods. Frequent fire will also likely reduce the abundance of shade-tolerant species and gradually lead to forests dominated by fire-resistant species, such as Douglas-fir and western larch, instead of fire-susceptible species like western hemlock and subalpine fir. Additionally, increase in fire frequency will also likely result in more young forests as older, late-successional forests burn. Frequent fires will likely replace native plants by invasive annual grassland as invasive grasses produce many seeds and can reestablish more quickly after a wildfire. All these changes will change the number and composition of animal species that depend on forests or grasslands as their habitat, which, in turn, may affect the cultural values, as well as the experience of hunters, anglers, and recreationalists.

• Livestock: Wildfires impact livestock by disrupting grazing rotations, stocking rates, and rangeland management. They directly damage grazing land, often leading to the closure of public grazing allotments for several years to allow for restoration. This forces ranchers and rangeland managers to find alternative, often costly and time-consuming, sources of summer forage. Additionally, wildfires promote the expansion of invasive annual grasses, which outcompete native grasses that provide late-season forage, further reducing the availability of palatable forage for livestock.
• Water resources Wildfires can contaminate water quality and impact water supply within watersheds.They bring more sediments, eroded soil, ashes and debris from fires, as well as heavy metals and toxins into nearby water sources. These substances pollute the water and make it unsafe for human or animal consumption, as well as disrupt or destroy aquatic life. Additionally, decreased vegetation increases runoff, reduces groundwater recharge, and diminishes overall water availability.
• Buildings and other key infrastructures Though started in the wildland, wildfires can easily spread and cause large damages to both residential and industrial infrastructures. For example, the Camp Fire occurred in Northern California in November 2018 destroyed more than 18,000 structures, including nearly 14,000 homes, and significant damage to critical infrastructure such as power lines, roads, and communication networks. Roads and highways can also be impacted by the heat, flames, and falling debris and became impassable.
• Power and Energy Wildfires severely impact the power and energy sector in several ways. This includes directly damaging or destroying energy infrastructure as power lines, power plants, transformers, and substations, as well as disrupting the operation by Public Safety Power Shutoffs. In California and Oregon, electric utilities have on several occasions responded to hot, dry, windy conditions by shutting off power to hundreds of thousands of households and businesses to reduce fire risk. Although these shutdowns are shown to be effective in reducing the likelihood of ignition, they are extremely costly, causing businesses and schools to close, perishable foods to spoil as refrigerators turn off, and medical devices to fail without power. One study estimated that a shutoff event in October 2019 cost California’s economy up to $2.5 billion.
• Tourism

Energy Availability: Efforts to prevent wildfires have recently begun to disrupt energy systems. In California and Oregon, electric utilities have on several occasions responded to hot, dry, windy conditions by shutting off power to hundreds of thousands of households and businesses to reduce fire risk. These power shutdowns may be prudent when fire danger is very high, and they have shown to be effective in reducing the likelihood of ignitions. Nonetheless, they are extremely costly, causing businesses and schools to close, perishable foods to spoil as refrigerators turn off, and medical devices to fail without power. One study estimated that a shutoff event in October 2019 cost California’s economy up to $2.5 billion. While so far power supply shutoffs have primarily been a Californian phenomenon, Portland General Electric cut power to more than 5,000 Oregonians in September 2020 due to wildfire weather conditions. https://www.rff.org/publications/explainers/wildfires-in-the-united-states-101-context-and-consequences/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwnqK1BhBvEiwAi7o0X9o9JiR0FosBDhlEjtxrMTGOAPnjBBk_R6gyJg7bLhilmJ-rda85YxoCzT8QAvD_BwE

3. Property: Loss of Property, Crops, Animals, Resources https://wfca.com/wildfire-articles/negative-effects-of-wildfires/

One of the most significant negative effects of wildfires is the loss of land and property, including homes, crops, animals, and resources.

In the United States, wildfires burn an average of 7.4 million acres annually. In 2020, nearly 18,000 structures were destroyed because of wildfire, and 54% of those were residences.5

Not included in that statistic is the number of pets, agricultural crops, and other types of property loss that people living and working in the wake of the wildfire devastation have experienced.

Impacts to rangeland carbon sequestration potential: The combination of the invasive grass-fire cycle and the loss of woody plants like sagebrush suggest that less carbon can be stored in annual grass-dominated ecosystems than sagebrush systems. Conversion of deep-rooted perennial systems to shallow-rooted annual grasses can result in the loss of persistent below-ground carbon. Because most of the carbon stored in rangeland systems is stored in the soil, losing below-ground carbon has serious implications for rangeland carbon storage potential.

Carbon Emissions: By burning through carbon-rich forests and grasslands, wildfires can emit an enormous amount of carbon dioxide, methane, and carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. While wildfires are essential for ecosystem function in many western ecosystems, recent increases in western wildfire activity have yielded increased emissions. In 2020, wildfires in California alone emitted an estimated 112 million metric tons of carbon dioxide—roughly the same annual emissions as 24.2 million cars. Because they emit so much carbon dioxide, wildfires and climate change can enter into a feedback loop; climate change creates more intense wildfires, which then emit more greenhouse gases, which then makes climate change worse. https://www.rff.org/publications/explainers/wildfires-in-the-united-states-101-context-and-consequences/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwnqK1BhBvEiwAi7o0X9o9JiR0FosBDhlEjtxrMTGOAPnjBBk_R6gyJg7bLhilmJ-rda85YxoCzT8QAvD_BwE

fire-weather: https://www.nwcg.gov/publications/pms437/weather/critical-fire-weather

Wildfire-related risk analysis

Wildfire data

Historical data

Real-time monitoring data

Forecast data (or called "daily to seasonal scale forecast")

Future projection

https://uw.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=9c0f8668f47c4773b56c9b9ae6c301e3

https://uw.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=9c0f8668f47c4773b56c9b9ae6c301e3

The Rangeland Analysis Platform is an online tool that visualizes and analyzes vegetation data (including annual forb and grass coverage) for the United States, including the Northwest.

Great Basin Rangeland Fire Probability Map represents the relative probability of large (> 1,000 acres) rangeland fire given an ignition in a given year. Maps are updated yearly.

FuelCast provides monthly fuel and fire forecasts during the growing season to help users stay up to date on fire danger. It is updated monthly during the growing season.

Data Sources

The full set of wildfire frequency and burned acreage data in Figures 1 and 2 comes from the National Interagency Fire Center, which compiles wildfire reports sent from local, state, and federal entities that are involved in fighting fires. These data are available online at: www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics. Additional data were provided by the U.S. Forest Service based on a different set of records, referred to as Smokey Bear Reports. Burn severity data, state-by-state acreage totals, and monthly acreage data in Figures 3 through 7 come from the MTBS multi-agency project, which maintains a database of wildfire events across the United States. These data are publicly available at: www.mtbs.gov/direct-download.https://www.mtbs.gov/direct-download

Wildfire Data Analysis

U.S. Wildfire statistics:

• Wildfires and Acres (burned areas and number of fires)
• Suppression Cost
• (Incident management situation report) by National Interagency Coordination Center has a lot of statistics. LLM or even some simple coding is useful in extracting this resources

Global fire statistics:

• burned area by country
• number of fires by country
• seasonal trend

Geospatial Data:

• Active fires (MODIS and VIIRS)
• Burnt Areas (MODIS and VIIRS NRT)
• Monthly and seasonal forecast of temperature and precipitation by regions
• Fire danger forecast (+1 day)
• Historical data:
• ourworldindata
• combined wildfire datasets for the US and certain territories 1878-2019
• wildfire risk data: EFFIS Wildfire Risk Viewer (copernicus.eu)
• EU and LAC collaboration

Fire forecast:

• fire weather outlook
• 7-day fire potential forecast
• 7-day fire outlook; documentation of the fire potential model
• fire danger forecast by USGS
  • fire potential index
  • 7-day forecast

Current Situation Viewer: [1]

Resources:

• National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC)
  • Description: Provides comprehensive information on wildfire management and coordination among various agencies in the United States, including useful maps of the historical and current fires.
• U.S. Forest Service (USFS)
  • Description: Offers extensive resources on wildfire prevention, suppression, and research, including detailed reports and data.
• Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
  • Description: Uses satellite data to provide near real-time active fire data and tools for monitoring wildfires globally.
• Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS): A joint initiative by the European Commission and partners providing global wildfire information, including risk assessments, historical data, and monitoring tools.
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Wildfire
  • Description: Offers information on wildfire weather, satellite imagery, and forecasting tools to support wildfire management and research.
• EPA
• USDA

The Wildfire dataset encompasses occurrences of wildfires across the USA spanning from 2000 to 2023. The dataset includes information on the total count of deaths and the number of individuals affected, providing quantitative insights.

Sample Data

Disaster Type	Disaster Subype	Location	Total Deaths	Total Affected
Wildfire	Forest fire	Gainesville, Alachua areas (Alachua district, Florida province), Lafayette, Gulf districts (Florida province)	0	600
Wildfire	Forest fire	Los Alamos, Rio Arriba, Sandoval, Santa Fe districts (New Mexico province)	0	25400
Wildfire	Forest fire	Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, Florida, North Dakota provinces	14	1000

Access the whole dataset here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L_EbjiHZYTChjEllwEG0LX_4HavbomD3/edit#gid=1887285575

Deaths and Affected numbers on the basis of different Climatological disasters in USA from 2000-2023

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References

1. https://climatedata.imf.org/