Predicting Wildfire Fuels and Hazard in a Central European Temperate Forest Using Active and Passive Remote Sensing

Climate change causes more extreme droughts and heat waves in Central Europe, affecting vegetative fuels and altering the local fire regime. Wildfire is projected to expand into the temperate zone, a region traditionally not concerned by fire. To mitigate this new threat, local forest management wil...

Authors: Heisig, Johannes
Olson, Edward
Pebesma, Edzer J.
Division/Institute:FB 14: Geowissenschaften
Document types:Article
Media types:Text
Publication date:2022
Date of publication on miami:21.03.2022
Modification date:22.03.2022
Edition statement:[Electronic ed.]
Source:Fire 5 (2022) 1, 29, 1-23
Subjects:fuels; wildfire; fire behavior; fire hazard; remote sensing; LiDAR; Sentinel; modeling; simulation
DDC Subject:000: Informatik, Wissen, Systeme
550: Geowissenschaften, Geologie
License:CC BY 4.0
Language:English
Funding:Finanziert durch den Open-Access-Publikationsfonds der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU Münster).
Format:PDF document
URN:urn:nbn:de:hbz:6-64059485783
Other Identifiers:DOI: 10.17879/64059488833
Permalink:https://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:6-64059485783
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  • Digital documents:10.3390_fire5010029.pdf

    Climate change causes more extreme droughts and heat waves in Central Europe, affecting vegetative fuels and altering the local fire regime. Wildfire is projected to expand into the temperate zone, a region traditionally not concerned by fire. To mitigate this new threat, local forest management will require spatial fire hazard information. We present a holistic and comprehensible workflow for quantifying fuels and wildfire hazard through fire spread simulations. Surface and canopy fuels characteristics were sampled in a small managed temperate forest in Northern Germany. Custom fuel models were created for each dominant species (Pinus sylvestris, Fagus sylvatica, and Quercus rubra). Canopy cover, canopy height, and crown base height were directly derived from airborne LiDAR point clouds. Surface fuel types and crown bulk density (CBD) were predicted using random forest and ridge regression, respectively. Modeling was supported by 119 predictors extracted from LiDAR, Sentinel-1, and Sentinel-2 data. We simulated fire spread from random ignitions, considering eight environmental scenarios to calculate fire behavior and hazard. Fuel type classification scored an overall accuracy of 0.971 (Kappa = 0.967), whereas CBD regression performed notably weaker (RMSE = 0.069; R2 = 0.73). Higher fire hazard was identified for strong winds, low fuel moisture, and on slopes. Fires burned fastest and most frequently on slopes in large homogeneous pine stands. These should be the focus of preventive management actions.