4.6 Article

Extreme fire weather is the major driver of severe bushfires in southeast Australia

Journal

SCIENCE BULLETIN
Volume 67, Issue 6, Pages 655-664

Publisher

ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2021.10.001

Keywords

Remote sensing; Forest fires; Climate drivers; Burnt area modelling; Machine learning; Southeast Australia

Funding

  1. National Natural Science Foundation of China [42088101, 42030605]
  2. research project: Towards an Operational Fire Early Warning System for Indonesia (TOFEWSI)
  3. UK's National Environment Research Council/Newton Fund on behalf of the UK Research Innovation [NE/P014801/1]
  4. Natural Science Foundation of Qinghai [2021-HZ-811]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Forest fires in southeast Australian temperate forests have significant impacts on socio-economic factors, human health, greenhouse gas emissions, and biodiversity. By developing a machine-learning diagnostic model, this study identified the driving factors of forest fires and provided useful guidance for decision-makers to prepare for upcoming fire seasons.
In Australia, the proportion of forest area that burns in a typical fire season is less than for other vegetation types. However, the 2019-2020 austral spring-summer was an exception, with over four times the previous maximum area burnt in southeast Australian temperate forests. Temperate forest fires have extensive socio-economic, human health, greenhouse gas emissions, and biodiversity impacts due to high fire intensities. A robust model that identifies driving factors of forest fires and relates impact thresholds to fire activity at regional scales would help land managers and fire-fighting agencies prepare for potentially hazardous fire in Australia. Here, we developed a machine-learning diagnostic model to quantify nonlinear relationships between monthly burnt area and biophysical factors in southeast Australian forests for 2001-2020 on a 0.25 degrees grid based on several biophysical parameters, notably fire weather and vegetation productivity. Our model explained over 80% of the variation in the burnt area. We identified that burnt area dynamics in southeast Australian forest were primarily controlled by extreme fire weather, which mainly linked to fluctuations in the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), with a relatively smaller contribution from the central Pacific El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Our fire diagnostic model and the non-linear relationships between burnt area and environmental covariates can provide useful guidance to decision-makers who manage preparations for an upcoming fire season, and model developers working on improved early warning systems for forest fires. (C) 2021 Science China Press. Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science China Press.

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