Characterizing Fire Activity in Eastern Mediterranean Europe by Surface
Temperature and Soil Moisture Variability
Abstract
Being an agent of environmental hazard, wild fire is a major concern,
especially in Mediterranean countries, where warm and dry summers may
lead to high levels of vegetation stress. Vegetation fire, whether
caused naturally or by humans, its widespread and occurrence depends on
land cover (LC) type and state, climate and meteorological conditions,
land use. The main concern of the study is quantification the physical
processes related to vulnerability of biomass burning across the
climatic gradient for Eastern Mediterranean Europe (Bulgaria) using
satellite information, ground observations and model outputs for land
surface state. Sixteen years (2004-2019) satellite data from LSASAF
FRP-PIXEL product at MSG resolution were processed in order to determine
the distribution of vegetation fires for the most risky period
July-September. The work examines the relationships of wildfire
statistics (number of fires and radiative energy released) to surface
temperature (according LSASAF LST product), and soil moisture
availability, SMA (according SVAT model) as energy-moisture related
climate variables. Regression analyses for the main aggregated
vegetation types (forest, shrubs, cultivated) reveal statistically
significant dependences: - In short-term climatic aspect: a high
correlation between monthly mean positive LST anomalies and fire
activity as well as negative correlation between SMA anomalies and fire
activity; - In long-term climatic aspect: the contribution of different
LC types for fire activity is considered. Identified specific fire
regime with location of spots with highest fire activity provides
knowledge about fire-climate relations on a regional scale, which is
important to define more risky regions as well as for projection the
effects of global environmental change.