Scientific publications

Fire vulnerability characteristics of forests in the region depending on the type of geographical landscape (average size ca. 100,000 ha) and locality (ca. 10,000 ha) are considered. This parameter varies in different types of landscapes. We found that the main factor for fire vulnerability is the typological structure of forest areas. The spatial arrangement of forest sites with different frequency and scope of fires also matters a lot. It is demonstrated that one forest type is in contact with various other types along its periphery (a chart for a mid-taiga bilberry pine forest is provided as an example). Hence the different risk of fire reaching into the forest and, accordingly, the different frequency of fires. Landscape-based zoning of forests by fire vulnerability was carried out with Karelia as the example. A more detailed spatial differentiation (at the locality level) was made for a sample polygon. An obvious factor to be taken into account is the highly variable annual combination of weather conditions in the high-fire-risk period, e.g. from very wet to very dry. Depending on these conditions, the area affected by wildfire in Karelia alone may vary from several hundreds of hectares to several tens of thousands. Having a zonation of the region at the landscape and sublandscape levels by forest fire hazard one can expediently allocate and distribute the facilities for fire prevention, detection and fighting. It is wiser to concentrate them in those landscapes where the risk of fire ignition and dispersal is the highest, rather than to spread them “evenly” across the entire region. The latter consideration is especially important from the economic point of view (costs), since there will be little demand for such facilities in low fire risk areas.