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Forestry Department Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Forestry Department Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Forest Protection Working Papers Guidelines on Fire Management in Temperate and Boreal Forests November 2002 Forest Resources Development Service Working Paper FPF/1 Forest Resources Division FAO, Rome, Italy Forestry Department Disclaimer The Forest Protection Working Papers report on issues addressed in the work programme of FAO. These working papers do not reflect any official position of FAO. Please refer to the FAO website (www.fao.org/forestry) for official information. The purpose of these papers is to provide early information on on-going activities and programmes, and to stimulate discussion. Comments and feedback are welcome. For further information please contact: Mr. Mike Jurvélius, Forestry Officer (Forest Fire Management) Ms. Christel Palmberg-Lerche, Chief Forest Resources Development Service Forest Resources Division, Forestry Department FAO Viale delle Terme di Caracalla I-00100 Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected] [email protected] or: FAO Publications and Information Coordinator: [email protected] The present paper is based on work carried out by a team of experts working under the overall coordination of FAO and the Global Fire Monitoring Center, Germany. Members from the FAO/ECE/ILO Team of Specialists on Forest Fire and associated experts also contributed to the development of this Working Paper: Special thanks are due to Cornelius de Ronde (SILVA Forest Services, South Africa), Brian J. Stocks (Canadian Forest Service), Eduard P. Davidenko (National Aerial Forest Fire Center Avialesookhrana, Russian Federation), and Johann G. Goldammer (Global Fire Monitoring Center, Germany). The following scientists contributed to the Fire Management Options tables in ANNEX III: Norman L. Christensen (Duke University, U.S.A.), Stanislav N. Sannikov (Institute of Forest, Ural Division of Russian Academy, Russian Federation), Valentin V. Furyaev, Anatoly I. Sukhinin, Peter Tsvetkov and Luda Zlobina (Forest Fire Laboratory, Sukachev Institute for Forest, Russian Academy of Sciences, Siberian Branch). For quotation: FAO (2002). Guidelines on Fire Management in Temperate and Boreal Forests. Forest Protection Working Papers, Working Paper FP/1/E. Forest Resources Development Service, Forest Resources Division. FAO, Rome (unpublished). © FAO 2002 2 1. Preface........................................................................................................................................ 4 2. Fire Ecology and Fire Management Principles: Selected examples............................. 6 2.1 Fire Management in Temperate Africa........................................................................... 6 2.2 Fire Management in Temperate South America............................................................. 9 2.3 Fire Management in Temperate Australasia................................................................. 10 2.4 Forest Fire Management in Canada .............................................................................. 12 3. Fire Management in Plantation Forestry (Tables 1b, 2b and 3b).............................. 16 3.1. External Fire Protection................................................................................................ 16 3.2. Internal Fire Protection ................................................................................................. 17 3.3. Using Slash Burning, or Prescribed Burning inside Plantation Stands, as Fuel Management Measures.............................................................................................................. 17 3.4. Fire Application in Heritage Areas and Nature Reserves............................................. 18 3.5. Wildfire Bufferzoning and other Fire Protection Techniques ...................................... 18 4. Fire Management in Rural Areas.................................................................................. 19 4.1 Regulating Fire Application and Grazing in Rural Areas............................................. 19 5. Remote Sensing of Vegetation Fires and its Contribution to a Fire Management Information System .................................................................................................................... 21 5.1 Introduction to Remote Sensing ................................................................................... 21 5.2 Remote Sensing Products for Fire Management .......................................................... 22 5.3 Implementing Remote Sensing in a Fire Management Context ................................... 25 6. Fire Protection Planning, Regional Integration and Fire Danger Rating................. 26 6.1 Fire Protection Planning ............................................................................................... 26 Level....................................................................................................................................... 29 6.2 Regional Integrated Fire Protection.............................................................................. 30 6.3 Fire Danger Rating........................................................................................................ 34 7. Fire Detection and Control ............................................................................................ 35 7.1 Fire Detection............................................................................................................... 35 7.2 Fire Preparedness, Dispatching, and Co-operative Schemes........................................ 37 7.3 Incident Command System........................................................................................... 40 8. Fire Insurance, Economics and Training ..................................................................... 42 8.1 Fire Insurance............................................................................................................... 42 8.2 Fire Protection Economics............................................................................................ 42 8.3 Training Issues.............................................................................................................. 42 9. International Wildland Fire Cooperation .................................................................... 43 APPENDIX I ............................................................................................................................... 44 Fire Management Options Tables ............................................................................................. 44 APPENDIX II.............................................................................................................................. 59 APPENDIX III ............................................................................................................................ 62 APPENDIX IV ............................................................................................................................ 63 APPENDIX V.............................................................................................................................. 75 3 FAO GUIDELINES on FIRE MANAGEMENT in TEMPERATE AND BOREAL FORESTS 1. Preface Destructive wildfires have been increasing in occurrence across global temperate and boreal zones during the past two decades. These fire outbreaks are the result of increasing human populations and land-use change. Conversely, societies have become more vulnerable to the direct damages caused by wildfires and the consequences of secondary disasters occurring after forest destruction by fire. On the other hand, it has become common knowledge that, in the history of boreal forests and in some temperate forest types, natural (lightning) fires and traditional burning practices of humans have significantly shaped stable forest ecosystems. Changing fire regimes as a consequence of forest use are often associated with forest and site degradation. In addition, burning of forests and other vegetation exert impacts at different levels on local, regional, and global environments. Smoke from large-scale wildfires also reduces the safety of air, land and coastal marine traffic, with attendant human health problems. Fires in the interface between wildlands and residential areas often cause the loss of human lives, property, and other values-at- risk. The primary concerns of forest managers and policy makers focus on questions concerning the local to global impacts of excessive and uncontrolled burning, broad-scale trends over time, and the options for instituting protocols that will lead to improved control. Other key questions involve determining in what circumstances fires pose a sufficiently serious problem to require action; what factors govern the incidence and impacts of fires in such cases; and what might be the relative costs and benefits of different options for reducing adverse impacts? The majority of nations in the temperate and boreal zone have systems in place that permit appropriate fire management actions. However, in some countries there is still a deficiency in systematic approaches to fire management due to a lack of guiding policies or shortcomings in funding. In other places, traditional misconceptions in fire prevention are inefficient or expensive. Unchecked rural human population shifts, urbanization, and civil and frontier wars have also been identified in developing countries as significant contributors to degrading practices and increased fire risk in temperate
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