Technical Note Fire probability in South American Protected Areas August to October 2020 South American authors: Liana O. Anderson, João B. C. dos Reis, Ana Carolina M. Pessôa, Galia Selaya, Luiz Aragão UK authors: Chantelle Burton, Philip Bett, Chris Jones, Karina Williams, Inika Taylor, Andrew Wiltshire August 2020 1 HOW TO CITE THIS WORK ANDERSON Liana O.; BURTON Chantelle; DOS REIS João B. C.; PESSÔA Ana C. M.; SELAYA Galia; BETT Philip, JONES Chris, WILLIAMS Karina; TAYLOR Inika; WILTSHIRE, Andrew, ARAGÃO Luiz. Identification of priority areas for reducing the likelihood of burning and forest fires in South America August to October 2020. 16p. São José dos Campos, 2020.SEI/Cemaden process: 01250.029118/2018- 78/5761326. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.13727.79523 Contact: [email protected] Institutions Met Office Hadley Centre – United Kingdom Centro Nacional de Monitoramento e Alerta de Desastres Naturais - Brazil Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais – Brazil This Technical Note was prepared with the support of the following projects: CSSP-BRAZIL - Climate Science for Service Partnership (CSSP) Brazil. Fund: Newton Fund MAP-FIRE – Multi-Actor Adaptation Plan to cope with Forests under Increasing Risk of Extensive fires Fund: Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI-SGP-HW 016) PRODIGY BMBF biotip Project – Process‐based & Resilience‐Oriented management of Diversity Generates sustainabilitY Fund: German BMBF biotip Project FKZ 01LC1824A João B. C. dos Reis and Ana C. M. Pessôa were funded by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq - 444321/2018-7 and 140977/2018-5, respectively). Luiz Aragão was funded by CNPq Productivity fellowship (305054/2016-3). Liana Anderson acknowledges EasyTelling, and the projects: CNPq (ACRE-QUEIMADAS 442650/2018-3, SEM-FLAMA 441949/2018-5), São Paulo Research Foundation – (FAPESP 19/05440-5, 2016/02018-2). 2 Executive summary Fires in South America are at their highest since systematic monitoring began in 1998. During March, April and May 2020 respectively, fire hot spots have reached peaks of 17%, 32% and 9% higher than previously registered peaks. This report identifies priority areas with a high probability of fire threat, in order to support decision making and planning strategies to mitigate the risk and impact of fires. The focus is on South American protected areas, given the importance of protecting these areas of high biological, environmental and sociocultural value. In addition, these areas have an institutional structure, legal framework and in most cases, a management plan that allows the use of the information presented in this report to guide actions on the ground. In South America, we identified 117 Protected Areas (P.A.) under High Alert and Alert. In total, there are more than 287,000 km2 and 146,000 km2 under High Alert and Alert fire threat conditions across the continent over the next three months. Among the recommendations, we highlight the importance of early identification of Protected Areas under High Alert and Alert conditions. In these areas strategic planning and communication networks can be implemented, to enable the population living inside and in the surroundings to plan for minimising the risk and impacts of uncontrolled wildfires. 3 Overview Fire occurrence negatively impacts people, ecosystems and climate. The impacts on people include threat to lives, loss of goods such as homes, agricultural production, forest products, infrastructure (communication networks, light, roads), transport, and diseases associated with increased air pollution1,2. The impacts on ecosystems are related to the decrease in biodiversity, wildlife mortality, decrease in carbon stocks as well as effects on other environmental services such as maintenance of local temperature and the cycling of water to the atmosphere. Climate impacts are associated with the carbon emissions to the atmosphere, which could lead to more extreme weather conditions, such as increased droughts and prolonged dry seasons2. It has been estimated that fires associated with deforestation in the Amazon cause approximately 3,000 premature deaths annually across South America3, which can put increased pressure on health resources, and the carbon emissions from fires during drought years can be higher than those from deforestation emissions4. So far this year, fires in South America are at their highest since 1998 in the months of March (31,529 hot spots, 17% higher than the previous peak), April (23,139 hot spots, 32% higher than the previous peak) and May (13,638 hot spots, 9% higher than the previous peak), with the other months presenting detections higher than the long-term average5. This Report aims to identify priority areas with a high probability of fire threat, in order to support decision making and planning strategies to mitigate the risk and impact of fires. The focus is on South American protected areas, given the importance of preserving these areas of high biological, environmental and sociocultural value. In addition, these areas have an institutional structure, legal framework and in most cases, a management plan that allows the use of the information presented in this report to guide actions on the ground. The document is structured in four sections. First, we present the Priority Areas, the Fire Probability Categories and the Recommendations. Next, the Technical Information is presented, divided into three topics: Seasonal forecasts for temperature and rainfall, Fire trend methods, and the Protected Area classes used. Finally, a Glossary with the definition of technical words used in the report, and the list of References are presented. *** 4 Priority Areas for mitigating fire probability August – October 2020 The fire probability for August to October presented here has been generated based on the integration of three datasets: the fire trend and peak of fires in the August-October period, the rainfall, and the temperature forecast. The definition of the fire probabilities per category (High Alert, Alert, Attention, Observation and Low Probability) is presented in the next section. The technical and methodological information are described at the end of this document. In South America, we identified 68 Protected Areas (P.A.) with High fire probability: 43 P.A. in Brazil, 20 in Bolivia, 2 in Peru, 2 in Paraguay and 1 in Ecuador; and 49 P.A within the Alert level: 34 in Brazil, 5 in Argentina, 3 in Bolivia, 3 in Colombia, 2 in Peru, 1 in Venezuela and Chile (Figure 1, Table 1). The complete list of the identified protected areas in each category is presented in Annex 1 and 2. All these areas presented an increase in August-October total fire occurrence from 2017 to 2019, and have high forecast probabilities of experiencing above- median temperatures and below-median rainfall, depicting the socio-environmental- climatological conditions favourable to wildfires. In total, there are more than 287,000 km2 and 146,000km2 under High Alert and Alert of fire threat in the next three months. Table 1. Summary of Protected areas per August-October fire probability category in South America. 5 Figure 1. Spatial distribution of the Protected Areas and the summary in each probability category, for each country. *** 6 Fire probability categories In Table 2 we present the summary of the data integration, structured by fire probability category. The fire trend and the accumulated active fires in each fire season (Aug-Oct) of the period from 2017 to 2019 were calculated for all the Protected Areas (PA). The climatological conditions (the probability of temperature being above the climatological median, and rainfall being below the median, for Aug-Oct 2020) were obtained by area-weighted averaging of the grid cells in each PA. The Alerts were classified into five categories: High Alert, Alert, Attention, Observation and Low Probability. These categories refer to the level of probability of the occurrence of fire events. The description of each category is presented below: High Alert This is defined as: (1) there is an observed positive trend in fire occurrence (increased number of fire occurrences every year from 2017-2019), (2) accumulated active fires higher than 75% of the distribution of fires in the Protected Areas, (3) 60% or higher probability of lower than average rainfall, and (4) 60% or higher probability of higher than average temperature, which represents the climatological condition for increased risk of fire occurrences. Alert This is defined as: (1) a positive trend in fire occurrence (increased number of fire occurrence every year from 2017-2019), (2) accumulated active fires more than 50% and less than 75% of the distribution, (3) 60% or higher probability of lower than average rainfall, and (4) 60 % or higher probability of higher than average temperature, which represents the climatological condition for increased risk of fire occurrences. Attention This is defined as: (1) a positive trend in fire occurrence (increased number of fire occurrences every year from 2017-2019), (2) the number of accumulated active fires is less than 50% of the distribution, but it has one or none of the climatological conditions including (3) probability of below-average rainfall and (4) probability of above-average temperature. 7 Observation This is defined as: (1) areas with a negative trend of hot pixels, (2) high accumulated fire values (> 75%) in areas where both or one of the meteorological variables, (3) rainfall or (4) temperature, is forecast with a probability of 60% or higher for enhanced fire-prone conditions. Low Probability This is defined as: (1) areas without fires detected for the Aug-Oct period since 2017 or with negative fire trend, (2) accumulated hot pixels lower than 75%, although one of the meteorological conditions (3) rain or (4) temperature may have a high probability for establishing a condition for fire spread. This category also includes areas where the trend is negative and both climatological conditions for fire risk have lower probabilities to occur. Table 2. Summary of the variables for the different fire probability categories.