Vital Forest Graphics

Forests and fires

E ver the summer of 2007, Greece was hit by its most devastating forest fires in 50 years. People were burned to death. Trees burst into flames like giant matchsticks. For days a dense cloud of smoke blocked out the sun. In all, at least 270 000 hectares of forest, olive groves and farmland were destroyed. Though the scale and ferocity of the Greek fires was unusual – blamed on record high temperatures, a prolonged drought and in some areas the activities of arsonists – such con- flagrations regularly devastate forests around the world. Satellite data from 2000 revealed that 350 million hectares of land was affected by vegetation fires world- wide – an area slightly bigger than the whole of India – much of which was wooded savannah, woodland and for- est. According to the data, a large pro- portion of the burned area was in sub- Saharan Africa. Each year in the Mediterranean

Often unquantified, the social and economic impacts of forest fires are considerable: lives are lost, health problems occur, animals are killed and the environment suffers

region alone about 50 000 separate fires sweep through up to 1 million hectares of forest and other woodland. In 2007, wildfires ripped through southern California, burning more than 200 000 hectares of trees, destroying homes, and claiming lives. These siege fires are ten times the size of the average forest fire of 20 years ago and are becoming increasingly frequent (Wood 2007). Figures for 2005 indicate that nearly 4 million hectares in the US were burned – more than twice the average annual figure in the previous ten years. Many of the world’s ecosystems have evolved under the influence of fire and need it to regenerate. Up to the early 1990s, forest fires in Brazil were seen as a management tool, used to trans- form forest biomass into soil nutrients or eliminate invasive species and weeds (Mountinho and Schwatzmann 2005). It is still seen an important factor in ecosystem regeneration. However, in some parts of the world, for example

Smoke over Southeast Asia on 11 September 1997

Same cloud projected over Europe

SWEDEN

VIETNAM

IRELAND

POLAND

KAZAKHSTAN

HUNGARY

THAILAND

FRANCE

PHILIPPINES

ROMANIA

ITALY

TURKEY

IRAN

MALAYSIA

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

INDONESIA

Dense smoke Moderate smoke

TIMOR-LESTE

0

500

1000 km

AUSTRALIA

Source: Based on images from Earth Probe TOMS/ NASA, 1998.

48 VITAL FOREST GRAPHICS