Forest Fires

June 30, 2022
Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
Category: DPN Topics

Forest Fires

Subject: Environment

Section: Climate Change

Context: According to UNEP 2022 report on wildfires, while human carelessness and lightning strikes may start wildfires, climate change, land-use change, and poor forest management are allowing these fires to burn longer and hotter than ever before.

Concept:

Forest fires, also called wildfires and bush or vegetation fires, are described as uncontrolled, often widespread burning of plants in forests, grasslands, brushland, and tundra.
Types of Forest Fires:

Surface fires– easiest fires to control and cause the least damage as they burn only surface plant litter.
Ground fires– also called ‘underground’ or ‘subsurface fires’, burn within humus, peat, and piles of vegetation that are dry enough to burn. Although such fires spread very slowly, they are often difficult to suppress or fully extinguish, which makes them dangerous.
Crown fires– most intense and dangerous forest fires as they burn whole trees and can spread rapidly by spreading across tree tops due to winds.

The UNEP report provides a new classification for forest fires – landscape fires and
Landscape fires are defined as being seasonal, of moderate intensity (with few instances of high intensity), easily controlled, and having a low environmental impact (for some species it may even have a positive impact).
Wildfires are defined as extreme events, of high intensity, that are difficult to control, and have severe social, economic, and environmental impacts.

Causes of Forest Fires:

Under natural circumstances, extreme heat and dryness, friction created by rubbing of branches with each other also have been known to initiate fire.
In India, forest fires are most commonly reported during March and April, when the ground has large quantities of dry wood, logs, dead leaves, stumps, dry grass and weeds.
The fires of longer duration, increasing intensity, higher frequency and highly inflammable nature are all being linked to climate change.
Some major fires are triggered mainly by human activities.

How prone to fire are India’s forests?

As of 2019, about 67% (7,12,249 sq km) of the country’s geographical area is identified as forest, according to the India State of Forest Report 2019 (ISFR) released by the Forest Survey of India (FSI), Dehradun. Tree cover makes up another 2.89% (95, 027 sq. km).
Based on previous fire incidents and recorded events, forests of the Northeast and central India regions are the most vulnerable areas to forest fires, the FSI has said. Forests in Assam, Mizoram and Tripura have been identified as ‘extremely prone’ to forest fire.
Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh are the two states that witness the most frequent forest fires annually.

Impacts of Forest Fires:

Positive

Negative

Land Management- selective firing stimulated grass growth and curtailed tree growth and ensured better visibility and safer movement for collecting non-timber forest products.
Reduce diseases- ground fires lit by the Soligas and Kurubas communities kept down hemiparasite populations and reduced incidence of tick-borne diseases. E.g., Invasive Lantana.
Support local wild herbivores– by serving as fodder.

Impact the economic stability– communities that depend on non-timber forest products as a source of income.
Increase atmospheric carbon dioxide levels- that were locking into forests, grasslands, soils, and other areas.
Impacts biodiversity – Evergreen Forest and Himalayan slopes that are home to rare flora and fauna.

Efforts to protect forests from fire:

In 2004, the FSI developed the Forest Fire Alert System to monitor forest fires in real time.
In its advanced version launched in January 2019, the system now uses satellite information gathered from NASA and ISRO.
The real-time fire information from identified fire hotspots is gathered using MODIS sensors (1km by 1km grid) and electronically transmitted to FSI.