• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
• /
• v.38 no.4
• /
• pp.219-228
• /
• 2022

This study examined the relationship between the number of forest fires and days with no rainfall based on the national forest fire statistics data of the Korea Forest Service and meteorological data from the Open MET Data Portal of the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA; data.kma.go.kr) for the last 30 years (1991-2021). As for the trend in precipitation amount and non-rainfall days, the rainfall and the days with rainfall decreased in 2010 compared to those in 1990s. In terms of the number of forest fires that occurred in February-May accounted for 75% of the total number of forest fires, followed by 29% in April and 25% in March. In 2000s, the total number of forest fires was 5,226, indicating the highest forest fire activity. To analyze the relationship between regional distribution of non-rainfall periods (days) and number of forest fires, the non-rainfall period was categorized into five groups (0 days, 1-10 days, 11-20 days, 21-30 days, and 31 days or longer). During the spring fire danger season, the number of forest fires was the largest when the non-rainfall period was 11-20 days; during the autumn fire precaution period, the number of forest fires was the largest when the non-rainfall period was 1-10 days, 11-20 days, and 21-30 days, showing differences in the duration of forest fire occurrence by region. The 30-year trend indicated that large forest fires occurred only between February and May, and in terms of the relationship with the non-rainfall period groups, large fires occurred when the non-rainfall period was 1-10 days. This signifies that in spring season, the dry period continued throughout the country, indicating that even a short duration of consecutive non-rainfall days poses a high risk of large forest fires.

• Fire Science and Engineering
• /
• v.21 no.4
• /
• pp.52-58
• /
• 2007

The effect of stand-growing-stock characteristics of thinning area and non-thinning area on forest fire was studied in this work. 14 spots were selected from 3 counties such as Yangyang, Injae, and Gapyeong and on-the-spot investigations were performed to evaluate the effect of forest fire. The stand-growing-stock characteristics on the spots were analyzed through the height of tree, breast height diameter, clear length, mortality of branch, forest tree standing crop density, degree of closure, and shrub and grass cover degree. The relation between forest fire and the risk of spread of forest fire were analyzed from the analysis of the stand-growing-stock characteristics. It is considered from this work that the possibility of forest fire is decreased on the thinning area compared to the non-thinning area because of higher clearlength, lower number of tree, lower mortality of branch and higher shrub and grass cover degree.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.38 no.6_3
• /
• pp.1847-1859
• /
• 2022

Wildfires in North Korea can have a directly or indirectly affect South Korea if they go south to the Demilitarized Zone. Therefore, this study calculates the regional optimized Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) based on Local Data Assessment and Prediction System (LDAPS) weather data to obtain forest fire risk in North Korea, and applied it to the cases in Goseong-gun and Cheorwon-gun, North Korea in April 2022. As a result, the suitability was confirmed as the FFDI at the time of ignition corresponded to the risk class Extreme and Severe sections, respectively. In addition, a qualitative comparison of the risk map and the soil moisture map before and after the wildfire, the correlation was grasped. A new forest fire risk index that combines drought factors such as soil moisture, Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) will be needed in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Hazard Mitigation
• /
• v.2 no.1 s.4
• /
• pp.161-167
• /
• 2002

Forest fire danger period in nine Provinces (Gangwondo, Kyonggido, Gyeongsangnamdo, Gyeongsangbukdo, Jeollanamdo, Jeollabukdo, Jejudo, Chungcheongnamdo, Chungcheongbukdo) has turned out to be similar to recognize whether there are some differences between each Provinces, we used correlation analysis with number of occurrence and damage area by an interval of ten-day period. Based on this analysis, there was significant numbers of occurrence at all areas wish serious burns except Gyeongsangnamdo and Jejudo Provinces. Since persuasive power is insufficient as danger period of forest fire applies equally to nine Provinces, statistical analysis using number of forest fire occurrence and burned area are executed. And then, a analysis of variance(ANOVA) test of significance by an interval of ten day period is carried out. As a result of this analysis, there showed significant at 1% level for number of occurrence except Jejudo, and is also showed significant at 1% level for burned area except Gangwondo and Chejudo. Through regional correlation analysis for danger period, we classified three parts of Middle region (Gangwondo, Kyonggido, Gyeongsangnamdo, Gyeongsangbukdo, Jeollabukdo, Chungcheongnamdo, Chungcheongbukdo) Southern region (Gyongsangnamdo, Jeollanamdo) and Jejudo region. With respect to forest fire occurrence time, Middle region showed from the middle of February to first of May that amounts to 81% of entire occurrence in this region, and Southern region begins with at the last of January to the middle of April covering 71%. In terms of forest fire burned areas, it appears at the middle of February to the first of May, occupying 98% in Middle region, and Southern region showed burned areas from the last of January to the middle of April amounting to 82% of total occurrences.

• 한국방재학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2007.02a
• /
• pp.223-230
• /
• 2007

Nowaday, for the promotion of producing forest trees, production of excellent timbers, and build-up of public forest area, it is on the increase of the thinning-forest for artificial forest, natural forest, eco-friendly forest, and the forest for development and improvement of forest resources nationwide. Even though the thinning-forest is applied around 180,000ha every year, the quantity of collected/used products is only 18,000ha $(240,000m^3)$ which is 10% of the whole thinning-forest area. Meanwhile, some reports represent that the left products after thinning-forest might increase the severity of forest fire and the waste of resources. Therefore, this study focused on the analysis of correlation between the accumulated products after thinning-forest and forest fire, and providing a preparation plan for the forest fire.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
• /
• v.95 no.2
• /
• pp.160-167
• /
• 2006

Most of the forest fires that occur in South Korea are caused by human. We partitioned South Korea into nine districts and used observed weather data and daily fire occurrence records for the 1994 to 2003 period to develop a human-caused fire occurrence model of South Korea. Logistic regression analysis techniques were used to relate the probability of a fire day to Fine Fuel Moisture Code (FFMC) component of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System. The probability of the number of fire day was increased as FFMC increased in the nine districts of South Korea.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
• /
• 2001.11a
• /
• pp.109-113
• /
• 2001

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.199-207
• /
• 2016

This study was conducted to develop a forest fire occurrence model using meteorological characteristics for practical forecasting of forest fire danger rate by reflecting the climate change for the time period of 2000yrs. Forest fire in South Korea is highly influenced by humidity, wind speed, temperature, and precipitation. To effectively forecast forest fire occurrence, we developed a forest fire danger rating model using weather factors associated with forest fire in 2000yrs. Forest fire occurrence patterns were investigated statistically to develop a forest fire danger rating index using times series weather data sets collected from 76 meteorological observation centers. The data sets were used for 11 years from 2000 to 2010. Development of the national forest fire occurrence probability model used a logistic regression analysis with forest fire occurrence data and meteorological variables. Nine probability models for individual nine provinces including Jeju Island have been developed. The results of the statistical analysis show that the logistic models (p<0.05) strongly depends on the effective and relative humidity, temperature, wind speed, and rainfall. The results of verification showed that the probability of randomly selected fires ranges from 0.687 to 0.981, which represent a relatively high accuracy of the developed model. These findings may be beneficial to the policy makers in South Korea for the prevention of forest fires.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Fire Science and Engineering Conference
• /
• 2008.04a
• /
• pp.321-324
• /
• 2008

Forest fire danger rate of thinning area was lower than that of non thinning area, because height rate of leewardside in burned stem of tree, damage rate of crown and mortality of tree in thinning area were 30.8%, 37% and 48.4% lower than that in non-thinning area, respectively. Intensity of forest fire varied depending upon topographical condition up slope, down slope, aspect, location as well as species, breast height diameter and forest tree density. Especially, a mountaintop area was burned down when forest fire was spread to up slope ridge of mountain.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
• /
• v.21 no.3
• /
• pp.189-204
• /
• 2018

This study has developed a forest fire occurrence probability model for inaccessible areas such as North Korea and Demilitarized Zone and we have developed a real-time forest fire danger rating system that can be used in fire-related works. There are limitations on the research that it is impossible to conduct site investigation for data acquisition and verification for forest fire weather index model and system development. To solve this problem, we estimated the fire spots in the areas where access is impossible by using MODIS satellite data with scientific basis. Using the past meteorological reanalysis data(5㎞ resolution) produced by the Korea Meteorological Administration(KMA) on the extracted fires, the meteorological characteristics of the fires were extracted and made database. The meteorological factors extracted from the forest fire ignition points in the inaccessible areas are statistically correlated with the forest fire occurrence and the weather factors and the logistic regression model that can estimate the forest fires occurrence(fires 1 and non-fores 0). And used to calculate the forest fire weather index(FWI). The results of the statistical analysis show that the logistic models(p<0.01) strongly depends on maximum temperature, minimum relative humidity, effective humidity and average wind speed. The logistic regression model constructed in this study showed a relatively high accuracy of 66%. These findings may be beneficial to the policy makers in Republic of Korea(ROK) and Democratic People's Republic of Korea(DPRK) for the prevention of forest fires.