• 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.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
• /
• v.99 no.2
• /
• pp.163-171
• /
• 2010

Forest fires have potentials to change the structure and function of forest ecosystems and significantly influence on atmosphere and biogeochemical cycles. Forest fire also affects the quality of public benefits such as carbon sequestration, soil fertility, grazing value, biodiversity, or tourism. The prediction of fire occurrence and its spread is critical to the forest managers for allocating resources and developing the forest fire danger rating system. Most of fires were human-caused fires in Korea, but meteorological factors are also big contributors to fire behaviors and its spread. Thus, meteorological factors as well as social factors were considered in the fire danger rating systems. A total of 298 forest fires occurred during the fall season from 2002 to 2006 in South Korea were considered for developing a logistic model of forest fire occurrence. The results of statistical analysis show that only effective humidity and temperature significantly affected the logistic models (p<0.05). The results of ROC curve analysis showed that the probability of randomly selected fires ranges from 0.739 to 0.876, which represent a relatively high accuracy of the developed model. These findings would be necessary for the policy makers in South Korea for the prevention of forest fires.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
• /
• v.26 no.3
• /
• pp.83-92
• /
• 2024

In recent years, the number of cases caused by people such as forest fires has been increasing, so it is very important for the whole nation to prevent and practice forest fires. In addition, due to climate change around the world, many lives and disaster losses are increasing due to forest fire-related disasters, and in the last 10 years (2014-2023), there have been 5,668 forest fires and 40,037 hectares of damage, which is equivalent to 56,000 football fields, resulting in 19 casualties and 285.4 billion won in damages. Now, in order to improve the understanding and awareness of forest fires among all the people, the government should actively inform the people about how to act in the event of a forest fire by making the people's action tips related to forest fires easy to understand and practical through public relations activities. In addition, the public and the government should work together to prevent and prepare for forest fires before they occur.

• Fire Science and Engineering
• /
• v.25 no.5
• /
• pp.39-46
• /
• 2011

In order to consider the prevention countermeasure to the occurrence of forest fires, analysing characteristic of the past forest fire data is needed. This research analyzed distribution and characteristics of forest fires damage over 30 ha based on statistics data of forest fires in Korea between 1975 and 2010. As a result, the number of forest fires damage over 30 ha as 23 was most occurred in 1978. Forest fires show an upward tendency from 1970 to 2000. Forest fires of 30 ha~50 ha damaged area was most occurred. Forest fire in Gangwon province was occurred as the number of total 66 (37.0 %). Gangwon province was superior in point density analysis. The number of forest fire occurrence over 30 ha was most high to 114 (63.0 %) in April and to 44 (24.3 %) in Sunday. The occurrence number of forest fire and damage caused by forest fire is increasing more and more since 1975, appropriate authorities can use effectively in devising policy for forest fire prevention from this result.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
• /
• v.7 no.2
• /
• pp.37-46
• /
• 2004

In order to decrease the area damaged by forest fires and to prevent the occurrence of forest fires, we are making an effort to improve prevention measures for forest fires. The objective of this study is to classify hazard regions where forest fires occur based on the factors that contribute to the occurrence of forest fires. Forest fire sites in the Uiseong-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do were surveyed according to the factors of forest type and topographic characteristics where the forest fires occurred. We used a correlation analysis to determine the forest fire occurrence factors and a conditional probability analysis and GIS to determine a forest fire danger index. The resulting forest fire danger index was used in the classification of forest fire occurrence risk regions.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
• /
• v.40 no.1
• /
• pp.24-34
• /
• 2024

Fire, being primarily a natural phenomenon, is impossible to control, although it is feasible to map the forest fire risk zone, minimizing the frequency of fires. The spread of a fire starting in any stand in a forest can be predicted, given the burning conditions. The natural cover of the land and the safety of the population may be threatened by the spread of forest fires; thus, the prevention of fire damage requires early discovery. Satellite data and geographic information system (GIS) can be used effectively to combine different forest-fire-causing factors for mapping the forest fire risk zone. This study mainly focuses on mapping forest fire risk in the Madikhola watershed. The primary causes of forest fires appear to be human negligence, uncontrolled fire in nearby forests and agricultural regions, and fire for pastoral purposes which were used to evaluate and assign risk values to the mapping process. The majority of fires, according to MODIS events, occurred from December to April, with March recording the highest occurrences. The Risk Zonation Map, which was prepared using LULC, Forest Type, Slope, Aspect, Elevation, Road Proximity, and Proximity to Water Bodies, showed that a High Fire Risk Zone comprised 29% of the Total Watershed Area, followed by a Moderate Risk Zone, covering 37% of the total area. The derived map products are helpful to local forest managers to minimize fire risks within the forests and take proper responses when fires break out. This study further recommends including the fuel factor and other fire-contributing factors to derive a higher resolution of the fire risk map.

• Fire Science and Engineering
• /
• v.20 no.2 s.62
• /
• pp.54-63
• /
• 2006

The number of forest fire under various conditions such as year, month, time, day of the week, region, damaged species, cause, and damaged area are checked, and the statistics of the forest fire causing materials in recent 14 years ('91-'04) are analyzed. The result shows that the year majority of forest fires had happened in last 14 year was 2001 and most of forest fire occurred in April, Sunday, around 14:00 to 15:00. The most damaged region is Gyeongsangbuk-Do, followed by Gangwon-Do, Jeollabuk-Do, and Gyeonggi-Do. The most damaged species is pine tree. The main causes of forest fires are accidental fire and incineration of a field boundary; however, recently, incendiarism is increased. The result of analysis on the damaged area shows that small fires under 5 ha occurred most frequently and large fires (over 30 ha) occurred mostly in Kangwon province (44.2%). The result also shows that the large forest fires (1,113 minutes) require 7.5 time more than the small forest fires (148 minutes). Especially, since average damaged area caused by large forest fire was about 470 ha per incident.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
• /
• v.41 no.3
• /
• pp.209-217
• /
• 2021

Although forest fires are more often triggered by artificial causes than by natural causes, the combustion conditions that spread forest fire damage over a large area are affected by natural phenomena. Therefore, using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), which can analyze the dependent and causal relationships between various factors, this study evaluated the causal relationships and relative influences between forest fire, weather, and drought, taking Gangwon Province as our sample region. The results indicated that the impact of drought on forest fires was 27 % and that of the weather was 38 %. In addition, forest fires in spring accounted for about 60 % of total forest fires. This indicatesthat along with meteorological factors, the autumn and winter droughts in the previous year affected forest fires. In assessing the risk of forest fires, if severe meteorological droughts occur in autumn and winter, the probability of forest fires may increase in the spring of the following year.

• The Korean Journal of Ecology
• /
• v.23 no.2
• /
• pp.125-129
• /
• 2000

Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park is one of the Long-term Ecological Research Site in Indonesia. In the late 1997, the fires have burnt and destroyed nearly 300 ha forest in this park. and G. Masigit was the largest burnt area (250 ha) of nine locations of hot spot recognized. Undergrowth vegetation got the most severe impacts. Almost undergrowth vegetation in various location were totally burnt. However, within three months following burning new seedlings such as Omalanthus populneus, Macaranga, Trema orientalis and Eupatorium appeared in the forest floor- The number of mycoflora recorded in burnt forest was interestingly increased in post forest fires site. Forest fires in G. Masigit had also affected the wild life population and diversity. For example, the number of bird species and the number of soil insects in burnt forest was significantly reduced. The forest fires had also great impact on soil. such as on soil organic contents, bulk density, colour, consistency, permeability and the activity of soil microorganisms.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
• /
• v.32 no.2
• /
• pp.149-157
• /
• 2016

Understanding regional characteristics in forest fire occurrence is important to establish effective forest fire prevention policy in Korea. This study analyzed the characteristics of forest fires occurred in 16 administrative districts for recent 25 years (1990~2014) to examine regional characteristics in forest fire occurrence. Forest fire occurrence reflects regional characteristics depending on climatic factors as well as region's society-cultural factors. Results showed that the first cause of forest fire occurrence was carelessness by human activities throughout all administrative districts, however, the second cause depends on regional characteristics. As the results of forest fire occurrence period analyzed for 10 days, the most forest fires occurred in the southern region during January to March, while forest fires in the northern region occurred mostly during March to April. We classified forest fire occurrence patterns into three types (centralized: Gyeonggi-do, dispersal: Busan, horizontally distributed: Gyeongsangnam-do) by multi-temporal analysis for forest fire occurrence period.