Global fire activity patterns (1996–2006) and climatic influence: an analysis using the World Fire Atlas

摘要

Vegetation fires have been acknowledged as an environmental process ofglobal scale, which affects the chemical composition of the troposphere, andhas profound ecological and climatic impacts. However, considerableuncertainty remains, especially concerning intra and inter-annualvariability of fire incidence. The main goals of our global-scale study wereto characterise spatial-temporal patterns of fire activity, to identifybroad geographical areas with similar vegetation fire dynamics, and toanalyse the relationship between fire activity and the El Ni?o-SouthernOscillation. This study relies on 10 years (mid 1996–mid 2006) ofscreened European Space Agency World Fire Atlas (WFA) data, obtained fromAlong Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) and Advanced ATSR (AATSR) imagery.Empirical Orthogonal Function analysis was used to reduce the dimensionalityof the dataset. Regions of homogeneous fire dynamics were identified withcluster analysis, and interpreted based on their eco-climaticcharacteristics. The impact of 1997–1998 El Ni?o is clearly dominant overthe study period, causing increased fire activity in a variety of regionsand ecosystems, with variable timing. Overall, this study provides the firstglobal decadal assessment of spatial-temporal fire variability and confirmsthe usefulness of the screened WFA for global fire ecoclimatology research.