• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.99 no.2
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• pp.163-171
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• 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 Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.219-228
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• 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 the Korean Society of Hazard Mitigation
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.95-100
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• 2009

Fine fuel moisture code (FFMC), a main component of forest fire weather index(FWI) in the Canadian forest fire danger rating system(CFFDRS), indicated a probability of ignition through expecting a dryness of fine fuels. According to this code, a rising of temperature and wind velocity, a decreasing of precipitation and decline of humidity in a weather condition showed a rising of a danger rate for the forest fire. In this study, we analyzed a weather condition during 5 years in Kangwon province, calculated a FFMC and examined an application of FFMC. Very low humidity and little precipitation was a characteristic during spring and fall fire season in Kangwon province. 75% of forest fires during 5 years occurred in this season and especially 90% of forest fire during fire season occurred in spring. For developing of the prediction model for a forest fire occurrence probability, we used a logistic regression function with forest fire occurrence data and classified mean FFMC during 10 days. Accuracy of a developed model was 63.6%. To improve this model, we need to deal with more meteorological data during overall seasons and to associate a meteorological condition with a forest fire occurrence with more research results.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.148-156
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to analyze the patterns of forest fire possibly related with Asian dust event and carry out a correlation analysis between forest fire occurrence and existence or not of the Asian dust event during dry seasons i.e. February to May in 2000 to 2008. To study the correlation of forest fire and Asian dust, we surveyed information of Asian dust observations, forest fire statistics, fire danger rating index, weather data such as temperature, relative humidity and wind speed of the day occurring the forest fire. As a consequence of analysis, the regional frequency of Asian dust was the highest in Gyeonggi and Chungbuk divisions. Frequencies of forest fire occurrence by the Asian dust events were the highest in the day before three days of the Asian dust event. The highest frequent regions of forest fire occurrence were district of boundary line between Gyeonggi and Western of Gangwon, Chungbuk and Gyeonbuk inland. The correlation between forest fire and fire danger rating index showed the high correlation with the day before three days and after three days of the Asian dust event. These correlation coefficients were 0.50038 and 0.53978 to 1% significance level. The result of analysis between the frequency of forest fire occurrence and wind speed had a highly negative relationship at all the Asian dust days, the day before and after three days. The correlation coefficients had been -0.58623 to -0.61245 to 1% significance level. Relative humidity showed a little of negative relationship with forest fire occurrence in -0.2568(p ${\leq}$ 0.01) for the Asian dust day and -0.35309(p ${\leq}$ 0.01) for next three days. Moreover, at the day before three days of Asian dust events, it was -0.23701 to 1% significance level. However, the mean temperature did not correlate with frequency of forest fire occurrence by Asian dust events at all.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.49-60
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• 2012

The change in fuel moisture in accordance with the number of days after rainfall is an important factor in predicting forest fire dangers and supporting forest fire rangers. Therefore, in order to clear up these forest fire occurrence conditions, forest fire danger levels for surface fuel 0.6 cm or lower, 0.6~3.0 cm, 3.0~6.0 cm, and 6.0 cm or above by fallen leaves layer, humus layer, soil layer, and diameter after rainfall of 5.0 mm and higher in accordance with tree density in 2008, 2009 Spring/Autumn Young Dong region have been analyzed. Research showed an approximate 17 % fuel moisture which is a dangerous forest fire occurrence level after 5 days from rainfall in medium-density areas and 3 days after rainfall in loose-density areas of Spring time in the fallen leaves layer. On the other hand, the humus layer showed a 40 % or higher fuel humidity even after 6 days from rainfall regardless of the season, while the upper and lower parts of the soil layer had a little change. In loose-density areas with 0.6 cm or less surface fuel per diameter in Spring time, the fuel humidity displayed a dangerous level in fire forest occurrence after 3 days, and 4days in medium-density areas, and for loose-density areas with 0.6~3.0 cm surface fuel per diameter in Autumn time it showed a dangerous level in forest fire occurrence after 3 days, and for medium-density areas, 5 days. In the case of 3.0~6.0 cm of fuel moisture per diameter in both Spring and Autumn times, even after 6 days, low and medium-density areas showed that they maintain fuel moisture and therefore the dangers of forest fires were very low, and in the case of 6.0 cm or higher, it showed 25 % or higher fuel moisture even after 6 days from rainfall regardless of the season.