EU lack of fuel management contributes as well as climate change: - Every year 60 000 forest fires burn an area twice the size of Luxemburg burns within the EU
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Over 60 000 forest fires occur every year in the EU. These fires burn, on average, half a million hectares, causes human casualties and economic losses estimated at around €2 billion.
According too the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), every year an area twice twice the size of Luxemburg burns within the borders of the European Union.
The Joint Research Centre (JRC) supports European and global authorities in monitoring forest fires through integrated information systems that help predict and forecast fires and provide post-fire monitoring and evaluation of soil, gas emissions and vegetation.
Scientific studies show that forest fires damages are likely to increase the future due to climate change and the lack of "fuel management" - which means not cleaning forest vegetation and fallen branches below the trees (which end up working as combustion fuel) in abandoned rural areas, according to the article in the link above.
24 % more Europeans will be exposed to extreme wildfire risk if global temperatures rise 3 degrees C
The articles also points out that with a global temperature rise of 3°C, an additional 15 million Europeans — an increase of 24% — will find themselves living near wilderness areas and facing high-to-extreme wildfire risk for at least 10 days each year.
Mitigation of fires will therefor not be enough to fully prevent climate-related disasters, which means adaptation strategies are needed to enhance social and ecological resilience to wildfires.
Fire information systems
The European Forest Fire Information System(EFFIS), covers the full cycle of forest fire events in the EU and neighbouring countries.
Through its website, EFFIS provides fire danger predictions up to nine days in advance of their occurrence, as well as updated daily information on active fires, burned area and fire damage in Europe.
Additional modules analyse post-fire effects such as soil erosion and gas emissions and use satellite imagery to monitor the recovery of vegetation in the burnt areas.
The Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS) was set up as a joint initiative of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the Copernicus-EU's Earth observation programs.
GWIS brings together existing information sources at regional and national level to provide a comprehensive view and evaluation of fire regimes and fire effects at global level and to provide tools to support operational wildfire management from national to global scales.
The platform offers data and geographical information on current situation and statistics, country profiles and a long-term fire weather forecast.
