Wildfire ignition from forestry machines in boreal Sweden
Johan Sjöström
A C , Frida Vermina Plathner A and Anders Granström B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Division of Transport and Safety, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Box 857, 501 15, Borås, Sweden.
B Department of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 901 83, Umeå, Sweden.
C Corresponding author. Email: johan.sjostrom@ri.se
International Journal of Wildland Fire 28(9) 666-677 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF18229
Submitted: 18 June 2018 Accepted: 13 June 2019 Published: 11 July 2019
Abstract
Several large Swedish wildfires during recent decades were caused by forestry machinery in operation, fires for which there is still no characterisation. We combined 18 years of data on dispatches, weather and fire danger and interviewed forestry workers to understand the spatial, temporal and weather distributions of these fires, and their underlying mechanisms. We estimate the average annual number of ignitions from forestry machinery in Sweden at 330–480 (2.0 ± 0.4 ignitions per 1000 ha clear-felling) of which 34.5 led to firefighter dispatches, constituting 2.2% of all forest fire dispatches and 40% of area burnt. Soil scarification causes the most ignitions and the main mechanism is likely high-inertia contact between discs and large stones, causing sparks igniting dry humus or moss, countering reports suggesting that such metal fragments cannot fulfil ignition requirements. We found a spatial relationship between forestry machine ignitions and abundance of large stones, represented by a Boulder Index generated from a nationwide dataset. Further, 75% of the dispatches occurred on days with relative humidity <45%, Duff Moisture Code (Canadian system) >26 and Fire Weather Index >12. 75% of the area burned when Fire Weather Index was >20. Results suggest machine-caused forest fires can be largely avoided by cancelling operations in stony terrain during high-risk weather.
Additional keywords: forestry, scarification, site-preparation, sparks.
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