The spatial and temporal distribution of fires on Sakhalin Island, Russia

Abstract

In the 1990s, catastrophic fires affected ~8 million ha of forest lands in the Russian Far East, including forests of Sakhalin Island. A study that correlated the spatial distribution of burned area and topographic features (elevation, slope, aspect) was carried out for Sakhalin Island. Burned area information derived from forest inventory maps (1935 to 1990) and satellite imagery (1998) was digitised and entered into a Geographic Information System. The burned area locations were correlated with topographic information; the normalisation procedure allows for analysis of the dependence of the fire scars on landscape features. The analyses show that fires occur primarily on the eastern, south- and north-eastern facing areas; >90% of fires occur at elevations lower than 300 m, and >95% occur on slopes <10 degrees. For the period 1935 to 1998, ~54% of the Sakhalin Island forest land territory was burned. From the total area of fire scars, formed from 1935 to 1998, 90.5% occurred owing to single fires, 8.6% of fire scars were the result of burning by two fires, 0.9% of fire scars were from three fires, and 0.03% from four fires. A fire return interval for the study region is ~120 years.