Analysis of lightning-induced forest fires in Austria

• Published in: Theoretical and applied climatology Vol. 111; no. 1-2; pp. 183 - 193
• Main Authors: Müller, Mortimer M., Vacik, Harald, Diendorfer, Gerhard, Arpaci, Alexander, Formayer, Herbert, Gossow, Hartmut
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Vienna Springer Vienna 2013; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Anthropogenic factors; Applied ecology; Aquatic Pollution; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Atmospheric Sciences; Biological and medical sciences; Climatology; Coniferous forests; Conservation, protection and management of environment and wildlife; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Forest & brush fires; Forest and land fires; Forest fires; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Lightning; Original Paper; Parks, reserves, wildlife conservation. Endangered species: population survey and restocking; Phytopathology. Animal pests. Plant and forest protection; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control; Weather damages. Fires; Austria; Europe; Thunderstorm Activity; Error Ellipse; Burned Area; Decision Matrice; Forest Fire; Ground discharge; Statistical analysis; Geographic distribution; Environmental factor; Vegetation fire; Forest fire; Environmental monitoring; Time variation
• ISSN: 0177-798X; 1434-4483
• DOI: 10.1007/s00704-012-0653-7

Besides human-caused fires, lightning is the major reason for forest fire ignition in Austria. In order to analyse the causes of ignition and to characterise lightning-induced forest fires, fire records were compared with the real appearance of lightning events by using the Austrian Lightning Detection and Information System for the period from 1993 to 2010. A probability was estimated for each forest fire being caused by lightning by using a decision tree and decision matrices based on flash characteristics (e.g. amplitude, time, location). It could be shown that 15 % of documented forest fires were lightning-caused. Nearly all lightning-caused fires were found during the summer months, whereas almost 40 % of all fires occurring from June to August were naturally caused. Most lightning-caused fires took place in the south and east of Austria. Lightning fires were more frequent at higher altitudes and primarily affected conifer forests. The median burned area was lower than that for anthropogenic forest fires.