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Impact of human population density on fire frequency at the global scale

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Author

  • Wolfgang Knorr
  • T. Kaminski
  • A. Arneth
  • U. Weber

Summary, in English

Human impact on wildfires, a major earth system component, remains poorly understood. While local studies have found more fires close to settlements and roads, assimilated charcoal records and analyses of regional fire patterns from remote-sensing observations point to a decline in fire frequency with increasing human population. Here, we present a global analysis using three multi-year satellite-based burned-area products combined with a parameter estimation and uncertainty analysis with a non-linear model. We show that at the global scale, the impact of increasing population density is mainly to reduce fire frequency. Only for areas with up to 0.1 people per km(2), we find that fire frequency increases by 10 to 20% relative to its value at no population. The results are robust against choice of burned-area data set, and indicate that at only very few places on earth, fire frequency is limited by human ignitions. Applying the results to historical population estimates results in a moderate but accelerating decline of global burned area by around 14% since 1800, with most of the decline since 1950.

Publishing year

2014

Language

English

Pages

1085-1102

Publication/Series

Biogeosciences

Volume

11

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Copernicus GmbH

Topic

  • Physical Geography

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1726-4189